Rialto Beach hike, 6-9 Apr
Aug. 24th, 2006 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Into the Olympic Park Wilderness Information Center behind two parties. Long wait. The second party is two Boy Scout leaders who have not done their homework, with regs for large parties or with the tides. Out the window, is it nascent flowerstalks of palmate coltsfoot? I browse a lichen handbook -- a species [Omphalina umbellifera] that is a mushroom with algae in its hyphae. Scout leaders leave, telling the ranger that they would never argue with such an attractive female. Ranger breathes. Ranger advises us which stretches have no ground to place a camp -- very useful information! We get our bear can.
Driving through Forks: a motel with sign listing amenities, CABLE TV / BREAKFAST / FLOWER GARDEN.
The day-walkers turn around at Hole-in-the-Wall. Past here we see no one.
Sightings on Cake Rock are consistent with where we think we are. We see water-trickles down the bluff, and at each one hope there there's one vastly more accessible from the campsite. All of the shore on from here to the Chilean Memorial site is marked as sand on the map, but this is mostly a lie. The next point is rocky, and then the tiny point inside the bay, hardly marked on the map, is big tumbled boulders and a solid maze of fallen trees and their interpenetrating limbs.
I rinsed dishes in the sea, retreating up onto a rock when the big waves came, which they did more often than I ever expected when I set up at this spot.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
katybeth laughing as I sprang out of the way and stood holding a pot in each hand on a one-rock island. A big wave took her blue bowl off the rock -- grab it, I yelled foolishly instead of jumping for it myself -- water in her boots; bowl got away -- but a dozen waves later it washed back up.
We left the camp set up, and headed north with lighter packs, to go as far as we can by our turnaround time. Our watches are discrepant. Mine has been known to lose time, hasn't it? I reset mine to hers, adding 1:15 or so.
It's soon all boulder-stepping, and then picking through tidepools, wet and slippery even at just about lowest tide now. Off the point to the south we can see that the island has become a peninsula, and can see a pocket beach; might reach above the high-tide line? Little caves in the headlands -- an awfully wet way to spend a high tide. On my jacket arm a small scuttly creature like an inch-long pillbug. We round what we think is the final headland, and can see the next beach. A spire of rock offshore, the island marked 128' I think. Still some picking over fallen timber to do, and it's getting late. We eat and head back.katybeth slips and hurts her knee -- I worry it's twisted and we won't be able to make it back around -- but it seems only bruised.
Is this chunk of rock petrified wood? It looks rather like it.
We attempt to watch the sunset. It is cloudy. Instead we watch diving birds, loonlike, black-over-white neck. How many are there? Calling out current count as they dive and surface. Max surfaced is four.
It is light awfully long after sunset. And the tides seemed low later than expected. We grow to suspect that my watch was correct, andkatybeth's watch reset itself to 12:00 around 10:45 last night. Good thing we didn't get the time wrong in the other direction, and get trapped by tides.
What with all of the changing out wet socks and hanging them up to dry on the tent's roof shelf, it looks like a gamekeeper's gibbet of socks.
At the first point, the rocky hummock island marked 54' is a peninsula now. We drop packs and go to look at it. We find a large deposit of crab-poop, i.e. feces fresh and older made mostly of crushed crab shells. Substantial diameter, 3/4"? Could it be bird? We don't go all the way around the little island; the rocks are unstable.
The path to the big 130' island has now cleared of water -- want to do that one too? It's wet but pretty easy walking, 10 min out. Huge crags rising from the ground, sea-smoothed all around the base. We picked our way around to see the beach on the northwest side. I might have gotten there, but would have had to retrace and circle further out -- just took pictures.
Many crabs today. They clear out of the way as they see us -- scuttle sideways, go over the edge of the rock and roll flip flip flip splash into the water, scuttle some more into a crevice.
Found a lovely log bridge across Ellen Creek this time.
More pics:
Into the Olympic Park Wilderness Information Center behind two parties. Long wait. The second party is two Boy Scout leaders who have not done their homework, with regs for large parties or with the tides. Out the window, is it nascent flowerstalks of palmate coltsfoot? I browse a lichen handbook -- a species [Omphalina umbellifera] that is a mushroom with algae in its hyphae. Scout leaders leave, telling the ranger that they would never argue with such an attractive female. Ranger breathes. Ranger advises us which stretches have no ground to place a camp -- very useful information! We get our bear can.
Driving through Forks: a motel with sign listing amenities, CABLE TV / BREAKFAST / FLOWER GARDEN.
The day-walkers turn around at Hole-in-the-Wall. Past here we see no one.
Sightings on Cake Rock are consistent with where we think we are. We see water-trickles down the bluff, and at each one hope there there's one vastly more accessible from the campsite. All of the shore on from here to the Chilean Memorial site is marked as sand on the map, but this is mostly a lie. The next point is rocky, and then the tiny point inside the bay, hardly marked on the map, is big tumbled boulders and a solid maze of fallen trees and their interpenetrating limbs.
I rinsed dishes in the sea, retreating up onto a rock when the big waves came, which they did more often than I ever expected when I set up at this spot.
katybeth laughing as I sprang out of the way and stood holding a pot in each hand on a one-rock island. A big wave took her blue bowl off the rock -- grab it, I yelled foolishly instead of jumping for it myself -- water in her boots; bowl got away -- but a dozen waves later it washed back up.We left the camp set up, and headed north with lighter packs, to go as far as we can by our turnaround time. Our watches are discrepant. Mine has been known to lose time, hasn't it? I reset mine to hers, adding 1:15 or so.
It's soon all boulder-stepping, and then picking through tidepools, wet and slippery even at just about lowest tide now. Off the point to the south we can see that the island has become a peninsula, and can see a pocket beach; might reach above the high-tide line? Little caves in the headlands -- an awfully wet way to spend a high tide. On my jacket arm a small scuttly creature like an inch-long pillbug. We round what we think is the final headland, and can see the next beach. A spire of rock offshore, the island marked 128' I think. Still some picking over fallen timber to do, and it's getting late. We eat and head back.
katybeth slips and hurts her knee -- I worry it's twisted and we won't be able to make it back around -- but it seems only bruised.Is this chunk of rock petrified wood? It looks rather like it.
We attempt to watch the sunset. It is cloudy. Instead we watch diving birds, loonlike, black-over-white neck. How many are there? Calling out current count as they dive and surface. Max surfaced is four.
It is light awfully long after sunset. And the tides seemed low later than expected. We grow to suspect that my watch was correct, and
katybeth's watch reset itself to 12:00 around 10:45 last night. Good thing we didn't get the time wrong in the other direction, and get trapped by tides.What with all of the changing out wet socks and hanging them up to dry on the tent's roof shelf, it looks like a gamekeeper's gibbet of socks.
At the first point, the rocky hummock island marked 54' is a peninsula now. We drop packs and go to look at it. We find a large deposit of crab-poop, i.e. feces fresh and older made mostly of crushed crab shells. Substantial diameter, 3/4"? Could it be bird? We don't go all the way around the little island; the rocks are unstable.
The path to the big 130' island has now cleared of water -- want to do that one too? It's wet but pretty easy walking, 10 min out. Huge crags rising from the ground, sea-smoothed all around the base. We picked our way around to see the beach on the northwest side. I might have gotten there, but would have had to retrace and circle further out -- just took pictures.
Many crabs today. They clear out of the way as they see us -- scuttle sideways, go over the edge of the rock and roll flip flip flip splash into the water, scuttle some more into a crevice.
Found a lovely log bridge across Ellen Creek this time.
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Date: 2006-08-25 11:04 am (UTC)