Fall on the Olympic Coast

 I don't often take the time to blog post all of my trips these days, but this one seemed worthy of it. 

The band got back together (Austin, Kurt, and myself) for a trip to the coast in the fall of 2024. We were looking for something mellow from a mileage and elevation-gain perspective but with full value scenery, solitude, and wilderness. We put together a 2 night trip through some of the best parts of the Olympic National Park coast. 

After parking a vehicle at Lake Ozette Ranger Station, we huddled into one truck and drove all the way back around to the Makah Indian Reservation on the tip of the peninsula. We'd leave our truck here and then walk the road briefly before re-entering Olympic National Park and the Shi-Shi Beach trailhead. I'd done the trail down to Shi-Shi and over-nighted there previously. But this was the first time camping on the Olympic National Park beaches for Austin and Kurt. I'd never gone much further south than Shi-Shi so was really looking forward to seeing more of the park beaches.

The trail to Shi-Shi is flat, but muddy from the fall rains before descending down the hill to the beach. Fall weather in the PNW has a reputation (for good reason) of being wet and gray. However when you hit those rare windows when it's not, you often have popular trails and campsites all to yourself. The fear of bad weather can keep the crowds down. Somehow we managed to pull it off on this trip.

"Trail" to Shi-Shi Beach

After the long drive to the coast and the vehicle shuttling, we were content to just get the 5ish miles to the Shi-Shi camping area for night one. Early camp setup meant we had plenty of time to explore the sea-stacks around Point of Arches that make the area popular for overnights, check out the abundance of birds, and enjoy the makeshift playground equipment.  

Day 2 is where things start to get interesting. In certain sections, the beach trail along the coast of Olympic National Park is only accessible at low tide. To hike the trail, you need to be able to read a tide table and map to see which areas you need to time appropriately or risk getting wet, stuck, or washed out to sea. The trail undulates between walking the beach and climbing up and on to the adjacent cliffs. The primary low tides for our trip were just after sunrise and mid afternoon. In order to get through those low-tide dependent bottlenecks on the trail we had to wake up early, before sunrise, pack up and hike first thing in the morning. Probably another reason we primarily had the coast to ourselves this trip. 

Around 5am, we were awake and taking down camp to start heading south. It's a little eerie hiking with the loud Pacific on one side and minding your steps across slippery rocks by headlight, but such a cool experience. Plus you get to fully enjoy the sunrise.

We hopped across the kelp and barnacle covered rocks around a cliff that was only accessible at low tide before scrambling up the muddy slopes to the brushy cliffs above. We'd drop down into small coves and then scramble back up the cliff a few times over the morning. Each lil cove was like a hidden sanctuary you only get to see when the tide permits. 

As the morning edged closer to mid-day we reached a beautiful cove curling around a small island with a small freshwater stream and plenty of beach realestate above the anticipated high tide line. There was another cliffed out low tide crossing ahead of us, but we were edging towards high tide with not enough time to make it through. We'd have to hang out in this cove for a few hours and wait out the tide.

The trail down was a bit interesting. This was characteristic of many up and downs we'd negotiate. Muddy, steep, with a weathered handline.

If you have to wait out the tide, there are worse places I can imagine. 

Our brunch cove even came with its own ocean debris table.

We spent a few hous here, eating, napping, checking out tide pools, watching for otters and birds, and creating bocce ball type games with pieces of kelp. 

Somedays I still pretend to be a gartersnake biologist.

This otter was just cruising through the cove. First of many we'd see that day and tomorrow.

The tide dropped enough by mid afternoon that we felt comfortable skirting the rocks along the cliff to escape the cove. We cleared the cliffs and had a perfect beach walk to our next camp.

We weren't the only thing walking the beach today.

We made it to the Ozette River which would be our camp for the night. We set up tents, had some dinner and then prepared for the light show.

Ozette River. We'd have to cross this early tomorrow morning. 

Another predawn start. We packed up, crossed the river and worked our way along the rocks and through the kelp to round the cliff. 

Headlight beams in the dark.

This last few miles of our trip was interesting for a couple of new reasons. First the wildlife was awesome. Harlequin ducks, shorebirds, oyster catchers, and otters were everywhere. There were also giant rafts of kelp to walk through. Slippery at times, but fun to feel between your toes.

This was our last section of trail. We made it to Cape Alava, a popular campsite and pretty much the only people we'd seen since we first hit Shi-Shi Beach. Once we found the trail back to Lake Ozette it was a nice, mostly flat walk through rainforest back to the truck. I almost feel embarassed having lived in WA this long before exploring this part of the coast. Fall feels like the best time if you can make the weather work. The wildlife is abundant, the weather is cool, and you can have miles of Olympic National Park beach to yourself.