Pacific North-Wet
Journal Entry #29
May 20, 2022
Today, as I write this entry, we are deep in the upper-west Olympic Peninsula camping among rainforests and Sitka Spruce and blue green glacial rivers. We crossed the California/Oregon border back in the beginning of April and have spent the better part of six weeks hugging the western edge of the country, leisurely exploring much of the southern and central coast of Oregon. We migrated eastward at the end of April to the Willamette valley (wine!) and then to the Portland area to visit a dear friend. After that we hiked in the Columbia River Gorge area. Carrying northward, we spent a few days Seattle with my daughters, who flew out to meet us.
I have to say that the stuff they say about the Pacific Northwest is true.
First, the colors; a seeming endless palette of greens and grays and blues, but especially the greens and especially in the endless spring we seem to be experiencing. Carpets of moss, lichens, and ferns, strands of firs, spruces, hemlocks and cedars so tall that the angled filtered light has a soft glow. The forest trails we hiked were literally enchanted mystical places. I so often I thought of scenes from The Lord of the Rings or the lyrics of Led Zeppelin’s Misty Mountain. (We even hiked a trail called The Hobbit Trail).
And then there were the grays greens and blues of the beaches, more often stone than sand. And when there was sand, it was not honeyed like in the east, but mottled gray with flecks of travertine and granite and jasper and geology that I can’t name.
As an aside, I learned that when Oregonians go to visit the Pacific Ocean they don’t say “we are going to the beach” (or “going down the shore” like in NJ!) - they say “we are going to the coast”. Because it’s not going to the beach, really- at least not the way you imagine visiting the beach to be. Oregon and Washington beaches are NOT sunbathing, get your towel and coppertone out beaches… these are wild, often remote, powerful natural places, with steep dark evergreen forests, clinging to precipitous cliffs stretching right down to the sea.
We always checked the tide before venturing out to make sure there is an actual coast to walk on when we set out. We watched the waves, wandered along the stones and sand in boots, jackets and hats. It was our habit to walk for miles, collecting driftwood or stones, and watching the massive roiling sea. I do not exaggerate when I say there were many times we didn’t see another soul; the miles of hauntingly beautiful coastline and the many miles of cliff and forest trails were ours alone.
Now another reason why we might have been alone could have been, well, the weather. The second thing they say about the Pacific Northwest that is also true is it is a place given to rain. A lot of rain. I mean, Washington State lays claim to a rainforest, for goodness sake. But we had the distinct pleasure to experience the WETTEST April on record across most of coastal Oregon.
That said, Oregonians are a hearty bunch. One of our first camping stops after crossing the California Border was near the Cape Blanco lighthouse. We stopped into the little visitor center to learn more and get a tour. We had been discussing the naming of storms in the van on our drive. On the east coast, we understand what is meant by hurricanes and nor’easters. However we realized how unfamiliar we were with what Pacific storms are called. We thought to ask L, a young bearded volunteer with a wool newsboy cap and seafaring tattoos who was manning the little lighthouse museum. We shared our east coast storm lexicon and asked him what a big storm off the Pacific coast was called. Was it a gale? A typhoon?
“Well, around here,” he said smiling wryly, “we call that Tuesday.”
Despite the daily forecasts, we remained undeterred. I added a more substantial rain jacket to my wardrobe. I was surprised to find that the local grocery store chain, Fred Meyer, had a second floor which sold all manner of rain gear (as well as heaps of “Duck” swag for the University of Oregon). Suffice it to say that when exploring coastal Oregon and Washington in the spring, your constant companions are the rain, (it is either threatening to rain or it is raining), hauntingly moody skies, unpredictable winds, mist and muddy trails.
One particularly memorable hike was our trek to Cape Lookout in the south central coast of Oregon. We set out from the van in the morning under fair skies. The weather was calling for an “only” 50 percent chance of rain and the trail wasn’t a particularly long one, once you got to the trailhead- a three miler out and back. In order to get to the trailhead we hiked an three additional miles, climbing about 1000 feet. Still, day hikes ranging anywhere from 5-12 miles are fairly common for us so it wasn’t the distance or the climb that was the problem. Just as we made it to the cape trailhead the skies darkened and the rains began. First softly, then becoming more steady. About a half mile in on the trail, waterlogged from nearly constant rainy days, we slogged through deep puddles of thick black/brown soup. Tree roots across the trail were slippery hazards, but often the only way to traverse the mud. There was no way around it. The trail followed the spine of a cliff-like bluff, the land mostly falling steeply away to the woods on one side and, as we approached the cape’s end, a steep cliff down to ocean on the other side. About a mile in, after we had both surrendered to the fact that our boots and pants would be mud soaked, the wind picked up and suddenly it was hailing. I mused out loud to Tom, sharing my news headline, “Two hikers from New Jersey die in mudslide! Cape Lookout officials in disbelief that hikers made attempt to reach the Cape’s head in these conditions…”
As I am shouting this to Tom through the wind and hail and mud, we are shocked to come across another hiker. She looked to be in her mid-sixties, walking stick in hand and dressed in hiking capris and open-toed Teva sandals. She smiled and cheerfully called out to us as we approached, “Hiya there, think I’ll just take a bit of shelter from the hail” as she ducked under the branches of large cedar. Shortly after that, we were OVERTAKEN on the trail by a young mother with an infant strapped in a Baby-Bjorn on her front, and her two elderly parents. They seemed completely unphased by the mud swamp, driving hail and the general vertigo-inducing cliffs. A tough breed, these PNWers.
By the time we got back to the van, we were mud covered and soaked to the bone. I had to have Tom untie my boots as my fingers were numb from the cold, wet chill.
Now, it may sound like some sort of trip-gone-wrong misery but the honest truth is we found a joyful rhythm in the rainy madness over these past several weeks. Certainly there was alot of laughter. We definitely added to our “cold-n-wet heartiness” quotient. Over the past six weeks we have hiked empty beaches with roaring gale winds and waves. We have trekked on mud soaked forest trails, we have scaled steep hills covered in fallen logs and ferns to reach waterfalls and lighthouses. We have hiked to the furthest western edge of the continental US. We have even climbed through snow covered mountains, in the middle of May, deep in the rainforest! And everyday, nearly without fail, there was some sort of precipitation.
Ironically, one of our sunniest days over the past few weeks was in the Hoh Rainforest. This is the place that gets the MOST rain in all of the continental US - nearly 14ft of it - per year. It was also ironic that it was on this sunny day that we both bought a pair of big black rubber wading boots, having finally gotten wise to the idea that if we weren’t dealing with too much altitude/climbing we could forgo our hiking boots and just wear waders to walk through the mud rather than try to navigate around it. So, we had a miraculously sunny hike on the Hoh River Trail. We were positively giddy to:
1. See our own shadows again
2. Have sunlight filter through and brighten the already surreally green forest canopy and floor and
3. Be able to gleefully tromp through mud and wade through streams in our rubber boots like children playing in puddles. We simply marveled at our luck to have a warm, dry spell in the middle of the rainforest.
But luck can’t always be on our side - we received a surprise cancellation notice yesterday for a campsite we had booked this coming week near the base of Mt. Hood. The recent coastal rains translate into big snows on the larger mountain ranges to the east of us. The campground we planned to camp at has postponed its season opening by another week to deal with snow removal. So we are rejiggering our plans and will head further east to visit Fossil National Monument and the Painted Hills in the high plains of central Oregon instead. These were on my original bucket list and we had thought we wouldn’t get to visit them on this trip but when one (van) door closes, another one opens.
I love the pictures as usual. And I'm loving the journey. HOh waterfall was gorgeous
Awesome blog