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.