the Olympic Mountains
Incredibly rugged, mysterious, and sublime, the Olympic Mountains of Washington State are the upthrust, crumpled, and eroding remains of sandy sediments and coarse volcanic rocks that once lay far beneath the waves on the ocean floor. Washington's Olympic Peninsula, from whence the mountains rise, is the leading edge of the North American continent as it rides roughshod over the tectonic plates of the eastern Pacific. Flecked with glaciers and perennial snowfields, and home to isolated and endemic animals and plants, the Olympics are nearly as wild now as they were when first explored just over a century ago. Secure for the present within Olympic National Park and adjoining wilderness areas of Olympic National Forest, much of the interior mountain mass is currently protected from a logging industry that repeatedly cleared surrounding foothills and lowlands of what were once Earth's greatest temperate coniferous forests. Though only a fraction of their former extent, the big trees remain, and the stunning biodiversity of this "museum of primitive America" still exists for future generations - from shining glaciers of Mount Olympus to the deep surrounding sea.
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