A Grand Mis-Adventure, Part II

Day three, Thursday, started with one last burst of rainshowers on the tent fly. Vinh and I waited out the rain before climbing out of the tent and packing up our things. Once we said goodbye to Nathanael we were off to further adventures. Our plan was to try to pick up some ground, making it most of the way down the coast in that one day, at least 10 miles. The beaches were amazing that morning, and only a light sprinkling of dewy mist fell.

Once we rounded the small headland that had socked us in the night before, we were faced with the first of a few "rope assists" to get over some unroundable headlands. I started to get a touch of vertigo as we walked along narrow trails and clung to ropes to help pull ourselves up over the still-soaked cliffs. Some of the outlooks were ridiculously spectacular, but I could neither take a picture nor linger for very long since we needed to go a fairly good distance before we could stop worrying about the tide that would start coming back in about an hour. Up and down we went, twice. Then around another very rocky headland where my hands really started to ache from clinging to scratchy ropes and sharp rocks. The boulders were very large and somewhat slippery, adding to how tired my legs were starting to get.

Then came the third and final rope assist. Up wasn't too bad, although I was getting more exhausted and experiencing more vertigo. I slipped a couple times while going up and on the first rope going down. Then came the second rope to the beach... The trail that you used the rope to descend had basically been washed out and stripped bare by the people who had gone down the trail ahead of us. It was nothing more than a muddy chute, slick as can be, with a fat, scratchy yellow rope to cling to. Vinh went down first. I heard a sound come from him which I understood to mean I could start. Turns out, he'd fallen down the second half of the trail, scratching his leg and rope burning his entire arm as he caught himself.

I started down the trail slowly, digging my boots in and allowing myself to slide down slowly. At a few points I became physically and emotionally stuck. I was so scared that I froze, unable to move a hand or a foot for fear of falling the 30 or so feet to the rocky beach below. Eventually, right around where Vinh had slipped himself, he convinced me to take off my pack and slide it down to him. It could have had to do with the fact that I was having a panic attack while clinging to the rope... Taking the pack off was incredibly difficult as my weight shifted back and forth and I could feel my feet sliding out from under me at times. Finally, I made it down the last stretch and just let all of it out--the vertigo, the fear, the shaky mud-coated legs, the scratched, beaten and mud-caked hands, all of it came pouring down my cheeks. But we weren't done yet.

Next, we had to go around yet another headland, bouldering for over 0.7 miles. Doesn't sound like a lot, but we did it over the course of maybe, a half an hour, moving as fast as I could at that point. Vinh could have done it much faster, as he's a wiz on the rocks, but I was still so shaky and the rocks so large and slippery that it took me a long time. Plus, we'd run out of fresh water (our overnight campsite had not had access to a stream) and I was getting dehydrated. When we'd gotten around that headland and one more smaller trek, we were on a long sandy beach... and I just demanded a break.

We came across a stream, maybe 3 miles from where we'd started, 3 hours after we'd started, with almost no breaks in between as we raced the tide. Vinh pumped water and we mixed some gatoraide in my water bladder to rehydrate me. Laying on this wonderful, sandy beach, looking back towards the headlands we'd just crossed (Point of Arches still in view in the distance), I suggested just staying. We'd have problems if we tried to rush to the other headlands since I couldn't go fast enough without a break. There was no way to make it the distance we needed to to be able to get past the reserved-only campsites, and I didn't want to end up pushing our luck on some not-quite low tides.

We ended up camped on the beach, our tent facing north west with a spectacular view of the creek flowing into the ocean and the sea stacks in the distance. Vinh built another fire without a firestarter this time, then relocated it to a better spot (how he did this still baffles me), and then watched as the beach flies died in massacre quantities as they flew too close to the roaring flames. We made pesto pasta with fried salami and flatbread cooked in the salami grease (trust me, I needed the nutrients at that point) and slept extremely well until waking up at the crack of dawn the next day... determined to get cell phone signal, call my dad and bail out at Cape Alava.

A Grand Mis-Adventure, Part I

Upon the wonderful suggestion of my father, Backpacker Man, I convinced one of my friends to join me on a 5 day adventure into the wilds of the Washington coastline. Turns out taking advice from someone who has hiked all 2600 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail in the course of 6 months is not necessarily the best idea…

Our adventure was to take us over the 25 or so miles from Shi Shi beach up north to Rialto beach near La Push. Monday night I began to have reservations about the wisdom of our excursion considering the forecast: rain and gale force winds for the next two days. My compatriots convinced me to go through as planned; Vinh and Nathanael, I’m not sure whether to thank you or knock you out.

Tuesday, Vinh and I headed out for Neah Bay. After stopping in Port Angeles for some tasty drive through at a chrome and neon diner called Frugals and getting laughed at by the ranger as we picked up our permit, we drove the long, winding road along the northern coast of the peninsula. Stopping in Neah Bay to pick up our Makah recreation pass, we walked out along a long, sketchy dock and purchased a 6 pound salmon straight from the fishermen. Wrapped in a simple trash bag, Sammy was to be the first course in a gourmet backpacking extravaganza of food!

The rain started to plip plop on the windshield as we headed out to the trailhead, and it picked up as we walked along the mud-filled trail. Vinh struggled to keep his sneakers clean and semi-dry while I trudged straight on through the puddles and muck (hooray for gore-tex lined boots!). We hit the beach after two miles, and continued down for about another mile, looking for anything that could function as a semi-protected campsite. We found a little ramp with a rope assist leading up off the beach, and ignored the “no camping” sign we found there. Vinh tried in vain to really get a fire going so we could cook Sammy and kept an eye out for Nathanael until we were both so cold and wet we couldn’t stand it anymore. He handily tied our extra food up high enough to act as a decent bear wire, including what we were sure was to be a very sadly spoiled fish the next morning. A dry tent kept our tummies happy enough for the night.

Wednesday morning, we woke to dry skies, walked down and met Nathanael on Shi Shi beach, and decided to cook the salmon, damn the tides. Let me tell you, those moments of dryness and the taste of that fish (which had not been eaten by raccoons nor spoiled overnight!) were spectacular. As soon as we started eating though, the rain came pouring down. As we walked along Shi Shi, we created a couple of “Olympic Beach Events” including a hammer throw with a rope tied to a rock that we found, buoy soccer, buoy chucking, and seagull chasing.

Then we came to the Point of Arches, which was amazingly gorgeous in the rain. Nathanael went around the corner a bit and assured Vinh and I that it was passable, even though the tide was definitely higher than we’d expected or wanted it to be. Well, it was passable, if you didn’t mind getting up to your waist in water. I was terrified to be honest, after being warned constantly not to end up getting caught by the tide. At one point I lost my footing and slipped. Vinh grabbed the back of my pack to help keep me above water, but my waist belt and the bottom of my pack definitely went under, along with my butt. My camera was sadly tucked into one of the waist-belt pockets at the time and was the absolute last thing on my mind. About 100 more yards after the fall and we were out of the water and on the beach, wet up to our waists in salt water, and wet down from our heads by the torrential rain.

Eventually we determined that there was no way to round the next headland and that we would have to wait out the tide if we wanted to leave the cove we found ourselves in. After getting up above the tide line and determining that there was no overland trail for the headland blocking us, we set up the footprint of our tent as a lean-to shelter. Water was coming off of it in sheets as we all three huddled underneath not sure how we were going to withstand 6-7 hours of waiting. As the rain appeared to taper off, Nathanael made a fateful bet with Vinh that Vinh could not start a fire in the sodden conditions. Somehow, out of sheer dumb luck or fantastic skill, Vinh got a fire going with nothing but toilet paper, a wet fire starter, matches and some soggy twigs. I managed to keep the fire stoked and with two boys collecting the driest stuff they could find, we had a roaring blaze going.

We decided to spend the night on our secluded cove. No one else could reach us due to the tide and we rightly decided that trying to make it to Cape Alava, four or five miles away, at 8-9pm was not a good idea. Our clothes dried out by the fire and we had the tents up in time to keep us and our stuff relatively dry when the squalls started up again. phad thai (with baked tofu, green beans, and sautéed spinach) was our dinner along with my Nalgene full of Charles Shaw chardonnay. The only thing we were lacking at this point was marshmallows! Then to wake up on our little cove, with the sea stacks on either side, was spectacular. Since I was dry, warm, and excited by our lovely beach, I decided not to bail out on the trip altogether. Our little fire saved the trip.

Free at Last

Now that everyone knows, I can blog about my recent job-related adventures... perhaps too late for anyone to care. I have spent the last month in the process of interviewing for and accepting a position at the Bureau of Education & Research (otherwise known as BER). I will be traveling the US (and some parts of Canada), flying or driving to a different city 6 days a week, facilitating seminars for educational professionals, and generally testing every fiber of my being.

It was an intense, four interview process, culminating in an interview with the owner of the company who also just happens to be my roommate's boyfriend's father... but following that interview they offered the job, and I was ready to sign. It was a combination of many things that led to such an abrupt change, dropping away from science so whole-heartedly... Partly some of my co-workers, partly my own disinterest for what I was actually doing on a daily basis, partly the fact that I cannot see myself continuing on either in a lab tech position or in a graduate school program in the field, and partly because I was falling deeper and deeper into a hole that I was becoming defined by.

At some point I became defined as a nerd, an outcast, a dork, and what-have-you, and ever since I've been in the out-group. I found myself just like other people who strive to be original and a-typical but fall into simply defining themselves by a separate set of guidelines. I closed myself off to people because they weren't part of my "antisocial nature," that I insisted was inherent to my personality. Turns out, I'm pretty damn social and love to have attention and in-depth conversations one-on-one with people. I'm not necessarily as inclined to be social in the same ways as other friends are, but I have my own way that does not require definition or judgment. I may be a bit quieter, less a leader of the pack, or slightly off-beat when it comes to interests, but that makes me more interesting rather than less.

So this new job will help me turn the corner, leave the out-group behind, and try a high school-esque situation over again. I don't have to be the "popular girl" but I don't have to be an outcast. I just have to be me, put myself out there for who I am, and just let things roll instead of trying to control every step of the process.

My co-workers were shocked, as they should have been. I didn't let anyone know I was going to quit until I dropped the bomb to my boss yesterday afternoon. Some are madder than others but altogether I think most realize that I am doing what's best for me. I think some are impressed with my courage to step off the moving train, and I'll admit, I'm a little bit impressed too.