I doorstepped lonely as a cloud…
This summer in the Olympic Mountains was long and dry beneath the sun. Clouds scarcely intruded upon the blue sky, though sometimes smoke did. Dust rose up beneath my footfalls. Leaves fell early on the trail and crunched like paper. I had the same dryness in my nostrils and tremendous thirst that I remembered from hikes in Utah.
Yet the mountains had not forgotten the gray and snow-filled winter. They stacked their prodigious winter stores. in the steep snowfields, blinding white along the north faces of the high ridges. With the warmth of morning, new rivulets, then freshets of meltwater — diamond bright beneath the alpine sun— would gush from hollows in this snowpack, out from the glaciers.
The water poured over shattered rock into waiting moss groves, into the roots of the huckleberries, down through glens of sword fern, proud valleys of firs and cedars, churning into rapids and eddy pools where salmon, climbing up from salt water, fought their way into the hills for a chance to die and breed.
Snowmelt paved the road for the salmon. Mighty struggle drove them to the culmination of their purpose.
The hills beckoned me also. Waking up each day in Port Angeles, I would take in the azure blue waters of the Salish Sea, but even longer, I would gaze upon the snowfields on Klahhane Ridge. The white shrank back every day. Every day I thought about the mountains, and how I would get there from my doorstep.
Doorstep adventures were the only adventures I was interested in. That is to say, I wanted no cars involved between my doorstep where I began and my final destination. I was sick of my glass and metal box, sick of spreading, fumes and accepting the compromise of loving the mountains by helping to destroy life there.
Yes, it is possible to drive a mountain road and admire the pedals on an alpine lily. It is also possible to admire the feathers on a bird you have just shot out of the sky. The climate change crisis is the tragedy of how each thoughtless act merges with others — just as alpine trickles conjoin to lowland torrents.
The Olympic peaks were a place of renewal to me, but they could not be a place of retreat from the realities of our struggle. Climate change reality was in the smoke that stung my nostrils and in the steamroller heat that had me drinking and drinking the water from my pack. I often wondered if I would come down off the trails to news that a nuclear bomb had gone off over a city, that a Trump tweet had led the country into war.
The stories that follow are the first installment in my account of the four biggest doorstep adventures of the summer:
1. Elk Mountain: My mountain bike/hike adventure to Elk Mountain on the Obstruction Point ridge southeast of Port Angeles.
2. Royal Basin: The mountain bike, run and rock scramble into the distant Royal Basin, and beyond to the Dosewallips watershed and my eventual ascent of 7,000-foot Hal Foss Peak;
3. Adventure Trail/Spruce Railroad: The two day mountain bike ride to the end of the Olympic Adventure Route, to the Spruce Railroad and back that included a run to the top of Pyramid Peak above Lake Crescent.
4. Elwha: An adventure that I had been planning for over a year, in search of the source of the Elwha River, the longest river in Olympic National Park. This final adventure lasted four days, and took me deeper into Olympic wilderness than I had ever travelled, to Low Divide near the dead center of the park. The adventure included mountain biking, running trails under the weight of a full pack as well as climbing loose rock and snow.
I will accept criticism that says my adventures were just glorified escapism, or that I was spending resources that could have been better allocated elsewhere. At least I didn’t make it easy on myself.
Like the salmon, I was after struggle that began as soon as I started going up.
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Elk Mountain
“Hey Man, you want to smoke some weeeeeeeeeed?”
I heard this question as I hurtled down Ennis Street past the homeless encampment in the creek valley nearby. Lingering near the gates to the Rayonier Superfund site, a man and woman were socializing in the dusk light as I came whirling out of the shadows on my mountain bike, complete with ice axe pole strapped on my pack, hefty dry bags full of gear latched onto the handlebars.
I gave my answer in the negative and rounded the corner onto the Olympic Discovery Trail.
I pedaled east with the lullaby of waves crashing in my ears, the scent of seaweed in my nostrils. Cargo ships cast pools of orange light off the water in Port Angeles Harbor. The dusk light had nearly vanished from the west.
The hour was late for my planned climb to 5,000 feet along the Deer Park road. I rode on along the dark trail.
Royal Basin
A few weeks later, I would be riding along the same trail, this time in the afternoon, but again, way too late. This time it was late because I’d missed the bus.
Taking advantage of the bike rack on the local Clallam Transit Highway 101 Commuter, might have forced me to claim only partial doorstep adventure credit. The low-carbon transportation option also would have saved me about 16 miles of pedaling under weight at the beginning of an already ambitious schedule that involved a 22 mile rolling pedal from close to sea level to 3,000 feet, and a seven mile hike/run to 5,000 feet at Royal Lake.
Oh well. It was a beautiful day to be on the trail.
A farmer outside of Sequim had left out a table full of yellow plums with a sign marked “Free.” I bit into it, and found that I was drinking the fruit more than I was eating it. The sweet liquid within was ambrosia. It was easily the best plum I’d ever had, and that alone made the 16 miles of extra pedaling worth it.
Adventure Trail/Spruce Railroad
The trail I was going to was over 100 years old, and I suspect that the people who first built it had no idea what it was going to be used for.
In the early 20th century, the best airplanes in the world were built from Sitka spruce. It was lightweight, tough, abundant in the Pacific Northwest.
When aircraft production spiked at the start of World War I, investors hatched a plan to log the abundant groves on the north side of Lake Crescent below Pyramid Peak — about 20 miles due west of the mills in Port Angeles. The potential windfall from logging the spruce was enough to justify the cost of laying out a railroad bed along the rugged lakeshore. Trains would haul out the lucrative timber. The investors paid out vast sums to grade several miles out of the steep hillside and even blow out two tunnels in the crumbly basalt cliffs.
All of this effort came to nought however, as demand for Sitka crashed. World War I ended. Spruce planes gave way to planes made from aluminum. Finally, the land fell under permanent protection as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s Olympic National Park.
No lumber trains ply the old railroad grade, but plenty of hiking boots and mountain bike tires do.
I had thought about a mountain bike doorstep adventure out to Lake Crescent for a while, but I had to put the plans on hold for a while due to construction happening around the easternmost tunnel.
This is part of the exciting, ongoing project to link the Olympic Discovery Trail through the Olympic Peninsula so road bikers can pedal from Port Townsend in the northeast corner all the way to the Pacific beaches around La Push.
One day in July, I saw the headline that tunnel construction was finished, and began planning my route.
I was draping dry bags over the bike handlebars when I got a message from a friend asking if I wanted a ride out to the start of the Spruce Railroad trail and join a group that would pedal the length of the lake. It was a tough call, because I would have enjoyed company. Most people I know have no interest in joining the masochist adventures that I plan.
I thought about it, and decided to commit — to doing things my way, as usual.
I would bike out to the railroad bed myself, by way of the 26-mile Adventure Route mountain bike trail. If I ran into the other group at the Spruce Railroad, that would be dandy, but the odds of me getting there in time seemed low.
I started pedaling early afternoon, under a light load. I brought no stove, no sleeping bag, and a tarp in lieu of my tent. I had to add two miles to my trip in order to pick up a spare tube from a bike shop downtown and then lost more time fiddling with a brake pad that was rubbing into my wheel.
It was a late start as usual. I wondered if I would end up biking down switchbacks in the dark.
Elwha
By the time that I’d hit the ‘send’ button, my butt was numb (and maybe my soul, a bit as well) from wading down the long list of articles pointing to the latest consequences of climate change that were appearing in real time. My work compiling reading lists for the Olympic Climate Action group has been one of my attempts to take a more active role promoting my environmental beliefs. The work takes time though, especially because I want to write commentary about everything.
It was good to push out my chair and walk from the library into the warm September afternoon, a relief that faded somewhat as I remembered that I had plenty more packing to do, that I would almost certainly arrive at camp hours after nightfall.
Elk Mountain
I pedaled along the trail up from the coastline to the river of headlights on Highway 101. The sign at Deer Park Cinemas flashed out the hot new films of the summer, of which I have seen zero. The theater marked the beginning of the 5,000-foot climb to the campground. My headlamp played across the National Park sign, which bore a discouraging announcement: The campground was full already.
Ungrateful drivers, I thought to myself. The rangers should kick one of them out, and give their spot to someone who has earned the right to camp there. Surely the blood, sweat and tears of my climb were worth more than their pleasure ride and whatever insignificant fee they paid out.
Another part of me was relieved. If the campsite was full, I had an excuse not to make the spirit-crushing climb to the top of the road that night. I remembered a cleared-out area near the park entrance, that would probably have enough room to set up my tarp. After some quality sleep, I would have plenty of energy to tackle the remaining climb the next day, then hike out to my campsite on the Obstruction Point ridge.
It was a long enough grind climbing the pavement to 2,000-feet. Perhaps it was better doing it in the dark, rather than melting under the sun. I got a couple views of the Port Angeles road grid as well as distant blinky lights of Canada and the San Juan Islands. A booming owl right above almost made me jump off my bike.
When I finally got to the end of the pavement, the “campsite” I found for myself was a patch of dusty gravel just off the road, covered in spent shotgun shells, and shattered clays. It’s funny how the Second Amendment folks will preach about how responsible gun owners are, yet I’ve seen countless places in the National Forests and state lands, thoroughly trashed and shot to hell — with plenty of empty booze cans scattered around.
This site also had pieces of plywood with holes ripped through. I ran parachute cord through the holes, and mounted the boards up as little windbreaks at either end of my tarp shelter.
The night’s sleep in my little tarp, plywood hutch, surrounded by shells, was about as fitful as you might imagine. It didn’t help that around four in the morning, I heard strange cries coming out of the woods surrounding me.
Royal Basin
The delicious plum put me in a blissful frame of mind, almost enough to forget that I was running late again, or the monstrous amount of climbing I had to look forward to.
The farmland east of Sequim, could have been out of a renaissance painter’s conception of a pastoral idyll with its golden fields, and lazy herds of grazing cattle beneath the mountains. I half expected to see some Brueghel peasants threshing wheat or capering to hurdy gurdy music.
The plastic angles of the Shell station of Carlsborg Road shattered the illusion. I crossed Highway 101 and onto Hooker Road and a sharp uphill climb toward the mountains. Beneath the hot sun, any patch of shade was precious.
The pavement climbed on to Slab Camp Road at the beginning of Olympic National Forest. Here the way turned to gravel. The trees closed in. I went by small trailer encampments around ravines. The road continued to climb for a couple miles, then it was about two miles of downhill to the Gray Wolf River. I filled my water bladder and started climbing again. A couple sections were steep enough that I could barely turn the pedals over in the lowest gear.
The road topped out with a magnificent view of the rolling terrain, lit up golden green with the slant light of the falling sun. The distant snowfields of Mount Baker beamed orange back at me from the northeast.
I rolled down a couple more miles of downhill before I ended up at the trailhead shortly before eight o’clock. I locked the bike and unloaded the dry bags to clip them to my pack.
It was plenty of weight to carry added to the heft of the bear canister and other supplies I was already carrying. Nonetheless, I was able to break into an awkward trot for some of the shorter trail sections. The trail followed the banks of the Dungeness River, before climbing up along Royal Creek where I entered the National Park. The shadows lingered around the massive trunks of Douglas fir and cedars. Though, it was getting dim, I managed to avoid turning my headlamp on until 9 pm.
Fatigue crept down from my eyelids over the rest of my body.
I felt so tired, that I ate an entire chocolate bar with an energy gel to put some kick back into my system. The trail just wouldn’t stop climbing.
My world was defined by the narrow confines of the headlamp beam, which was about a second of running. The inability to perceive much of the woods around me bred paranoia.
I grabbed a cat stick to protect myself against any cougars on the prowl.
Adventure Trail/Spruce Railroad
Two roads diverged. I had already invested about a dozen miles of pavement pedaling on the mountain bike and was itching for the wooded, Olympic Adventure Trail. Unfortunately, the timing was working against me. I decided to cut off the first seven miles of trail riding biking that I’d planned by taking the paved Dan Kelly Road instead.
After five miles of climbing the road under the hill, it was nice to finally get onto the Olympic Adventure Trail — for some more climbing.
Climbing up the dirt was hard work, but it was more interesting than climbing the road. The Adventure Trail has tight switchbacks. I forced myself to look into the turn instead of in front of my tire. Being a novice rider, I screwed up plenty and ended up dismounting more than once.
These uphill challenges, made for blissful downhills, however.
The original trail builders (who happened to be chain gangs from the nearby prison) had built the trail in flow-y, graceful curves on gentle grades. Hell, they had even taken the roots out of the ground. Local volunteers and businesses had adopted different miles along the path and maintained them with pride.
I glided effortless through Jurassic stands of sword fern, linking one turn into another.
Later, the trail passed through a series of clearcuts where pink stalks of fireweed flanked my progress. I was able to gaze upon the mountains of Vancouver Island across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
A large grove of salmonberry bushes did away with the last of of my sense of urgency. These orange, clustered fruit lack the sweetness of their cousin, the raspberry, but they were positively refreshing on a hot day. I plopped down many.
Elwha
By the time I started pedaling my mountain bike out of Port Angeles, it was already 3pm. I could look forward to 16 miles of pedaling and then 11 miles of trail running. I decided to bike along Highway 101 instead of my preferred route on rural roads that would have added three miles and a long hill climb.
Highway 101 is the lifeblood of the Olympic Peninsula economy and it is a huge drag to deal with. Car after car flew by me as I chugged away unhappy in their fumes.
It is important to ride a bicycle in order to remember how much cars suck, I thought. Who were all these drivers, so oblivious of their great noise, so certain that they were important enough to justify wherever they were going?
The going got even more miserable up ahead. A construction project effectively cut the highway margin down to zero. I weaved inside the cones and rode over loose gravel, thereby avoiding the speeding cars and logging trucks to my left. Thank God I was on the mountain bike, I thought.
Later, a truck towing a boat trailer parked right in the breakdown lane and started backing up toward me. The cars going by left no room to go around and I had to yell at the top of my lungs to avoid getting flattened.
It was a relief to turn onto the Olympic Hot Springs Road with its lower traffic. I had a companion in the Elwha River, which ran low and cobbly after months without rain.
A couple miles later, I came to the ranger station at the park entrance. The ranger on duty noted that there had been a cougar sighting a month earlier near the place where I’d be camping. This is always good information to know when you are about to be running in the dark somewhere.
I left pavement and began the serious hill climbing at the Whiskey Bend Road. Below, there was the broken Glines Canyon Dam and its former reservoir, where miles of transplanted trees grew up in place of the receded waters. There were already reports that salmon had been spotted above the dam site that year. I planned to keep an eye out for them in the river pools.
I stopped at the end of the road, and drank greedily from my hydration bladder. I transferred the gear from my bike onto my backpack, then walked the bike into the woods and locked it to a stout tree.
The trail running was smooth, though a bit slow under the weight of four days’ worth of food and other supplies. Several campers were already settled down at the Lillian River tributary by the time that I crossed. They were cooking supper or enjoying bagged wine. I kept running.
Darkness fell. I switched on my headlamp and grabbed a cat stick to swing at any marauding cougars. I too felt like a night creature, lost in my dance with the twisting trail.
Suddenly, I halted. There was a white light shining up from the trees in the canyon below. Staring for a second, I realized it was the full moon, reflected off the shifting waters of the Elwha. The cold illumination flitted like quicksilver in and out of the utter black of silhouetted pines. Late at night, miles to go, there was no better place for me — right then and there.
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Stay tuned for the next installment!
The doorstep adventuring continues with the investigation of the nighttime noises, the agony of Deer Park Road, the wonder of the Olympic alpine zone, my journey off trail to find the Elwha source, the exhilaration of falling down snowfields, the dangerous call of the snow tunnels, the bear in the huckleberries.