Goblin Gates
On March 4, 1890, Charles Barnes, a member of the Press Party, was the first white man to lay eyes on the Goblin Gates. The area, just upstream from Lake Mills, was once looked at as a possible hydroelectric site, but after the land was acquired by the National Park Service, that threat was removed. As Robert Wood describes it in the Olympic Mountains Trail Guide, the river, “flowing alongside a steep cliff, comes to a sudden standstill in a deep basin, where the water whirls furiously, then makes a right angle turn and glides through a break in the rock wall. The strata, consisting of alternate layers of slate and sandstone, are tilted on edge, and the sandstone has eroded faster than the slate, thus leaving the latter projecting from the canyon walls. The broken rocks, resembling faces with various expressions – at least to the imaginative person – line the canyon walls.”
About Ken Campbell
New Release
A story of sea kayaking and science on the rugged coast of Alaska. Coming – Spring 2014.
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