Олимпийские горы: ландшафт, реки и ледники Вашингтона.

Mountain range in Washington, United States
Rivers radiate outwards to all sides. Clockwise from windward to leeward, the major watersheds are: Satsop, Wynoochee, Humptulips, Quinault, Queets, Hoh, Bogachiel, Sol Duc (all flowing west into the Pacific Ocean; with the Satsop, Wynoochee by way of the Chehalis River, the Humptulips by way of Grays Harbor at the mouth of the Chehalis River, and the Bogachiel and Sol Duc forming the Quillayute River within 5 mile (8 km) of tidewater), Lyre, Elwha, Dungeness (all flowing north into the Strait of Juan de Fuca), Big Quilcene, Dosewallips, Duckabush, Hamma Hamma, and Skokomish (all flowing east into Hood Canal).

A large portion of the range is contained within the Olympic National Park. Of this portion, 95% is part of the Daniel J. Evans Wilderness. The national park is surrounded on the south, east, and northwest sides by the Olympic National Forest, with five wilderness areas, and on the southwest side by the Clearwater State Forest with one Natural Area Preserve (Washington Department of Natural Resources), and the Quinault Indian Reservation. State parks and wildlife areas occur in the lower elevations.

Precipitation varies greatly throughout the range, from the wet western slopes to the semi arid eastern ridges. Mount Olympus, nearly 8,000 feet (2438 m) tall, is a mere 35 mile (56 km) from the Pacific Ocean, one of the steepest reliefs globally and accounting for the high precipitation of the area, with an estimated of snow and rain on Mount Olympus. of rain falls on the Hoh Rainforest annually, receiving the most measured precipitation of anywhere in the contiguous United States. Areas to the northeast of the mountains are located in a rain shadow cast by the mountain themselves, and receive as little as of precipitation around the city of Sequim. Annual precipitation increases to about on the edges of the rain shadow around Port Townsend, the San Juan Islands, and the city of Everett across Puget Sound. with occasional hot spell days reaching to the upper 80s to low 90s °F (30 35 °C). The large number of snowfields and glaciers, reaching down to 1,500 m (5,000 ft) above sea level, are a consequence of the high precipitation, northern latitude, and cool moderating climate adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. There are about 184 glaciers and permanent ice fields crowning the Olympics peaks. The most prominent glaciers are those on Mount Olympus covering approximately 10 square miles (26 km2). Beyond the Olympic complex are the glaciers of Mount Carrie and others in the Bailey Range, Mount Christie, Mount Queets, and Mount Anderson, however most of these have experienced significant decrease in both length and mass in recent decades, with several disappearing completely in the driest northeastern portion of the mountains.

Mount Olympus itself was not ascended until 1907, one of the first successes of The Mountaineers, which had been organized in Seattle just a few years earlier. A number of the more obscure and least accessible peaks in the range were not ascended until the 1970s. President Grover Cleveland protected the forests of the Olympic Peninsula with the Olympic Forest Reserve in 1897. A second dam was built a few miles upstream in 1927. Neither dam had any fish passage for the salmonid runs, eliminating salmonids from over 70 mile (113 km) of river. Congress authorized removal of these dams in 1992, and work began in 2011. The North Fork Skokomish River was dammed in the 1920s by the city of Tacoma, enlarging the original Lake Cushman by 600%. A settlement was reached in 2009 with the Skokomish Indian Tribe over damages to fisheries and game habitat, damages to tribal lands through flooding, and trespass on tribal lands for the power transmission line. As part of the settlement, migrating salmon will be trucked around the dam. Migrating salmon are trucked around the dam, and Tacoma Public Utilities funds mitigation for Roosevelt elk wintering habitat that was lost under the reservoir. With the building of the Spruce Railroad during World War I and the completion of the Olympic Highway in 1931, logging in the Olympics intensified, along with demand for recreational facilities. During this period the Forest Service built roads and campgrounds and encouraged private businesses with special use permits to build tourist facilities such as a winter sports facility at Deer Park and the chalets in Enchanted Valley and at Low Divide. Special use permits were also issued for private summer cabins at Lakes Cushman and Quinault, and the Olympic Hot Springs resort. During the Great Depression, the Olympic National Forest used the Civilian Conservation Corps to build logging roads and railroads, bridges, campgrounds, shelters, fire lookouts, ranger stations, and a fish hatchery. They also fought fires and planted tree seedlings. Pressure for a national park built with the acceleration of logging and road building. The Forest Service campaigned in peninsula logging and mill towns against the national park, and both the Forest Service and the Park Service jockeyed for public support and endorsement from various conservation groups for administration of the monument. In 1935, a special committee was convened on the national park proposal. The majority reported that the Olympics fully rated protection as a national park, but one member issued a minority report stating that public pressure for recreational facilities would require the Park Service to build roads, campgrounds, and chalets, thus negating any benefit from national park status. Both the Forest Service and the Park Service sponsored backcountry trips through the high Olympics that summer to promote their stewardship of the mountains. In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited the Olympics to determine their suitability as a national park, and was greeted in Port Angeles by more than 3000 local school children asking him to 'give us our Olympic National Park'. He signed Olympic National Park into law in 1938. In 1953, the park was enlarged with the addition of the coastal strip, and more coastal areas along Lake Ozette were added in 1976. Also that year, UNESCO named the park an International Biosphere Reserve, and a World Heritage Site in 1981. In 1984, Congress designated 5 wilderness areas in the Olympic National Forest, and declared 95% of Olympic National Park a wilderness area in 1988.