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    Hike with Me: Return to the Wild Coast
    Hike with Me: Return to the Wild Coast
    Hike with Me: Return to the Wild Coast
    Ebook209 pages1 hour

    Hike with Me: Return to the Wild Coast

    By Jeanne Bustamante

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    About this ebook

    Come back to the Wild Coast, on a hike along the ocean in Washington State's Olympic National Park. Come along on a nine day backpacking trip with Jeanne, Ambrose and a new friend for incredible experiences, unpredictable weather, gorgeous views and wild animal encounters.

    This book contains over 225 full color pictures.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJeanne Bustamante
    Release dateMar 3, 2019
    ISBN9780463276068
    Hike with Me: Return to the Wild Coast

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      Book preview

      Hike with Me - Jeanne Bustamante

      Introduction

      The story of this trip starts three years ago, when Ambrose and I spent most of a day at Cape Alava instead of going on with our planned itinerary of Shi Shi Beach. We sat, and we watched the tide come in, go out, come in. We watched the sun set. And we both knew that we would be back.

      The year 2018 was chosen as the year to come back, and, in December 2017, Ambrose took the time to analyze the tide charts for the summer of 2018 in order to pick the perfect range of dates for making it from Rialto Beach to Shi Shi Beach and back. About 28 and a half miles each way, by the Olympic National Park's North Coast Campsite Map.

      But that map doesn't really take into account what kind of miles they were.

      Sure, some of them were easy miles. Wet sand, compacted into a decent surface.

      But others were struggles, like beaches full of ocean-tumbled rocks ranging in size from large marbles to softballs. Beautiful to behold, but taking a step caused the rocks to slide and tumble and clack, challenging balance and ankles. There were long ranges of tumbled rocks from football sized all the way up to refrigerator sized - and not just small dorm fridges either. And huge boulders with sharp edges and abrasive surfaces, with seaweed draped artfully over them to add a degree of slipperiness that is difficult to predict.

      And we didn’t take this trip alone. Ambrose invited a friend he had made on an online message board to come with us on this trip, Bill. We had met Bill the previous summer when we, along with Bill and three of his friends, hiked into the Sawtooth Wilderness to watch the eclipse. But on that trip, there were some complications. Bill ended up having to drive one of his friends back to Boise so it was less a hiking trip together and more a parallel hiking trip. Same destination, same trail, but different timing.

      We did have a chance to spend some time together, long enough to know there weren’t any immediate personality clashes. But the coast would be something different altogether. The tides would constrain the amount that we could separate without getting completely cut off from each other. And this was going to be a nine day trip with no easy ways to ditch if the going got tough. Ambrose, Bill and I were in for a whole lot of togetherness.

      Not a bad thing, necessarily, but something that gave the whole trip a new dimension. I’m used to backpacking with just my husband or by myself. The idea of being around another person scared me. Not for any good reason. There was just a part of me that didn’t want to share the trip with anyone else. This was a thing that Ambrose and I did.

      And now we were going to share it.

      Day 1 – Journey Begins

      We parked at Rialto Beach after lunch on an overcast day. Our cars would remain on the gravel of the backpackers’ lot while we walked along the ocean for the next nine days, an anchor of stillness, waiting patiently for our return while other cars arrived and parked and left again. Because not many people are… let’s say, enthusiastic, enough to go for a nine day backpacking trip at all, let alone one on the coast.

      Bill had a digital hanging scale that he typically uses to weigh his pack both before and after a trip. He offered to weigh our packs, too. I took him up on the offer, but Ambrose didn’t want to know. My pack weighed just about 43 pounds. Definitely the heaviest that my pack has been in a long time.

      Our first steps were through the paved day parking lot, and we paused at the restrooms to take one last opportunity to use flush toilets - a luxury we would not be able to enjoy while on the hike.

      The tide was pretty low when we started, and we were only planning on hiking a couple miles to just past Hole in the Wall. That would allow us to get a nice early start the next morning. Ambrose and I knew that the early start would prove beneficial because of our prior experience. This was Bill’s first time on the coast, and he was making an effort to trust us and our crazy ideas about how to conduct this particular hike.

      I mean, it wasn’t anything too bad at first. Ambrose had an itinerary, and we shared that with Bill. The campsites were pretty set, because we had a permit for specific places along the coast, but how we got there was left in my charge. Not the route, there wasn’t much to choose from there, but the timing. I decided our wake up times, break times and meal times, although I didn’t decide anyone’s bed times but my own.

      But bedtime was a way’s away as we started walking on the sand and rocks of Rialto Beach. I was savoring being on the coast again, breathing in the sound of the ocean waves. The mist threatened to turn to drizzle or even rain, but for about half a mile it held off.

      I wasn’t really sure where to walk. Or how fast to walk. Should I walk at Ambrose’s speed? And if so, should I be on his left or his right, and where was Bill walking and where should I be in regards to his position? I’m probably the only one who was thinking about this on the first day, but I did think about it for a while. And then I just walked at a comfortable speed without getting too far ahead and kept near the water, sometimes letting the waves rush over my boots.

      Bill wore lower shoes, so he wasn’t as cavalier about letting the waves rush over his feet. He stayed a bit higher on the beach, but still low enough that the sand was damp and compact instead of dry and loose. Ambrose kept to his own pace and rhythm.

      As the mist started to transition to drizzle, Bill and I paused to put pack covers on. Ambrose didn’t cover his pack, because it’s water resistant. And he has a waterproofed down quilt for sleeping so he wasn’t very concerned with his pack contents getting wet. I, on the other hand, have a useless-when-wet down sleeping bag, so I got the cover on. It was actually the first time I’d deployed this particular cover on my pack. It used to be Ambrose’s pack cover, but now that he didn’t need it, I got to use it. An immense improvement over my prior garbage bag arrangement once Bill helped me get it fitted properly.

      Ellen Creek wasn’t anything like I remembered it. I mean, it was in roughly the same place, but there had clearly been some nature-induced landscape changes sometime in the past three years. When we hiked there in 2015, the creek was hardly visible on the beach. You had to hike towards the sign a bit to be able to see the fresh water flowing. Now, a clearly defined stream flowed directly into the ocean and came before the sign. The water actually had carved a deep channel through the sand that would have been hard to navigate. But there were shallower spots that I could easily step across.

      I eyed the overland trail sign by Hole in the Wall, but I didn’t suggest climbing it. It’s really steep and it was raining and the tide was low, so there was no need. But I was - I am - curious about what’s up there. Just an overland trail, or is that where they hide the pit toilets?

      Hole in the Wall was slick, but pretty. There were actually other people there, even in the weather, so we didn’t pause for lots of pictures.

      Passing through Hole in

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