Olympic Beaches

Hiking the Pacific coast in Olympic National Park has long been on my bucket list. I’ve dreamed of this hike. Olympic National Park protects over 73 miles of coastline. About two-thirds of those miles are wilderness.

I’ve done a lot of backpacking in my time but I have never done the endless beach walk. What an epic experience that would be! It rates very high on that bucket list. I’m not asking for the whole 73 miles. I would be happy to just spend three days.

Think of it.  Dark forests of old growth Sitka spruce, cedar, hemlock and maple, dripping with moss and ferns. Rocky outcroppings  harboring tidal pools of colorful sea stars and anemones. Arches and sea stacks sculpted by the waves. Discovering treasures as you beachcomb your way down miles of black sand beaches.  Mazes of driftwood providing shelter from the wind and warm campfires.  Mighty waves roaring and crashing. Amazing sunsets. But lots of fog – and rain.

Well, it didn’t happen this time. There were lots of reasons. It’s a trip I would want to do with a companion and I was traveling solo. I didn’t have appropriate gear. The tides were timed wrong, with low tide coming just before sunrise and just after sunset when I was there. It was pouring down buckets of rain as often as not. I didn’t have the permits. What it all comes down to is that this is a hike that takes some planning.

It;s not an easy hike. There are lots of hazards. It’s not all sandy beach. There are stretches of ankle-twisting cobbles that can be ridiculously slippery in the rain. Sneaker waves can take you away. If the ocean isn’t successful in carrying you off with a sneaker wave, it might retaliate by tossing trees at you. Yeah, really. Big trees. You have to be on the lookout for bears and mountain lions when traversing the rain forest on the headlands.

Sometimes you have to climb these headlands where they cliff out into the sea. There are 7 impassible headlands where you must go overland. These paths are steep and slippery. So steep and slippery that you cannot ascend without a rope or cable anchored into place to aid you. Leather gloves are recommended to make it up and down these ropes and cables safely. The biggest hazard, though, is getting caught out by the tide. There are 23 spots that can only be crossed at low tide. You have to have a tide table and a watch, and you have to be aware.

You need good topo maps to point out the headlands and low tide crossings. You need good rain gear.  You should have light, flexible hiking boots instead of the heavier, stiffer boots you might use in an alpine environment. You need a bear resistant food container. You need to put everything in plastic bags to protect against the all-pervading moisture. I’d bring a sponge to mop up my tent, if I were you.

You need permits. Not only do you need a permit from the Park Service, there are 3 different Native American tribes whose lands you may cross. If you do, you will need permits and permission from them, too. You see what I mean when I say this trip takes a bit of prior research and planning!

So I didn’t do the backpack this year. However, I did spend a little time on the coast. Call it a scouting mission. Here are my impressions of a few of the beaches in the southern half of the Olympic Coast.

Rialto Beach

Rialto Beach is right next to Mora Campground, one of the four campgrounds located along the coast. I like my campsite here, tucked within giant trees with a smaller young maple forming a canopy over my tent that helps to keep it a little bit drier.

This is a cobble beach, made up of flat gray stones, perfect skipping stones if it were a lake instead of a rambunctious, unruly ocean. Not the best beach for beachcombing.  It’s a gray, blustery day, not as rainy as some, just small squalls and showers that come and go.  It’s kind of chilly, but it makes for some great wave watching. The tide is coming in and it’s fun to watch the waves explode against the offshore rocks.

I watch a seagull sitting on one of these rocks. Some waves are bigger than others and he flies off his perch and hovers in the air every time a slightly bigger wave threatens to drench him. There are tidal pools  and an arch about a  mile and a half north There’s a creek to cross and the tides are wrong, and I don’t have enough time before sunset to make it there and back.  Instead, I perch on a log in a pile of driftwood and meditate, vowing to return one day when the tides are right and walk through that arch, maybe even camp near it.

Ruby Beach

Ruby Beach has an arch, too. This is my favorite beach in Olympic. Too bad so many other people love it so much, too. It’s crowded near the arch when the sun is out, but when the fog destroys all hope of a sunset shot the crowd dwindles. I avoid the crowd by walking south down the beach, away from the arch and the sea stacks.

Then I find the whale. I thought it was a rock at first. It looks more like a geological formation than a once living being. Bold black and orange stripes, layered yet twisted, the rest of the lump shapeless, the nothing greyish color of weathered rock. I’ve seen similar colors and patterns in the canyons of the Desert Southwest. There’s no head that I can discern. The only thing that looks like an animal are the flukes of its tail.

And the stench. I literally cannot breathe downwind of this creature. It is the worst thing I’ve ever smelled.

It’s not very big as whales go, about beluga size. It’s a baleen whale, the black and orange stripes are its throat sack. What kind of a whale is it?  I have no idea.

Beach 3

It is so foggy this morning that I can’t even see 10 yards. It doesn’t matter, I have finally made it to a beach at low tide. Time to go tidepooling! I walk over, under, and through the rocky boulders on the point. I am deeply disappointed. There are lots of anemones. But there are no starfish.

Starfish play a big part in this dream I have of walking Olympic beaches. Since I’m a mountain girl unfamiliar with the sea, they’re rainbow-colored fantasy animals to me,  exotic and strange. I’ve seen the pictures and postcards, from Shi-Shi Beach and Beach 4. I SO want to see and photograph starfish. But I’m too late. They’re all gone.

Starfish used to be common all along the Pacific Coast, but not anymore. In 2013 an epidemic struck the starfish. It was literally a plague, wiping out up to 99% of the starfish on some beaches in a matter of weeks. The sickness took out the entire West Coast, from Mexico to Alaska. On the Washington coast mortality was about 90%. It’s called  Sea Star Wasting Syndrome. It’s pretty horrible. The starfish lose legs and start dissolving into a pile of goo, WHILE THEY”RE STILL ALIVE!

Scientists aren’t totally sure what the cause is. It’s probably a virus, but ocean warming and acidification, major consequences of climate change, seem to also play a part.  It’s happened before, but never so severe an outbreak. In some places like the Oregon Coast the epidemic seems to be over and sea stars are slowly making a comeback. Washington and British Columbia, though, are listed as this year’s hotspots for the disease.

Sea Star Wasting Syndrome doesn”t just destroy sea stars. It destroys a whole ecosystem. Some sea stars are important predators, and their favorite food is sea urchins. Sea urchins are grazing animals. They eat kelp. Kelp forests shelter an amazing number of different animals, especially juveniles. With no sea stars, the sea urchin population has skyrocketed, decimating the kelp forests. It’s all connected.

It’s not all bad news. There is a very thin ray of hope. In some localities it seems sea stars are mutating to overcome the virus. Maybe it’s just as well that I missed the tides this year. Maybe, just maybe, when I visit another time the sea stars will have found a way to survive and come back.