Explore Olympic's Activites

Hiking the Olympic Coast, Washington

It's Washington's wettest and wildest shore, a 57-mile long strip practically unchanged since famed explorer Captain James Cook sailed by in 1778. With monumental sea stacks, dramatic capes and coves, rocks and reefs, Olympic National Park's ocean shore is one to remember.

All is not quiet on the park's western front, especially in winter when huge waves, high winds and heavy rains lash the shore. The surf tosses giant logs upon the shore like so many matchsticks. Ah, but Pacific Northwesterners sometimes make a spectator sport of it: "Winter storm watching," they call it. Between storms the hiking is magnificent.

Some 100 inches of rain a year falls on these beaches in the shadow of mighty Mt. Olympus. Of course the weather is worse inland: the adjacent rain forest is rainier and 7,965-foot Mt. Olympus gathers 200 inches of annual precipitation--mostly in the form of snows. Three-fourths of this prodigious rainfall soaks the shore during the late fall-winter-early spring rainy season. However, even the summer hiking season averages a few inches a month.

Shore pine overlooks the surf line. A little farther inland thrives a forest of sitka spruce, red cedar and hemlock, towering above a forest floor that's a tangle of ferns, mosses, salal sorrel and ocean spray. Elk, porcupine, black tailed deer and black bear roam the bluffs above the beach. Double-breasted cormorants, black oystercatchers, gulls and great blue herons are among the frequently seen airborne denizens of land's end. Sea stacks (the tall offshore rocks) are mini-wildlife refuges, offer sanctuary for murres, guillemots, auklets and those favorites of every binoculars-equipped child --puffins. Minus tides present opportunities for exploration of this coast's abundant tidepools, teeming with mussels, starfish, anenomes, sea urchins, rock oysters, hermit crabs and many more creatures.

Certainly this coast is a wilderness by all outward appearances--charcoal-gray beaches heaped with humongous driftwood logs, pine-spiked headlands enshrouded in the mist. It's managed as a wilderness by the national park service. Within this public domain, and adding to it's end- of-the-world feeling, are three Native American holdings: the Ozette Reservation on the north side of Cape Alava, the Quileute Reservation at La Push and the Hoh Reservation on the south side
of the Hoh River.

Native people have lived on this coast for centuries. A village site at
Cape Alava, buried by a mud slide some 500 years ago, preserved a multitude
of artifacts that helped archeologists understand the culture and live
of these early people.

The hiking opportunities are
many: weekend and weeklong backpacking trips, half-day and all-day treks,
easy beach walks. Backpacking is the only way to see two seventeen mile
long sections of this coast, which have no road access. Beach hiking is
much slower than you might imagine. The beaches themselves are of two
varieties: long, wide sand strands and minor coves bookended by rocky
points. Some of these rocky points can only be rounded at low tide. Other
points can be surmounted by forest trails that climb inland before returning
the hiker to the beach.

If you're willing to brave
the rain or try to time your visit between storms, Olympic National Park
beaches are open all year. Temperatures are relatively mild for this part
of the world--rarely dropping below freezing or above 65 degrees F. Summer,
the most popular hiking is often cool, mosit and foggy.

For some hikers, autumn is the favorite time to beach comb or backback.
Thanksgiving weekend is particularly popular here, marking the last hike
of the season for many.

Although some intrepid backpackers
do hike the whole 57-mile length of coast, most hikers favor one, two
and three-day journeys. The complete absence of local public transportation
means that overnighters must make car shuttle arrangements or plan roundtrip
hikes. Directions to trailhead:

From the parking lot, walk to the Ozette Ranger Station and inquire about
the latest tide and trail information. The trail begins at a nearby information
kiosk.

Follow the path a quarter-mile
to a junction. Sand Point Trail (your return route) forks left but you
bear right on Capae Alava Trail and follow the boardwalk path through
a lowland forest thick with salal, huckleberry and ferns. About halfway
along, you'll reach a boggy area known as Ahlstrom's Meadow. Lake Ozette
pioneer Lars Ahlstrom, native of Sweden, resided here from 1902 to 1958,

The boardwalk returns to the forest before dropping to the driftwood-strewn
beach facing Ozette Island. Cape Alava and Cannonball Island are to the
north.

This hike heads south a mile
along the beach, reaching a minor headland called Weddding Rock where
the astute observer will find native petroglyphs on the boulders near
the beach. Two more miles of beach travel brings you to the (perhaps misnamed)
Sandy Point, a rocky point crowned with grass. Here you join a second
boardwalk trail, traveling past a stand of Sitka spruce and through the
lush green forest back to the trailhead.

For more information:

Olympic
National Park

600 E. Park Ave.

Port Angeles, WA 98362

tel. (206) 452-4501