Cape Alava Loop (Ozette Triangle) — Saturday, Aug. 27, 2016

Olympic Peninsula > Pacific Coast

We decided to go on the Ozette triangle as an overnight girls hike, wanting to try a shorter backpacking hike for those of us new to overnight hiking. Completely recommend it - so much fun and incredibly pretty! First things first - you need to go to a ranger station to get an overnight pass and make reservations at one of the campgrounds well in advance. We got our pass the week of (in the middle of August) and the Sand Point campground was full, so we ended up getting a reservation at the South Sand Point campground, which is about a half a mile down the beach from the first campground. It ended up being the best thing though as we were completed isolated from everyone else. This is a remote area, but it's also a relatively easy and busy/popular hike, thus there are plenty of people at both Sand Point and Cape Alava campgrounds. We ended up camping down at the trailhead for the Ozette Lake trail that had it's own pit toilet and no one else around - the best location!! As for the trail itself, we chose to go counter clockwise and head down to Cape Alava first. The 3 miles down to the beach is easy, with very little elevation change. Once you get to the beach and Cape Alava campground though, that's when the going gets a bit slower. As you're fighting the tide, you need to hustle to get around the two main points, which can be a bit difficult as you're going between sand and slick rocks. With packs on, we really only averaged about 1 mile/hr on the beach, so give yourself 3 hours to do the beach portion, with an extra few minutes to check out the beautiful wedding rocks in the middle. Once we got to the Sand Point campground, we stopped to find the creek so that we could filter and stock up on water. This time of year, the creek is pretty stagnant and nasty - we only filtered enough to cook for dinner (which we then tried to boil the crap out of - literally), determining that we could stretch the rest of our drinking water to last the next day. If going in August, I would recommend each person bring enough drinking water for both days. And wine - bring enough wine! We had absolutely GORGEOUS weather. For those unfamiliar with the Washington coast, this is a rarity and something that should be revered. The only disappointment was that the clouds rolled in at night and we weren't able to stargaze. As this is considered one of the darkest places in the US, free from almost all light pollution, I was a bit bummed. BUT, all the more reason to go back. The next day, we headed up the other side of the trail at Sand Point, which is the third 3 mile leg of the trip. We lucked out again with the weather, with the rain starting just as we got back to the trailhead. Again, such a great trip!