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Oly Loop GPS Tour
Latest Info and Updates
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Here's where you'll find any last minute info, addendums to the tour or any temporary or permanent road closures or other events that impact the tour after the current edition's publish date. Please read thoroughly and print out this page if necessary and take with you on your tour.  Waypoint names are from the most current edition (2023) of the tour, except where noted otherwise.

Route C has a partial washout on it where it climbs up the north side of the mountain toward the Kloshe Nanitch ridgeline. While it is blocked to keep vehicles from passing, there's plenty of road left for a motorcycle to get by easily. While they've placed some really big rocks right at the washout that prevented easy passage for motos last year, one of them magically moved and now it's not an issue there. However,they've placed assorted woody debris a few hundred feet back from the washout on both sides, and an additional line of rocks on the uphill end. None of it should be insurmountable by a decent rider, though novice riders and/or those on really big bikes may find it daunting. It's not a long way to backtrack down to FS road 30 on the valley floor to take the bypass mentioned below, if you want to have a look at it yourself and see what you think.

But if you would rather not bother, the bypass is pretty simple. When you arrive at waypoint RC28TL (RC25TL for 2022 Edition users), do not turn left , but instead continue straight (unless you are coming back down from checking it out, in which case you'll turn left) on West Twin River road (also called FS RD 30) until you reach its end at highway 101. From here, you should load and activate Route D before turning left onto the highway. You'll join route D in approximately 3 miles, then just follow prompts to the next turn.

Route Z is currently still closed due to a giant washout that is not passable. I have no news on if or when a repair will happen, but being a "mainline" road, it should get fixed eventually. However, you can still jump off of Route D onto Route Z, as suggested in the booklet, at waypoint RD11KR by turning left there instead of keeping to the right. This would be to shave off some miles if you're low on gas or time, or are just in a hurry to get to Forks ASAP.

This is just past RD11XX (for 2022 users, just past RD14KR). It's a BIG one, but it's cut back just enough at one end (the uphill end, next to the dirt bank) to be able to get around, even on a big bike, though perhaps with a little finagling. I'm confident someone in a truck with a saw will have this gone very soon

There is active logging going on Route E beginning just past the Upper Clearwater CG and beyond. If you are not permitted to pass, you should backtrack to the campground and continue on that road (Bull Creek) until you reach the Hoh Mainline road, where you'll go left and continue until you rejoin Route E just a few miles before Highway 101.

The road near the bridge crossing the Quinault river suffered storm damage and is closed there (Milepost 14.5 on North Shore Quinault Rd). However, you can still drive up either the North Shore or South Shore roads to visit any of the points of interest in the area, such as world's largest XX tree, etc..

If you choose to just bypass all of it, simply continue straight on highway 101 when you reach waypoint RF20TL. Make sure to gas up at the station in Amanda park, before continuing on down to Route G. Or if you need premium gas, you can go up the South Shore road a couple of miles to the fuel station near the Lake Quinault Lodge.

A couple of new roads have been cut in on the west side of the mountains on state land, making it difficult to discern which way to go. You'll have to use the track and intuition to figure it out. One was'nt a very long road, so it'll become obvious quickly if you pick the wrong way. With the other, the tracklog of your route is your friend, but even without it I'm sure it will be obvious when you keep getting farther from the next waypoint.

Due to the river no longer having a good ford, Route G no longer travels up the west side of Wynoochee lake. So 2022 users need to follow the directions for the "Water Crossing Bypass"

All waypoints in our tour have names with only 6 characters, so if you notice the aforementioned problem, there are two reasons this may have happened to you.  The first possibility is that you did not delete all of the waypoints from a previous version of this tour (or our Baja GPS tour) that you had on your GPS.  You cannot have two GripTwister GPS tours loaded onto a GPS at the same time.  In fact, it's best to backup your GPS and then delete all of your waypoints before loading the tour.  Then you can add back your essential waypoints like HOME and such if you still have room.

The second reason that can cause this to happen, is that you have waypoints from a previous version of this tour (or our Baja GPS tour) in your "Library" within BaseCamp.  It's necessary to make sure that if you have other GripTwister GPS waypoints in any folder within the "My Collection" folder of the "Library" in BaseCamp, that you first delete those before importing or opening the GPX files from the CD into BaseCamp.  If this is what happened, you will need to delete ALL the GripTwister waypoints from "My Library", including (and especially) the "Unlisted Data" folder near the bottom of "My Libray", and delete all the waypoints off of your GPS again and start clean.  The proper method to delete the old files from BaseCamp is to right click on the "List" item in the "Library" that contains the other GripTwister GPS tour, and select "Remove and Delete Unique Content".  Once that is done, you can import/open the GPX file for the tour in BaseCamp and download it to your GPS.

The reason is that the default setting for some GPS receivers and/or software is to not have individual tracks automatically "Show on Map".  It is a good idea to check to see if they (the tracks) are all set to "Show on Map" after you download the tour, and to manually change them if necessary. Different models do this differently so check your instructions, but here's how to do it on the Garmin Montana (and may be the same or similar on your model):
Select "Track Manager" from the menu screen.
Scroll down to the track that you would like to be displayed and select it.
Press "Show On Map".  If "Hide on Map" is displayed, it is already set to show, so do nothing more. 
Press the back button (curved line with arrow).
Repeat for the other tracks 

Here's what to do to enjoy the trip in the off-season:

When you arrive at the closed gate on Route G, turn around and activate Route H and continue on.  That's it! Now enjoy the tour any time of year, weather conditions permitting.