Welcome back friends! Well it has been over a month since I last posted to this blog, but in fact there remain many stories untold of my European travels while new adventures in the U.S. unfold. I will continue to post to this site from time and time and keep you updated on both. Last week, I ventured out to the Olympic National Park coastal wilderness with my son Kevin, backpacking in to the southernmost tip of Shi Shi Beach, which is surely one the most beautiful wilderness beaches remaining in the United States. Put this hike on your bucket list, but you will need a back pack and the ability to carry at least 30-40 lbs. in order to overnight and get a true beach camping experience.
To access Shi Shi, you park in a private lot on the Makah Indian reservation and then hike 2.5 miles through the coastal rainforest to access the steep trail to the beach. The Makah tribe has done a great job improving the trail that runs through their tribal lands, which is now dry and often elevated on cedar walking planks. Sitka Spruce, Hemlock and Cedar grew thick in the forest, while salal and salmonberry plants dominated the understory.
Above Kevin dwarfed by a massive Sitka Spruce on the Shi Shi beach access trail. The trees just get bigger and more impressive as you get closer to beach. In photos below you can see the elevated cedar planks which keep your boots dry through wet sections of the trail, and sweet, ripe orange salmonberries which dotted the trail and allowed for frequent snacking as we made our way through the forest to Shi Shi.
My first backpacking trip in the spring of 1980 at the age of 17 was along the Olympic Coast, where I learned the basics of wilderness camping in my “backpacking PE” class at Kent-Meridian High School with dozens of other young and restless teens seeking adventure where ever we could cheaply find it. We all loaded on a school bus and drove four hours to Olympic National Park, strapped on our rickety packs and then hiked out several miles to the remote beaches on the coast. I was basically an inexperienced suburban Kent boy, and you can only imagine the excitement of my youth unleashed on a wild and primitive landscape of undeveloped beaches, stacks of massive driftwood, and ceaseless pounding, crashing waves as your audio backdrop. Our “chaperones” were nowhere to be seen and we ran totally free and unsupervised!
Fast forward 38 years to 2018. All I can say is that primitive feeling of anticipation and excitement – as you emerge from the dark solitude of the rainforest, and first hear the pounding surf as you descend the final steep switchbacks to the beach, and then finally climb over the driftwood and step out on the sand to behold the spectacular wild coastline – remains wonderfully intact. The Shi Shi beach trail terminates at the extreme north end of the beach, which is 2.5 miles in length. The way to play this beach is to head south and camp as far away from the northern trailhead as possible, to get away from other campers who run out of gas after they get to the beach. Accordingly, Kevin and I headed south, targeting to set up camp at the extreme southern end of Shi Shi, next to the Point of the Arches.
One of the greatest elements of wilderness beach camping at Shi Shi is the primal thrill of constructing driftwood beach fires. We live in an era of global warming, which increasingly means campfire restrictions or outright bans in most outdoor settings these days. Fortunately, the Olympic Coast is bathed in fog, mist and moisture on the majority of days, making forest fire risk extremely low. Campfires are permitted at all times, with the only restriction being the requirement to burn driftwood, and not collect wood in the forest. Of course you must start small with the driest tender twigs you can find, and then meticulously tend to the flames, adding larger pieces as the internal heat gathers strength. The photo above was taken at 10 pm on June 21st – the solstice – and as you can see it was not completely dark yet, and we were adding 6-8 foot long driftwood logs to our flaming pinnacle! During the course of the evening we were occasionally doused in waves of blowing, misting rain, but it did not matter as our fire was so hot that our clothes remained completely dry and warm!
Hiking with Kevin is a joy because he is a born naturalist, who marvels at even the smallest details of the unfolding landscape. All creatures great and small warranted the attention of his camera, and our stops were frequent as he drank in the abundant flora and fauna of the coastline at low tide and meticulously set up his shots. The sea stacks in the distance in the lower photo are the Point of the Arches, located at the southern end of Shi Shi and one of the most iconic sections of the entire Olympic Coastline.
We day hiked about 15 miles on the 22nd, which was slow going at times when we had to carefully manage our footing crossing seaweed strewn boulders, and climb ropes and ladders from the beach back into the rainforest when approaching impassable headlands. The views looking out over the Pacific from the rainforest were spectacular, and we spotted frequent colonies of seals lounging on the flat rocks around the headlands.
Well as luck would have it, this Solstice Hike to Shi Shi, was in fact the 10 year anniversary of a backpacking trip to Shi Shi we took as a family back in July 2008. This was our first family backpacking trip, and as you can see we all looked a lot younger back then and our packs were more primitive external frame jobs! Lets see, Melanie would have been 16, Kevin 14, Dylan 11 and Audrey 9. Dylan and Audrey carried their vital possessions, and as you can see I stacked as much weight as possible on Melanie and Kevin! There may have been a few random complaints on the way in, but once we settled into our beach camp at Shi Shi the kids were in heaven, and Amy and I just kicked back and watched the kids run free and get crazy. Ah the glories of youth set free on a wild beach, dodging the crashing waves, stoking a driftwood blaze, and crawling into your tent in the darkness, with a thick and mysterious old-growth rain forest towering overhead in the back ground. Even for an old man like me, just getting back on the beach, setting up camp and observing nature at its most raw and powerful still has a magical effect and takes me back….way back in time.