Washed Out Elwha River Road, Madison Falls and the Bypass Trail

This was part 2 of our hiking adventure to the Lake Crescent area on the Olympic Peninsula of Western Washington. Previously we had hiked to the Marymere waterfall and wanted to see one more waterfall that day. Madison Falls is super easy to see and did not take long so we decided to walk down the closed road and see the washed out section of road plus check out the bypass trail. I really want to take our bikes past the washed out section of road but after seeing the steepness of the bypass trail I do not know if I feel comfortable doing that. It was a fun visit, we did 2.7 miles with 375 feet of elevation gain, my foot was done at this point! They have 2 studies ongoing to fix the road, the first is raise the elevation of the existing road by 10 feet and rebuild, the second option is to make a completely new road through the trees and avoid crossing the river at the point of the washout. There actually is a third option I found out and that is to do nothing.