Tom's On The Move

 

Over the last couple of months I have been collecting footage of moving water. I came up with a soundtrack to go with it: my song “Drops in the stream” on the guitar.

I am eternally fascinated by how water moves, in its ripples, vortices and eddies. The video is all shot in Clallam County near Port Angeles, Wash. and includes Lake Angeles, Lake Creek, Valley Creek, Morse Creek, The Elwha River and the coast around the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Here’s a video of my November bike ride up to snow line on the Hurricane Ridge Road with cross-country skis on the back rack.

Unfortunately, the road was plowed.  Skiing didn’t happen.

Royal Basin

The valley to the south of Royal Basin has no name, no trails. There were no people there that I could see. As soon as I started running down the other side of the ridge, I was out of sight from the hikers in the basin, and in a land of my own.

Each footfall sent small avalanches of busted shale crumbling down the slope in front of me. I ran like I was downhill skiing, knees bent, weight over the feet, eyes fixed on the fall line. When I did skid over backwards, the slope was steep enough that I could push off, pop right back up and continue into the slide.

I reached the bottom in minutes. Looking back up the crumble slope, I could trace my reckless decent in the piles of upended rock. I figured it would take at least a half-hour of tough climbing to get back on top of the ridge. I had truly isolated myself now. If I screwed up, there would be no hope of signaling to hikers in the next valley and it wouldn’t be an easy self-rescue. I was my own responsibility.

I wondered if I really had any business taking on the gothic rock slopes of the next mountain. I studied the geometry for a while, but couldn’t find any way up that didn’t involve one or two dubious sections. I told myself I would back down if I encountered any dangerous stuff with a sheer drop — but I would try for the summit.

I bushwhacked through the sedges along the river bottom and pushed my way through huckleberry thickets toward the first terraces of the climb.

The nature of rock in the Olympic Mountains is decay. Everything is loose, ready to fall. The rock is sharp and angular, like pieces of a shattered windshield. Mountain decay is in fact in equilibrium with mountain rise, I’m told.     Even as  subduction pushes the peaks up, erosion topples them down just as fast, similar to a standing wave in a river.

The erosive properties of the mountain almost kept me in stasis too. I would put one foot down and have it slide halfway down slope on scree, which had itself fallen from higher up. The backsliding, easily doubled the amount of time it took to go up.

Difficult as the scree was to deal with, it wasn’t nearly as worrisome as the jagged slab rock that it has fallen away from. Here, the risk was not little scree avalanches, but television-sized rocks coming lose suddenly and ruining your day. This is what you encounter on the higher mountains, and it is the reason why even experienced climbers with ropes and anchors are wary of the high peaks in the park.

My peak was high enough to have plenty of this slab rock, but still well-groomed compared to any one of the high peaks nearby, which jutted up like rows of shark’s teeth.

Every time I grabbed a handhold, I would give it a firm wiggle before committing weight. I would find rocks the size of mini-fridges that were ready to fall away. Minutes would go by as I listened to one falling rock fall into another and another, booming down the slopes below.

Walking on the snowfields was only slightly more reassuring. The month’s old snow was compressed down into hard firn — predecessor to glacial ice.  Without crampons or axe, I kicked hard to get any kind of foothold, sunk my fingers into the half-melted surface snow for purchase. I weaved away from areas that were still in shadow. Here, the snow would be rock hard, and far more difficult to climb.

Yet, being in the center of the snowfield was unnerving too, because I knew that the snow would be hollowed out here. Each snowfield I’ve encountered in the high mountains in summer has had a stream of meltwater running down the center, often carving out caverns that would be tall enough to walk through. I knew the firn snow was tough, but it was still unnerving to imagine that I was actually walking on top of a roof that was steadily melting away beneath the hot sun.

The sun was on me like an interrogation lamp. Sharp light from the snow stung back into my unprotected eyeballs. I squinted less when I got back onto the rock, but then, of course, I had to deal with the rock again.

Finally, I topped out at a ridge right next to the summit. The last 30 feet of climbing were sketchiest of all. There were ugly drops on all sides. To top it all, some flying ant species was having its annual convention on on the summit rocks.

I took my pack off and worked my way gingerly over the rock I didn’t trust. Ants landed on my shirt, on my hair and eyebrows. Finally I slapped the highest rock. I took a second looking around — especially at the hundreds of feet that dropped off to the glacier between me and the next mountain. Then I started to work my way, carefully, carefully, back down. The ants flew back to their summit.

I got back to my pack and released my breath.

Adventure Route/Pyramid Peak

The sun was just beginning to touch the top of the power lines by the time that I left my ninja camp. I didn’t make breakfast — no water — and pedaled thirsty on the logging road up toward Lake Crescent.

I made it through the railroad tunnel and stopped at the shallow stream that crossed the trail. Here, I filled up my hydration bladder and chowed down on soaked oatmeal flakes in cold water. The sugary dehydrated peanut butter I mixed in made it true trail-delicacy. I stashed some of my gear in the woods here to make the going faster on the technical trail ahead of me.

It was a few miles of mountain biking from here to the base of the Pyramid Peak trail. I had to concentrate hard on the aggressive roots in the trail, coupled with rocks that had fallen onto the path from the cliffs above. It was discouraging having to dismount after trying to weave through stones going down a hill, but it was also profoundly satisfying to pull it off.

This is one of the only places where mountain biking is allowed on a national park trail. Periodically, politicians will contend that mountain bikes should be allowed on all park trails. One argument is that we already let horses into the park, so why should bikers get the shaft? I get the argument, but I disagree.

If the Parks Service made the exemption, there would be a lot more mountain bikes on the trail then there are horses now. On narrow trails, people would be constantly on guard for mountain bikes zooming up on them.

Even biking a few miles in the park showed me how many conflict opportunities there were. I had to (mostly) politely inform hikers that I was coming through so they would step off the path. Some of them gave me the stink-eye. Plenty of them leaped like spooked horses as I wheeled down on them.

On the one hand I felt a little guilty disrupting their quieter, bipedal appreciation of Lake Crescent’s beauty. To be fair though, there were plenty of other park trails where they could go hiking without worrying about bikes.

I was not the only one biking either. There were several other riders coming through rigged up with panniers and bike racks full of gear. Several of the travelers were on long distance journeys, including one couple that was headed back to Sequim after biking all the way to Neah Bay at the west end of the Peninsula.

The large number of multi-day riders I saw on this trail, and on the Adventure Route, testifies to the growing number of people who are coming to the Olympic Peninsula for bike tourism which pays dividends on all the money that went into trail construction. The quality of life enhancement that the trail brings to residents like me is what is truly priceless.

The trail became smooth dirt, and then pavement further up.  I pedaled for a couple miles down the lake until I came to the Pyramid Peak trailhead. It would be about three and a half miles and close to 2,500 feet of gain.

At this point, I was still nursing an achy knee from my last marathon but decided to try myself out.

The climb had me sweating, but I felt a great deal more energy than I expected. Further up, the trail cut across an area where a large landslide had fallen off the mountain. Footing was tricky on the loose substrate. A missed step could have meant a long slide.

Back in the woods, I cut up along the switchbacks. With each one, I felt stronger and more confident as a runner. The knee wasn’t hurting yet.

After about an hour, I emerged from the trees at a small cabin — an eagle’s nest, jutting on the corner of tall cliffs.

Morning mist partly obscured the view to Lake Crescent down below. The sun made a circle of golden light upon the blue water. Leaves burned translucent green in the morning sun. The sharp ridges all around and the dense, wet forests reminded me of my visit to Machu Picchu many years ago.

The summit was where I turned the doorstep adventure around. Ahead of me, I had the trail run, the Spruce Railroad Trail to bike and the 26.2 miles of the Olympic Adventure Trail, before I pedaled the rest of the way to Port Angeles.

I wrapped my knee in an ace bandage for the descent, swung into the flow of the downhill, hitching a ride with gravity along the journey back to home.

This was July. In a couple months, I was back on the Adventure Route, to run the Great Olympic Adventure Trail Marathon — the GOAT run. 

I took second place with a time of 3:11. The run had me pretty well beat and the beer at the end was well needed. Having biked the trail, I had a nice leg up on the competition.

Elwha

There was hardly any weight on my back when I left Chicago Camp for my third day of exploration in the Elwha Valley: Water, a med kit, a windbreaker a Clif bar, an energy gel and vegan jerky. I didn’t bring much food so that I wouldn’t be tempted to spend half the day up in the mountains. I would still have a 14-mile run back to Elkhorn Camp at the end of the day and I didn’t want to start late in the day. Hunger was supposed to motivate me to get back to camp earlier.

It was a nice attempt at self-control, but in the hours to come, I undermined myself by picking berries along the trail and using the extra calories to go much further than I’d planned.

The run began with a fallen tree that I used to cross the river. I felt sluggish starting out, and walked some of the uphill sections as the trail began its climb to Low Divide. Maybe I was ready to turn back early after all.

As I climbed into higher country, I felt the machinery warming up and decided that I had the energy after all.

There was a string of mountain lakes, nestled in the pines. The snowfields of Mount Seattle caught the morning light behind them. I was at around 3,500 feet here, lower than the startling turquoise lakes of Royal Basin. The lakes were murkier, more tannic as the waters stewed pine needles. Lily pads floated out in the water. Tiny wavelets lapped against the rocky shorelines. The contemplative beauty of them reminded me of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters.

The trail was lined with huckleberry plants. Several different varieties grew here including fat pale blues, others dark enough to be almost black (these were also fat and were the sweetest), along with the smallest, least sweet reds, which were still delicious and which I picked compulsively. The berries were large enough that I could accumulate a handful pretty quickly. It was hard to move up the trail without stopping. Every turn brought me to another bush sagging with delicious berries and I couldn’t help myself.

Not far above the lakes I came to a sign for the Low Divide, which marked the boundary between the Elwha Valley and the Quinault to its south.

There was more water on the trail, and the growth was thicker here. I had crossed the rain shadow. Here, the moist Pacific air dumped the most moisture, and created a rainforest environment that was far more lush than the Elwha.

The lush forest turned out to be a significant obstacle when I tried to go off trail and climb Mount Seattle.

I couldn’t even make it to the flanks of the mountain before I was beaten back by the thick growth of stinging nettle and the the barb covered devil’s club (oplopanax horridus.) Stung and bleeding, I decided that I had already gotten my fill of bushwhacking for the trip the day before.

“I could go on, but I choose not too,” I announced.

Instead, I ran back to a spur trail near the divide to go check out some more alpine lakes around Martin’s Park. The trail followed a deep gully cut through bedrock, then popped out at a mountain meadow at the base of an enormous snowfield clinging to a mountain ridge. I thought about leaving the trail to explore this, but decided to press on toward the lakes.

I dipped down into the next valley, and a truly monumental view of another mountain range emerged. I was so taken by the background that I almost missed one extremely important foreground detail.

This detail was black, close to 400 pounds, and busy bending huckleberry bushes with its claws.

“Whoa!”

The bear was on a hill about 50 yards away, barely off the trail. It was utterly absorbed in what it was doing — moving from one huckleberry bush to another and eating every berry that it could put into its maw. It had zero reaction to the fact that I was standing right below it, watching it move.

The movements of the bear were fascinating — like watching a dance as it grasped each new shrub, tangoed for a minute and then moved on to a new partner. The bear was incredibly efficient manipulating the branches and its own maw so that it could consume the maximum amount of calories in the minimum amount of time.

Repetition surely accounted for much of the bear’s finesse Even the plump berries growing here would only be a small portion of its body weight. It would have to eat many of them to put on the pounds before winter. No doubt, this feeding would be an all-day affair.

I thought about my course of action. I was standing downwind; the bear still hadn’t noticed me. If I wanted to go on, I would have to shout the bear off the trail. I picked up a couple rocks to help reinforce my message, if necessary. It probably wasn’t going to be thrilled about me interrupting its meal.

I stopped. What the hell was I doing? No one said that I had to go and bother this massive animal that was more than twice my weight.

Would it step aside? Probably. Other bears I’ve encountered have moved, sometimes reluctantly. I could mess you up, Kid, but it wouldn’t be worth the paperwork.

Regardless, there was something that seemed wrong about yelling threats an animal that was guilty of nothing more than trying to survive in its natural habitat. If I went on to the lakes and the bear was still around when I came back, I would have to yell at it all over again. It didn’t feel right. The bear needed to be busy eating before winter arrived. I didn’t need to go any further.

I put the rocks down.

Fifteen minutes later, I was wandering off trail again, this time approaching the large snowfield along its icy outflow.

I didn’t see the frog until my foot came down right next to it and it leaped into the stream. I watched transfixed as it weaved its way through a narrow series of drops. Its webbed feet pumped expertly in time so that it missed the rocks — precision a river boater would envy.

The frog sighting, like the bear, exemplified excellence in nature. I felt privileged to bear witness.

The wonders continued upstream where the meltwater flowed out from beneath the snowfield. Here was a cavern tall enough to walk inside. The heat of the day vanished instantly as my eyes adjusted to the soft blue light. The sound of dripping water was everywhere and omnipresent. The ceiling was webbed out into an ornate series of groin vaults that would be the envy of a medieval cathedral. Droplets formed at the intersections and fell away into the dark water below. Each droplet, I realized, was headed for the Elwha’s mouth miles north of here. Because Port Angeles draws its water from the Elwha, I’m sure that I have drank from this snowfield a thousand times unknowing.

The blue firn continued upstream as a darkening tube, receding toward unseen mysteries above.

It would have been easy enough just to keep walking through the cavern. In a hundred yards or so, I would have popped up on the other side where the stream came in. Still, the thought of a cave-in was terrifying.

Indeed, I later found a series of large slabs that had fallen off the top side of the tube — which had received more sunlight and was therefore more unstable than the bottom end where I was exploring.

The steep walls of the rock gully made the fallen slabs impossible to avoid as I climbed upward. Getting over them meant crawling over them on my belly, then sliding down to the loose rock on the other side. Progress was slow.

After crossing the fallen slabs, I had to take on a steep rock slope before I topped out on the ridge. As carefully as I tried to step, I still managed to trigger a few long rock falls before I topped out on the ridge.

I took a breath.

The immensity of the glacier in front of me was overwhelming.

There were square miles of ice, sloped out on the mountain. Beneath the dirty, brown surface, the crevasses sank away into sapphire blue depths.

This was Mount Christy, a mountain named for the leader of the Press Expedition of 1889 and 1890, the first documented group to cross the Olympic Mountains. In Robert Wood’s account of their journey, it took the group several months to hack through the wilderness between Port Angeles and Low Divide.

As a doorstep journey (aided by the roads and trails that Christy’s expedition helped establish) I’d reached the same place in just over two days.

A brown lake of glacial meltwater ran down into a mountain river toward the Quinault River. I could see to where the mountains fell to lowlands in the west, and a dark blue area that I reckoned to be the Pacific Ocean.

Beneath the root of a gnarled pine, I found something that looked out of place. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was the handle of a large hunting knife. The steel blade was spotted, but still keen. I used it to hack off a dead branch and sharpen its end to a point — a makeshift ice axe for my descent on the snowfield.

I dragged the branch through the snow as I ran, skidded and fell down the slope. It took me a couple hours to run back to camp. By the time I had everything packed and started back on the trail, it was four p.m..

The fourteen miles of trail ahead of me were a slog. Just as it was getting dark enough to turn on my headlamp, I saw the familiar antlers nailed to a tree. I’d arrived back at Elkhorn Camp. The lean-to where I’d slept the night before was empty. Indeed, the only person I saw in camp was the caretaker, who was already going to bed.

Bed sounded very appealing to my tired body and mind, but first I needed water for dinner. I shambled down the bank to the Elwha River. My headlamp caught a glint of something by a rock and I realized that it was a can of beer. The can was full. Trail magic.

The smooth, dark IPA was luxurious as I squatted by the flames of my tiny cook fire. I listened to the crackle of the flames, the shush of the river flowing over rocks. The orange firelight danced up among the needles of the cedars. Here, on my third night in the woods, I had my own tiny civilization along the trail. The next day, I would return to the city.

Though I had literally reached the highpoint of my journey, there was still one more surprise to come.

I awoke for an 11- mile run back to the trailhead. The temperature got hotter and hotter as the sun rose. I found myself taking multiple breaks to walk up out of valleys. In one worthwhile detour, I walked off the trail to get to the edge of the Grand Canyon of the Elwha, where I could look at the river at the bottom of a thousand-foot sloping walls.

I started running into day hikers as I approached the road, including a crowd of whitewater kayakers who had rigged their boats into backpacks so that they could hike up the trail and take on the Class V whitewater in the canyon.

Finally, I popped out at the parking lot and unlocked my bike. There was still a long ride to Port Angeles, including a three mile hill climb that would be brutal in the full sun.

I took a seat on a picnic bench to relax and ended up in a conversation with a fisherman who was coming back from a short day hike. It turned out that he had found a pool full of salmon downstream of Whiskey Bend Road.

They were mostly Chinook salmon at this point, he said, though the Coho would be starting their run soon too. The pool would be a little out of my way, but I decided that it was worth it to include it in the journey.

The five-mile ride down Whiskey Bend Road was exhilarating as I took on the hairpin turns in my bike. I took a detour on the paved Olympic Hot Springs road to the bridge at Altair Campground. The fish were gathered in a large eddy. Some of them must have been close to twenty pounds. The most recent arrivals from the ocean were still silvery, whereas others had turned pinkish in preparation to climb further up river to spawn. Their mouths would become more beaklike too, so that they could use their jaws to fight other fish for mates.

My friend that I’d met at the trailhead pulled up in his Subaru for another look. It was likely that some of these fish would be in the pool for several days or weeks as their bodies changed in preparation for spawning, he said.

He’d been watching the spawning fish in the Elwha with interest. The river is still off limits to fishing however, as the salmon begin to come back into their old habitat.

It was extraordinary to think that only a couple years ago, the pool that was now full of fish would have been empty. The Lower Elwha Dam had locked off this section of river for over a century. Now that the dams have come down, the fish have begun returning to the upper reaches of their old habitat.

The stronger ones would fight their way upriver to many of the same places where I’d stopped on my doorstep adventure. They would not return from their journey, though — they hoped — their progeny would. Their carcasses would feed bears, eagles and raccoons; they would fertilize the roots of trees. Some adventure.

Elk Mountain

I ended my day on top of Elk Mountain with a snow sliding adventure off the north face. I found a ridge of broken rock to climb down that led to a snowfield. With a good running start, I was able to slide on my shoes down to the bottom of the valley where the snow melted into a stream. The water here was headed for Morse Creek, which crossed the Discovery Trail near Port Angeles. I wondered what it be like to put on a pair of waders and try to follow the stream the rest of the way down to the Strait — probably impossible, but certainly an interesting thing to attempt.

The lightweight ice axe attached to my hiking pole finally came in handy when I started climbing back up the snowfield. I could feel the snow becoming harder and more consolidated as the sun went down. I struck a rhythm in kicking my feet and sinking the axe. If I fell out of time, I tended to slip backwards. It became meditative and a pleasure to concentrate on my movements and draw on energy reserves that only showed themselves in the face of challenge.

I got back to my camp at Roaring Winds. Thankfully, the place did not live up to its name that night. It was quite calm. I slept warm beneath my tarp.

The next morning, I packed up and began my journey back to Port Angeles I would have spent more time in the hills, but there was an Olympic Climate Action meeting in town that afternoon that I wanted to get to.

I got to my bike in a couple hours and started the 5,000-foot descent back to sea level. Exhilaration met fear as I rolled down the tight curves along the edge of the mountain. My back-busting effort the day before gave way to effortless speed; the labor of a thousand pedal strokes was spent out in a couple of breaths.

Meanwhile, there were vehicles to watch out for. I like to think that for as much as I suffered more than they did on the way up, I had more fun on the way down. Biking downhill is exciting, whereas driving anywhere feels like responsibility. I had a jeep a hundred yards behind me for the last mile of dirt road.

Did I slow down to let it pass? Nah. I touched the brakes as little as possible and flew through the turns. I managed to stay ahead of it until the end of the park.

Royal Basin

I didn’t know the name of the mountain I had just climbed until I pulled out the map near the summit: Hal Foss Peak. 7,191 feet. It was the first 7,000-foot mountain that I’d climbed in the Olympics.

To the west, I could see the headwaters of the Dungeness River and then over the peaks of the Buckhorn Wilderness to the Hood Canal, the suburbs of Seattle and the Cascades.

Beautiful as the view was, I had some trepidation about getting back down the steep, crumbly mountain in one piece. I decided to descend a different route than what I’d come up, hoping for something more gradual. There were more snowfields this way, which I was worried about at first, but turned out to be a major asset.

The snow, which had been rock hard as I started my climb, was softening up under the hot sun and was easier to grip into. I tried sliding in places where there were backstops to break my fall and I found that I had more control than I had thought. I picked up a long slab of shale to use as a primitive ice axe, dragging it like a handbrake behind me as I scooted on my rear.

I also found a couple of tubes to explore, though, as in the Elwha Valley, I couldn’t find the nerve to walk all the way through.

The heat was becoming incredible. I had foolishly left my hat at home, but McGivered a brim out of a bus schedule I was carrying and a piece parachute cord. The glacial lakes at the bottom of the valley offered another source of relief.

Between Hal Foss and the even taller Mount Mystery, there lay a long frozen finger. I walked up it for a ways using another sharp piece of rock as an axe. I peered into a narrow crevasse where I could see the hard blue ice going down.

This was no snowfield, but true glacial ice. It was the first glacier I had walked out onto on the Olympic Peninsula. Cloistered in the cold shadows of the twin peaks, the ice that I was looking at had likely been frozen there for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.  I hope it will make it for the next hundred, but who knows?

The glacier had melted into a series of lakes, along the moraine. Some were brown with sediment, some icy blue with glacial flour — rock dust pulverized off the mountain beneath the weight of the ice. I chose one of the blue pools, where I could literally see the glacier sloping down into the water.

I stripped down and jumped in. The cold seized me immediately and shrunk my breath down to nothing. I opened my eyes for a half-second view of the blue lake world, and thrashed my way to the surface. I lurched with dumb muscles back onto the rocks, shivering in 85 degree heat.

As my temperature stabilized, I felt completely wonderful, invigorated feeling the heat leaving through my capillaries. I decided to hike for a while before I put my clothes back on (boots were still necessary for the razor sharp rocks, I draped a shirt over my shoulders to ward off burn.) It was the most breathable hiking outfit that I had tried, with no chafing. Highly recommended. The whole valley was empty, from the glacier, to the peaks of Hal Foss, Mystery and Deception. It was the best place in the world.

The only place I might have encountered someone was at the top of the pass I had climbed earlier the day — still a mile off and an unlikely climb for most of the day hikers in Royal Basin. I’m glad that no one was there to see me hiking au natural in boots and with a brimmed hat made from a bus schedule.

The climb up the ridge back toward Royal Basin turned out to be far more difficult than I had imagined.

Sure I had run down the side of it in a matter of minutes. However, the scree was so loose that I was doing well if I slid halfway back with every step I took. It was as bad as powder snow. Little bits of rock would break away above where I put my foot down and flow over my shoe to my ankle.

The shale layers here were offset at a 45 degree slant, remnants of the ancient sea bed, hoisted up and tilted as a result of tectonic subduction. It was easy to climb between two layers and brace off of the protruding ribs, but doing so meant meandering away from the point on the ridge that I where I needed to be to get safely down on the other side. Crossing from one tectonic layer to another required fancy footwork and grabbing at small handholds in the rock ribs, which were only marginally more reliable than the loose scree between them.

The rock was so sharp that I could feel the edges, even beneath the thick soles of my trail running shoes. By the end of the day, the bottoms were so cut up that I deemed them retired from any more mountain adventures.

My shoulders and biceps were as tired as my legs by the time that I topped the ridge. I put clothes back on because I now had a better chance of encountering other hikers. First, I got to run/slide down the other side of the slope, remarkably easy compared to the effort of going up, and an absolute blast staying on the knife edge between control and chaos.

I didn’t encounter an humans until I got back to the trail.

“Excuse me,” I  called cheerfully.

“Can it wait a second?” a backpacker called, voice tense, clearly uneasy with the mildly uneven trail and the small drop alongside. I walked slowly behind them until they let me run pass. No love there.

They probably thought I was some kind of show-off or yahoo.  Maybe they were right.

Still, as someone who has always considered himself a hiker, my summer of doorstep adventures has left me feeling strangely alienated from this group. I thought of the woman who had chastised me for seeing me with a mountain bike on the trail (though I wasn’t pedaling it.) I don’t think many of the traditional hikers understand what I am doing. Many of them might think that I am just running up from my car for a quick selfie on a mountain ridge. They don’t realize that I actually started my adventure from Port Angeles.

I reached my camp at Royal Lake by mid afternoon, packed up, and then started jogging the seven miles back to the trailhead under full pack. At this point, I felt fatigue catching up to me. Several times I caught myself walking when I knew I should be using the momentum to run. There was no way I was getting home until well after dark, that was for sure. I focused on each new change in the environment that I detected as I lost elevation. Here was the first thimbleberry plant, here was the first Douglass Fir, the first salal shrubs growing trailside. I guessed at how long it would take until I saw my first red cedar, the first maple. The goals helped keep me focused on keeping moving. The sun was already getting low by the time I reached my bike, and I still had almost 40 miles to get back to Port Angeles.

This started out with a mile long climb on the dirt road, followed by a long descent to the Gray Wolf River and another two miles of hard climbing.

As many challenges as there were, I found it easy to mindlessly follow the road back home. There were no decisions to make, no questions about the proper route, all I needed to do was point myself in the right direction and persevere. I could deal with the fatigue the next day.

By the time that I popped out on the pavement, it was dark. I flicked on my headlamp and tail light for my bike. Shifting gears going downhill, I somehow managed to bust my derailleur again, which meant that I would have to pump mightily to climb the hills of the Discovery Trail on the way back to Port Angeles.

I made a quick stop at a gas station to buy snack food, then pedaled onto the 16 winding, unlit miles back to Port Angeles. I pedaled past the farms, in and out of creek valleys and along the sea shore. The adventure ended with the two mile climb from sea level to my apartment at 300 feet. The bells in the courthouse rang eleven times as I pedaled up Lincoln Street, ushering my return. A car went past.

It’s possible that the occupants might have noted, briefly the lone pedaler out on the streets at night with his enormous backpack. He probably slept the night in the woods somewhere last night.

Damn right I did. And I’ve been on the mountains above you. I’ve stood on a glacier, walked beneath snow and swum in a lake you’ll never see in your lifetime. If I explained how I did it, you would probably smile and shake your head. It might be difficult for you to relate.

You’ll see that I’m a fanatic, I’m impractical and I’m out of touch. You’re completely right. I’ll own that hardship.

Elk Mountain

So what was that noise coming out of the trees?

That is the thought you don’t wan’t to be wondering at four a.m. lying in a strange patch of woods. I could best describe the sound as a suppressed sneeze, or the sound of airplane wheels scuffing down on the tarmac. It came from one direction, then another. I lay in my bag wondering whether I should be concerned, feeling concerned in spite of myself.

Of course it wasn’t cougars I was hearing. They are supposed to sound like a woman screaming. Otherwise they just kill you in a silent ambush. So what was it? Chortling deer? Some very early, early birds sharing gossip from across the valley? Wide-eyed paramilitaries communicating in bird calls as they encircled the camp?

As the noises got louder, I eventually sprung out from the tarp, ice axe in hand and swung my headlamp through the darkness. Nothing.

“Get lost!” I shouted. The noises seemed to let up, and I went back inside my bag, satisfied.

Fifteen minutes later, I heard the first screech, then another.

“Beat it!”

The racket went on.

Finally, I turned over with the ice axe in hand, committed myself to fitful sleep. Maybe I’d get a chance to hack one of the monsters in my final struggles.

Morning came and no monsters were hacked. I was alive, but far from rested, far from stoked about the 3,000 feet of dirt road I was going to mountain bike under the weight of all my gear.

I packed camp with a cold breakfast and started pedaling up Deer Park Road into the park. I had already drained my water supplies, but I was counting on a stream that I remembered from my bike/ski doorstep adventure over the past winter.

I almost despaired when I got to the spot and saw a gulch full of dry moss. As luck would have it, there was still the faintest trickle of water running over the rocks.

It took me ages — swatting flies all the while — to fill up my supplies. And I really filled up.

The ranger I’d talked to back at the park visitor center told me not to count on finding water on the ridge. I had a hunch that some of the other streams crossing the road would still be flowing, but had been a hot summer, and I would rather not be wrong and thirsty. Wrong and winded was more like it.

The weight of two days’ worth of water, on top of a bear canister, sleeping bag and other gear was a hefty burden indeed. I should also mention I didn’t have the lowest gear on my bike. Why? Stupid apathy, neglect.

I still hadn’t fixed the bike’s rear derailleur (bent from when I had fallen on my bike during my winter expedition to Deer Park.) I hadn’t expected this to be much of a handicap though. This was the fog of memory. If I had remembered how steep the road was, I wouldn’t have been surprised when it utterly kicked my ass.

Additional challenges included loose gravel in the road that made my tires more likely to spin out. I got walloped under the hot sun with sweat running continuously into my eyes.

Then I would hear the growl of a combustion engine and the crush of tires flying up the road behind me. I would fight to keep my front tire in straight, in the narrow margin between where I would fall off the mountain and where I’d get flattened onto it. Then the vehicle would go by in a blast of pebbles and choking dust.

The vehicle occupants would certainly be on the trail before I was, and would have a lot more energy too.

I snarled and grunted against gravity with heart going like a jackhammer. The wheels would slow on a steep section and I’d set my jaw.

“No! No! No!”

I’d barely wobble over a deep rut in the road, veer into another switchback with a howl of triumph — but the split second of inattention was enough to throw me in the path of a big rock. The bike would lurch and start to endo over backwards before I put a foot down to save myself.

“Aaargggghhh! I hate you! Goddammit!”

Sometimes I would try to kick launch back onto the road. Otherwise, I just walked up a couple hundred feet to a flatter section and started pedaling there.

Three hours after camp, I pedaled with numb, dumb legs over the last section to the trailhead. There was a brief downhill to remind me what it felt like to go fast on the bike. Then I swung out of the saddle.

A clear brook was running down through the trees. I shook my head, thinking of the pounds of water I needlessly hauled uphill.

Well, that was over. Time to hit the trail.

Royal Basin

What I cherish about mountain adventure is that when I am up there, I feel that I am in touch with the sublime. There is a feeling that the world might, in fact, be worth more than I realized. The feeling transcends my intellect; it inhabits me and makes me feel more whole than I would feel almost anywhere else.

Even if that feeling only lingers for a second, it is enough to justify hours or even days worth of toil. The feeling of sublimation arose several times in the day that I adventured in the Royal Basin and in the adjoining valley to the north.

When I woke up, the tops of the mountains were already burning as the sunlight began its march into the valley. Royal Lake was a mirror to the clear skies. This view hadn’t come easy.

I’d finally reached my campsite around 11pm the night before after the  hill-filled 30 mile mountain bike ride and 7 mile uphill run . The stars were spilled out onto the heavens like salt on a black cloth, closed by black jaws of mountain peaks. I set up my tarp above a dusty patch of ground, laid down my sleeping bag and zonked out.

I ate my breakfast cold. Soggy oatmeal in cold water.

Breakfast didn’t matter nearly so much as the glorious miles of busted rock in front of me. I was able to save weight by leaving the bear can and sleeping bag in camp. Despite the monster effort from the day before, I was energized rather than fatigued.

I ran up the trail into a glacial valley where patches of snow still clung to the north-facing bowls. A hundred-foot cascade to the east, gushed blinding white over the rocks. Deep turquoise pools of meltwater were scattered throughout the valley, laid out like saucers for a tasting ceremony of the mountain gods.

As good as it was, I wasn’t ready to call it a day. I needed to get higher. The challenge was that all the rock everywhere was broken, and it was impossible to trust any one hand or foothold. Still, it looked like I could make a path up the side of a north ridge.

My rambles were not in vain. I soon found that some other enterprising adventurers had blazed an informal trail through the rubble ahead. I clambered up this until I got to the top of the ridge, affording me a view into Royal Basin. Beyond, the volcanic cone of Baker rose out of the Cascades. I could trace the blue path of the Strait of Georgia east of Vancouver Island. Most satisfying, I could see the distant, white peaks of the Coast Range around Whistler — more than 100 miles away in Canada.

Mount Deception, to my west, was a Bara-dûr of a mountain, gothic in its protruding ribs of shale.  Snow fields nested in the shadows.

An unnamed valley lay below me to the south. There was a lush green meadow where a turquoise stream babbled through, a series of glacial lakes, brown and blue with sediments, a towering snowfield, a mountain peak that looked treacherously steep, but maybe, just maybe, I could pull it off.  I knew I was supposed to turn around soon, at least if I wanted to get back to Port Angeles anywhere close to a reasonable hour.  The charge I was getting from the mountains had me feeling unreasonable indeed.

Adventure Route/ Spruce Railroad

The switchbacks of the Adventure Route eventually brought me to the Lyre River and then to the shores of Lake Crescent.

The lake is about eight miles long. It fills a glacial valley, with steep peaks rising up on all sides. I like to imagine these slopes continuing to plunge straight down beneath the water. It is a 500-foot deep lake — the bottom is below sea level. There is a brilliant, blue quality to the water that looks tropical. All of these are reasons that I enjoy guiding kayak tours here.

My tour was self-guided today, but not for long.

I came to the newly renovated railroad tunnel and pedaled through. A sign told me to walk the bike because there were no lights inside. Indeed, halfway through the tunnel, I could see nothing. It was only an act of faith that kept me going. If there was a trap door to the underworld in there, I was lucky enough to miss it, popping out on the other side of the tunnel unscathed.

Trail renovations didn’t go much further than the tunnel. The smooth road I had enjoyed earlier became gnarly mountain bike terrain. There was a stream to pedal through, rocks to weave around and thick roots coming out of the trail.

I wasn’t the only one taking on the tricky terrain though.  I saw some familiar-looking bikes up ahead and realized that they were my friends from Port Angeles. They were heading back from their ride along the lake. I turned around to join them.

It was nice to finally have some company on a doorstep adventure. I was glad that I got to bike with friends even though I had passed on their offer to catch a ride with them earlier . The company was short-lived however as they cut back onto the road to Log Cabin Resort where their vehicle was parked.

Back on my own, I decided that I would try to get to the Lyre River mouth, where I had camped on a previous kayak adventure.

Shadows lengthened in the forest as I biked north over the miles of logging roads to Highway 112. Unfortunately, the road going down to the mouth was closed off. Plan B was a nearby pay campsite, but the RV’ers and car campers had already taken up every spot

Plan C was me going back onto the forest road where I remembered a grassy area under some power lines. I pushed into the woods a little ways and set up my tarp.

I was almost out of water at this point, and there was no way I was going to set the cook fire I’d planned without burning down the desiccated forest. Instead, I mashed on the dry flakes of dehydrated pea soup from my bear can, savoring the sharp edges crunching into the top of my mouth. I squirted in enough water to soften everything down into a painful bolus.

I had also saved weight by not bringing a sleeping bag (I’m full of fun ideas aren’t I?) This actually worked out just fine on the warm night. I put on my fleece and parka, and went to sleep beneath the tarp.

Tomorrow, I’d get back to Port Angeles, but before I did that, I had unfinished business with Lake Crescent and nearby Pyramid Peak.

Elwha

The Elkhorn campsite lived up to its name with two mossy pairs of elk antlers nailed to a tree. My headlamp beam played over a couple of wooden shelters. The bunks inside were empty! Perfect. I wouldn’t even have to set up my tarp.

The next day, I started running early under full pack weight. There were fourteen miles of trail ahead of me, weaving alongside the Elwha River until Chicago Camp. I hoped to leave my gear here and then push on toward the source of the river.

The start was promising. Without a tarp to take down, I got moving early. Pack running was slow but steady progress with only a gradual elevation gain. Usually, I would already be above tree line at this stage in the trip.

The low elevation adventure gave me more time to appreciate forest flora like the smooth-barked madrona tree, the waxy leaves of salal plants and Oregon grape growing along the trail. Even stinging nettle — gotta watch out for that one — popped up here and there.

I got to Chicago Camp a little after noon. I set my tarp up, ditched my bear can, and started running west up the Elwha Basin trail. It was a tricky path to follow. I found myself at a number of dead-ends, only to retrace my steps and find out where I had missed the trail at a curve.

The Elwha was now a shallow creek, splashing over the rocks. I guessed that at this point, I was above the reach of salmon, though it is best not to underestimate these plucky climbers.

My moment of transcendent bliss arrived at clearing in the river bottom.

To the north was a vast slope leading to the peaks of Mount Meany, Noyes and Seattle. An enormous cascade fell off the mountains to meet the Elwha. I estimated that it was a couple hundred feet of plunging water, close to the height of Niagara Falls. It plunged out of the snowfields above through terraces of alpine plants. I contemplated bush-whacking through the valley to climb to the top of the falls, but the source of the Elwha was still hidden within beyond the curve of the valley, on the slopes of Mount Barnes.

To get there, I would have to go off trail. I climbed a steep escarpment out of the river canyon,  to reach a small flat area with steep-sloped terrain above and below me. I resolved to start hiking upriver,  set a pile of stones next to a gnarled tree in order to remember where to climb down to the trail. Then I began a difficult hike upriver. With every step I would strain not to slip sideways on the slick pine needles and go sliding downhill.

Fallen trees offered short foot paths off of the slope, and I could move faster over balancing on them than I could walking on the forest floor. Still, my progress on the challenging terrain was far slower than I had hoped for.

Finally, at an overlook above some river rapids, I decided that I would turn around. The source of the Elwha would remain a mystery to me. Yet, all was not lost. A huge huckleberry bush grew nearby. I spent several minutes gorging myself the tangy red berries that were fat upon the branches.

I picked my way back to the trail, then ran the rest of the way back to camp.

I had one more day to explore the mountain country before I’d need to start back along the river toward Port Angeles.

I could have used the time to make another attempt on the source of the Elwha, but decided that the going beyond the trail was too tough and time consuming for me to commit.

Instead, I set my sites on Low Divide, where I could reach the top of the Quinault River Basin. Perhaps I would even try to summit a nearby mountain, though this wasn’t a very realistic plan given my limited time and resources. I planned to wake up, hit the trail, and see just what I was capable of doing.

Elk Mountain

I wheeled my bike a few yards down the trail before finding a place to sit down for lunch. A handful of hikers walked by.

“Y’know, you’re not supposed to have bikes on the trail,” a woman admonished me.

“I’m not biking on the trail,” I told her, trying unsuccessfully to mask my annoyance.

This is what I get after busting my hump to get here? A self-important lecture from someone who wouldn’t be here without Subaru and the Exxon-Mobil Corporation?

C’mon, Man, just let it go. You’re supposed to be having a good time here.

I hid the bike in some trees and started hiking.

A couple of day hikers who had just started from their cars with small packs, overtook me with their loud conversation. If I were a competitive guy, who never gets passed on the trail, this might have bothered me, but I’m not that kind of guy, so it didn’t bother me at all. Besides I could’ve hiked them into the ground any other day.

The beauty of my surroundings began to dawn on me at last as the trail climbed out of the trees, affording a panoramic view of the glaciated peaks to the south. Below, I could count ships in Port Angeles Harbor, trace the outline of the Dungeness Spit and the city of Victoria. There were so many past adventures within my sight, I thought with satisfaction. How many new ones was I looking at?

The first snow I encountered was near 6,000 feet on the side of Maiden Peak. Beneath the hot sun, this was a welcome relief. I packed snow into my ball cap for cooling.

A few miles later, the trail afforded me its first view into Grand Valley where waterfalls cascaded into alpine lakes. The Needles in the southeast were as forbidding as they were spectacular. To the northwest, the glaciers of Olympus shone resplendent in the perfect light.

It occurred to me that in all my years of hiking, this was one of the most beautiful places that I had ever visited.

A parallel feeling: These doorstep adventures were what I was supposed to be doing. There was no better place to be right now, and there was no way I would have rather gotten here.

The Roaring Winds campsite sits in a 6,000-foot saddle between Maiden Peak and Elk Mountain.  I ditched my camping supplies and bear can here, and continued with a lighter load toward Elk Mountain.

In a couple miles, I could see the cars parked on the Obstruction Point Road at the west end of the trail. To hike further was to get  nearer to the vehicles and any flip-flopped tourists milling around them. I decided I could pass on that.

The afternoon was still young though. I could have filled the time with a long hike down into Grand Valley for a lake swim. This would have meant close to 2,000 more feet of elevation gain however. I could take a pass on that too.

Instead, I opted to get to the summit of Elk Mountain, not far off the trail. I stepped daintily on the broken rock, trying to avoid treading over alpine life.

I got to the top and noted the geological survey marker — 6,764 feet above sea level. The number meant all the more to me because I had literally started the adventure at sea level. The night before, I’d been pedaling past the waves in the harbor.

With glaciers to my south and the sea to the north, I finally lay down in the sun and fell to sleep.

I awoke to thrumming chopper wings. A Coast Guard helicopter was flying over the ridge. The mountains were turning golden now.

The copter’s shadow shot by me. Funny to think that only minutes ago, the crew had been sitting on the pad on Ediz Hook, not far from where my own doorstep adventure had started.

The orange visitor flew by and diminished over the mountains — on its way toward wherever duty called that day. I lingered in the gorgeous light and wondered if I had time to explore the snowfields that stretched out below me to the north.

 

 

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.

*******************************************************************************

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.