Story: Wilderness Camping: An Olympic Event

The campground in Queets was disappointing. In a word, crowded. Sure, it had ocean views, but the tents were one right after another—not exactly my idea of a place to get away from it all. So I pulled into the ranger station across the road to look into alternatives.

“Well, if you’re up for it, you can do remote beach camping in Olympic National Park,” the ranger told me. Up for it? Are you kidding me? I love wilderness camping. I mean, who needs showers and toilets and hoards of other campers when you can rough it in solitude?

“Okay, then,” she said. “Just be sure your tent is above the high tide mark.” And she handed me a little card with the tide schedule printed on it.

“No problem. But just how exactly will I know where the high tide mark is?” I asked. Being an east coast guy, I was accustomed to broad sandy beaches where the high water mark, once dry, might easily blow away in a strong breeze.

“Oh, you’ll know. You’ll know. And do you have a bear box?”

“A bear box? What’s a bear box?”

“Here.” She said, handing me a black plastic barrel-shaped container. “You’ll need this. Put all of your food in here, lock it like so, and stash it at least 50 feet from your campsite.”

“Bears? There are bears at this beach?” The crowded campground was starting to look a whole lot better.

“No bears, but plenty of raccoons and they’ll tear into your food if you don’t keep it in here.” she said.

No bears. Whew. I felt better.

“And watch out for cougars.”

“Cougars?” I felt worse.

“Cougars. It’s highly unlikely you’ll see any, but there’s a notice at the trailhead that tells you what to do if you encounter one. Be sure to read it. Anyway, you’d better get going. It’ll be dark in a few hours.”

With that, she handed me a map and explained that I’d need to drive about a half hour north on 101 before hanging a left just after crossing the Hoh River. At the end of this 10-mile road was the trailhead. From there it would be just over a mile of hiking, at which point I’d emerge at the juncture of the Hoh River and the Pacific Ocean.

After parking the rental car on the edge of the gravel road, I rushed to load my food into the bear box. I then stuffed the bear box into my backpack, strapped the backpack onto my back, slung the camera bag over my shoulder, and advanced to the trailhead.

The notice the ranger had mentioned greeted me like a baseball bat between the eyes.

BEWARE OF COUGARS
#1. Do not hike alone. (Strike one.)
#2. Always carry a walking stick. (Strike two. You know, I thought, this would be one helluva location for a walking stick store.)
#3. Never run. Should you encounter a cougar, stand up to it, making yourself as big as you possibly can. Scream and shout. Wave your arms. Never make eye contact. Fight back vigorously.

Nice. So I filled out my back-country camping permit, dropped it into the little box to leave a record of my last known whereabouts, and set off down the trail through the rain forest.

About 30 minutes later, the trail worked its way down to the north bank of the Hoh river, and from there, it was just a few hundred yards to the ocean.

And that’s when I saw the logs. Hundreds—no thousands—of logs. Big logs…. Very big logs…. Humongous, Pacific Northwest logs.

‘Well,’ I thought, ‘I’ll just have to work my way past these to get to the beach.’ So I climbed over some, crawled under others, walked the length of most, jumping from one to another, and soon it became clear that this was the beach. Well, at least this was the portion of the beach that was above the high tide mark. As I approached the ocean, the sandy beach that became visible—six or eight feet below the steep edge of the log pile—was obviously only exposed because the tide was out.

And the ranger’s words suddenly made perfect sense. “You’ll know,” she had said. And I knew.

What I didn’t know was how anyone could camp up on these logs. Surely, there must be a place above the high tide mark where one can pitch a tent, I thought. So I ventured north on the woodpile, searching for a patch of sand amongst the logs large enough to call home for a couple of days.

Eventually I found a suitable location. It was an established campsite with a fire ring, room enough for my tent, and even a little pile of wood small enough to burn. ‘Perfect,’ I thought. ‘This is perfect.’

Then I noticed that a cluster of logs on the perimeter of the site was configured in such a way that was unnatural. On closer inspection, it became clear that this was a primitive man-made shelter, complete with a sign at the entrance that read ‘keep out.’

Sure, it was unoccupied—for now—but the black boot that hung inverted like a pirate flag atop the structure, and the plastic container that sat inside on a makeshift table made me wonder if the one person I’d passed on the path from the trailhead—the creepy guy who had ignored me when I said “hello”—might actually live here, and if he might be coming back.

Okay, so maybe this location wasn’t perfect. But it would have to do. The rest of the beach that I’d seen so far was simply uninhabitable, and with sunset approaching, there really wasn’t time to keep searching for something better.

By the time I finished pitching my tent I was thoroughly parched. It was time for a drink of water. Water. Where was my water? I searched. It wasn’t in my backpack. Not in the main compartment, not in the side pockets. I searched some more. It wasn’t in my camera bag. Oh my God, had I left it in the car in my haste to pack up? I must have.

So I grabbed my flashlight—figuring it might be dark by the time I got back—and proceeded to break cougar warning rule number three. I ran.

I ran every step of the way back to the car, determined to make the complete round-trip in daylight.

And when I got to the car, I searched. And I searched. And I searched some more. And the water wasn’t there. Not in the trunk, not in the cabin. Nowhere. And then I remembered. I had put the water … in … the … bear box.

So I ran again. All the way back to my campsite—and my bear box, and my water—and I had a nice long drink before photographing one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen.

I had managed to get a campfire going during the final minutes of daylight and, initially, it was a picture perfect koombyah moment. But imagine if you will how freaked out I got sitting there, completely alone on a desolate beach—wondering if a cougar was about to pounce on me from the darkness, or if creepy guy was about to return from wherever it was he’d gone. Now, if you can imagine that and triple it, you’d be getting close.

So I called it a night, crawled into my tent and laid there—clutching my very heavy camera tripod—prepared to beat any man or beast senseless who might dare to enter.

And on that happy note, I (eventually) fell asleep.

Boom. The earth moved under my tent. What the hell was that? Boom. It moved again.

The sounds of the ocean fused together with the percussion I was feeling and in an instant I realized what was happening.

Fumbling with my flashlight, I pulled the tide chart from a pocket in my camera bag. According to the chart, high tide would be at 1:22am. I looked at my watch. It was now 12:50. And with each approaching wave, my tent shook a little bit more.

By 1:15 the waves were crashing so violently against the log pile that I began to wonder if it—and I—would be washed out to sea. I turned my cell phone on, hoping to call my wife and kids, to tell them one last time how much I loved them, but my location was too remote to pick up a signal. At this point, my tent was being sprayed with the crash of each wave—as though someone was flinging buckets of water onto it. How close was my tent to the edge of the log pile? I wondered. 15 feet? 20? 25? I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that it was too close. Way too close.

As 1:22 came and went, I watched each second tick by, relieved to be alive. Then, ever so gradually, things calmed down—myself included. By 1:50, I was lulled back to sleep by the same rhythmic jolts that had woken me an hour earlier.

Then came the earthquake….

Okay, it was nothing major, but for about 10 seconds there was a sustained tremor. I wondered if there might be more to come. There wasn’t. I wondered if a tsunami might be heading my way. There wasn’t. But the possibility consumed me for several minutes before I resigned myself to whatever fate had in store.

I fell in and out of sleep for the next few hours, occasionally unzipping my window to look for signs of the coming daylight.

The stars were spectacular, but the eventual sunrise was even more beautiful. Perhaps more for what it wasn’t than for what it was. Yes, a new day had begun, but the night was over. And I had survived.

P.S. Late that afternoon, having spent a beautiful day on a desolate beach, I decided that one night was enough. I packed up, hiked out to the car (with a brand new walking stick, thank you very much) and drove two hours to Port Angeles, where I had a very quiet, extremely restful, thoroughly uninterrupted night of sleep—in a hotel.

Copyright © 2008 David Balch. All rights reserved.