Experience a Month of Backpacking Through Olympic National Park in Four Minutes

With National Park Week in full swing, we are pleased to have teamed up with our friends Jim and Will Pattiz from Sea Raven Media, who founded the project ‘More Than Just Parks.’  According to the brothers, “the goal of the project is to share the wonders of the National Parks with as many people as we can, thereby ensuring their continued protection and enjoyment for generations to come.”

To celebrate the beauty of the National Parks, we will be sharing the films, photos, and stories behind the brother’s work in these protected lands throughout the week. We have previously shared their incredible views of Grand Teton National Park and Voyageurs National Park, but the brothers have many more stories from National Parks all across the country.

More than two years ago, the project was born when the Pattizs published their first National Park film, ‘Olympic’. The brothers spent 30 days backpacking around the park, traveling over 500 miles to accumulate the more than 50,000 photos and videos that went into making the film.

On their website, the team describes the reasons why they chose Olympic National Park as the launching pad for the project. ‘We chose Olympic as our first of the More Than Just Parks short films due to its incredible diversity. It is unlike any park on the planet offering glacial mountain peaks, old-growth rainforests, and over seventy miles of wilderness coast, all within a day’s drive.’

Well, we didn’t back 30 days in a row backpacking, although it was pretty close. We spent 12 days in a row backpacking, then 1 off, 8 on, 1 off, and so on, for a total of 30 days. It was a grueling trip with some really long hours but resulted in a first film that we were truly proud of.

The most difficult aspect of the trip and the creating the film was probably figuring out how best to capture the park. It was our first time attempting to make one of these films so it was all trial and error and a lot of learning on the go. Knowing what equipment you needed and didn’t need on a given hike and some of the more basic things like that were things we had to learn along the way. Ultimately we figured it out and managed to put together a film that we felt did the park justice.

They go on to detail their 500-mile route, even providing a map of all of their shooting locations.

The film and the photos are a stirring look into one of the west coast’s most popular National Park, which averages almost 3.5 million visitors a year. And based off the stunning scenes in this film, it’s easy to see why Olympic National Park is so popular.

To see more, follow More Than Just Parks on Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and their website.