Cape Alava-Sand Point Loop

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The weather was forecast to be spectacular this weekend (and after our craptastic excuse of a spring and nearly non-existent summer, we deserve a nice October) so Tom and I headed out to backpack the Ozette Triangle in Olympic National Park. (We wanted to do Toleak, but the timing of the tides just didn’t work out this time)

For those who just want the pictures and not the report (although the bear story is amusing) they are here:

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You can view it as a slideshow here http://www.flickr.com/[…]/

Ozette is a unique experience because you can backpack out to one point, then up (or down, depending on which direction you're going) the beach and return to the same trail head (no shuttling of vehicles).

The trails which run from the Ozette Ranger Station out to Cape Alava to the North and Sand Point to the South are mostly boardwalk. They are also most often slippery and slimy. I don't enjoy walking, more or less carrying a 50 pound pack on boardwalks because you have to constantly watch and carefully place you feet at all times, lest you take a nasty fall, which makes it difficult to enjoy the fabulous scenery.

But fabulous it is, and therefore worth the pain in the butt boardwalks (which are there for a good reason)

We chose to camp at Cape Alava the first night as we could have a fire there, and I brought my <strike>famous</strike>infamous seafood kabobs (shrimp, scallops, red & green bell peppers, sweet onions & mushrooms) to grill over a driftwood fire.

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I received some very bad news on the trail. We stopped and chatted with one of the visitor protection rangers. Once you've been an NPS ranger for any length of time, you're part of a <strike>fraternity</strike>family. It's virtually impossible to meet a ranger that's been around and not know someone in common.

Sadly, I learned that the person we knew in common, my first NPS Chief Ranger and good friend from Devils Tower, died well before his time in a tragic accident.

I won't go into that here; I will post about it in my blog at a later date. Let is suffice to say, that the NPS lost a good ranger and a lot of people lost a great friend.

The rest of the hike out was silent and a bit slower. When we decided on our camp, I chose the “chop wood/carry water” method of “walking meditation” for coping and processing the news I had just received. Jim would not have wanted the news to ruin a trip, he would have wanted me to have a drink and laugh about the good times.

I first went South to scrounge driftwood for our fires, which is very rare at the end of summer when the area is mostly picked clean, and winter storms have not yet washed a new load up on the beaches, but I’m pretty good at scrounging.

I dumped a load off at camp and then headed North.

Just before I got to the now abandoned Ozette-Makah Tribal shack near the old village and burial ground, I got a surprise.

A bear.

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The bear was surprised as well.

We looked at each other for a moment and the encounter went pretty much like this.

[Bear] Holy Crap! A human, what is IT doing here?

[Lisa] Holy Crap! A bear, on the beach?

[Bear] Are you lookin' at me?

[Lisa] Heck, yes I'm lookin' at you; just stand there, I want to take your picture

[Bear] Like hell I'm going to stand here and let you take my picture, I'm heading for the trees

[Lisa] Well then I'll follow you just a bit to get a good shot

[Bear] Well then I'll turn around and walk right towards you to freak you out because you don't know if I have cubs and might try to maul you.

[Lisa] Well I'll back off then

[Bear] Well I'll back off then

[Lisa] Well since you backed off, maybe I'll try for one more picture

[Bear] Well since you didn't back off, maybe I'll show you whose territory this is

[Lisa & Bear] jockey for position a bit

[Lisa] gives up and goes back to camp (after taking one more picture)

[Bear] says good riddance and plops its butt on a rock

So I go back to camp and let Tom know that we'll want to be keeping a fastidiously clean camp because we are not alone as we thought.

“You wanna see it?” I asked. “Sure!” He said, and we walked back up the beach.

We found the bear right where I left it.

[Bear] What are you doing back?

[Lisa] I just want a better picture

[Bear] WHAT is that? You brought ANOTHER human? You nasty creatures breed like rabbits.

[Lisa] I'm not getting any closer; I just want a better picture

[Bear] FINE! If I walk across the beach will you take my picture and then go the heck away?

[Lisa & Bear] jockey for position, pictures are taken, big bad ass bear faces are made, territory is made clear and humans leave.

Then I showed Tom the cougar tracks I saw on the way out there...

We kept a VERY clean camp and kept the bear canisters well away from the tent.

We saw one other backpacker who stayed a couple sites North of us.

It's always nice to have someone else around as “bait”; As long as your camp is cleaner than theirs, you won't get raided. (both of us have spent a lot of time in bear country and are pretty darn anal about precautions, so we really weren't worried)

Sunset was lovely, we had just enough wood for a nice fire to grill on and life was good.

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All except the rotting kelp on the beach. (it was lovely in camp, just the beach was gross)

OMG, that was disgusting. I've never seen it like that out there; rotting, stinking kelp as far as the eye could see, and clouds of sand fleas to go with it.

We had an uneventful night and no nocturnal visitors at all (not even the mutant, glowing green eyed, German Shepard size raccoons that terrorize the Washington Coast)

We of course, woke up to the “Bald Eagle Alarm Clock” (my preferred method of waking up)

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The next morning, we headed South towards Sand Point trying not to let the sand fleas fly into our mouths or noses.

Soon, we arrived at Wedding Rocks, checked out the petroglyphs and had lunch.

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The tide had gone down just enough that we could scramble all the way around the point on the rocks without using the headland trial, but when we went back for our packs, we took the headland trail over rather than rock hop.

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Once we got past Wedding Rocks, the kelp situation greatly improved.

By about noon, It was getting quite warm (this was Sunday) and we zipped the legs off of our convertible pants and I lost my long sleeve shirt and was down to a tank top. At the end of October, I was too warm. That was pretty awesome!

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When we rounded Sand Point, we did have to deal with a local traffic jam.

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Then we had to navigate a good sized driftwood pile (aka a “deadfall of death”) and found ourselves on one of the most beautiful sandy beaches in the state of Washington. It was well worth slogging through the rotting kelp to find this beach.

It was a great joy to take off our boots and walk barefoot in the sand. I had grand intentions to frolic in the surf, or at least quickly rinse off.

Uh, yeah… My toes got so cold, they ached and then turned numb. My feet can handle 50 degree water, so I’m guessing the ocean was roughly 45 degrees (F) (that would be 7.22 Celsius for my non-US friends)

We decided to camp on the sand instead of up in the trees, because it's soft, gets sun earlier in the morning, and it’s nice to look out the tent door and see the waves (oh, and to not have to climb over massive driftwood piles to get in and out of camp)

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At low tide, about 4:45 PM, we headed back out to the point for some rock hopping and tide pooling.

That is where I met the “angry little crab” (well, he wasn’t angry until after I picked him up and put him on the rock, and he did pinch the heck out of me…)

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We started to get cold just before the sun went down, and headed back to camp. The sunset was beautiful and it was nice to sleep right on the beach.

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We did get raided by the aforementioned mutant raccoons in the wee hours of the morning, but since camp was battened down well, all they were able to do was knock the bear canisters together.

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After a leisurely breakfast, we headed back around the point and back to Ozette via the Sand Point Trail. (oh yeah, wearing shorts and short sleeve shirts) There were more bear tracks on the North side of the point which looked like a mama and cub.

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It was a great trip, and a rare treat to have weather like that in late October.

~L