Social Distancing on the Olympic Peninsula:Hurricane Ridge, Cape Alava, and the Aurora Creek Trail

The world seems to be losing its collective mind. Even out here in Port Angeles, in a county where there has yet to be a single confirmed case of the Coronavirus, the toilet paper shelves had been ravaged, hand sanitizer is no where to be found, and signs like the TP one above, limiting the number per customer, adorn what is left of hand soap. While waiting in line in the Conestoga at the Bainbridge-Seattle ferry, the K-9 officer checking for bombs and the like told me that off peak ferries were running at a quarter of their normal traffic. In Seattle, iconic Pike Place Market is a ghost town. The contagion is real; the deaths have been real and, of course, heartbreaking; the cancellation of schools, of beloved entertainment of all types (as our daughter, Kat, texted me, what are we going to do without March Madness?) of travel; the gut punches to the economy, to our freedom to move about, to so many things we count on, all too real. We are human so there is fear and we have all become cough suspicious. With bars and restaurants, hair salons, seemingly everything closing down, businesses and their employees are suffering terribly (Conor and Kat both work at restaurants and they are jolted but neither is supporting a family. There are jolts and then there are jolts) The Makah reservation at Neah Bay has closed, pulled up the virtual drawbridge to ward off these tiny beasts. Time to wash our hands, cover our coughs, not touch our faces (I'm sorry, I don't know if I can), and turn away from the news for a few precious moments. Mother Nature has cast these God-awful microscopic bugs amongst us, but her gift of the mighty outdoors abides; all we have to do is open the door and step outside. In this time, when keeping away from crowds has its own name (I, for one, had never heard of 'social distancing') and when keeping close to the people and things we love has a desperate edge, there are still places where there is no threat of contagion, where the experience is worth the effort, where fresh, clean air, peace, and hope can find you.

I begin this episode by opening the Farmhouse door, stepping into a frosty morning, and simply looking toward the eastern horizon as the sun comes up. Fortunately, this happens everywhere, some days more spectacularly than others, usually offering a fresh slate with which to fashion a day. The sunrise is there for all of us, whether our morning begins in the Arizona desert, on New York City streets, on a sandy Atlantic beach, somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, or near our new home on the Olympic Peninsula. Even within the shadow of this virus, there is promise in each morning pallet. And if you are looking for more, there is surely more to find; such as the three very different trails Shar and I had hankered to explore, each within an hour or so of our Port Angeles Farmhouse, each with lots of room for social distancing, each filled with images to nurture now and carry as we move through this odd, uncomfortable time and into the times when we can thrive on our memories. We finally made it to parts of these trails within the last three weeks. Here with a touch of what we found. Beginning with Hurricane Ridge

Hurricane Ridge is a legendary piece of mountain. Hovering above the Port Angeles harbor, dramatically nestled on the far side of Klahhane Ridge, the town's stunningly rugged backdrop, Hurricane Ridge was a winter mystery to us. Extraordinary in the summer, although crowded with a world's worth of tourists, less crowded in the fall when I had branched off toward Obstruction Point and an exhilarating hike deep into the valley of Grand Creek to Moose Lake, the Ridge is much more restrictive these dark months. The road is only open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The little ski area is run by volunteers. You must carry snow chains in your car or truck. Parking fills up early and when it does, you either never make it up the 12 miles from the ranger in the Olympic National Park entrance booth or you wait in your vehicle with crossed fingers. This means that folks will drive all the way from Seattle only to sit in a line that may never move enough to allow them to the top. Obviously, this is less of a thing to those of us who drive just 15 minutes to the booth. Those endless banks of clouds sifting rain onto Ediz Hook (the spit that carves a place to rest from the sea, now called Port Angeles) spend the winter dumping heavy, wet snow on the Ridge at 5,242 feet above the Strait of Juan de Fuca; so there are days when the road is simply closed, period.

Shar and I headed up one Saturday a couple of weeks ago to try some of the famous snowshoeing. We hiked from the Visitor Center toward Hurricane Hill, a destination we didn't reach because I was insistent that we get back in time to watch the Colorado Buffalos lose a basketball game (in fairness to me, I did not know that they were going to lose, just saying).

That is Hurricane Hill high in the right corner. We went to of the ridge at top left; a wonderful, steep tromp. The cornices are perfectly sculpted and, even on this calm, sunny day, one can easily imagine the wind and wet that formed them. While the drifts could easily be dangerous for the unwary who might step out on them, the trail as you see it is firm, well within the ridge line, and solid.

To the north of our trail, there is Mount Angeles, between us and Port Angeles, between us and the Strait., between us and Canada's Vancouver Island peeking around the mountain's western shoulder there on the left.

To the south, looking into the heart of the Olympic Peninsula, the unbelievable Bailey Range; somewhere in there is the Mount Olympus herself, easier for me to pick out from another angle, when there are fewer clouds and less snow on the lower peaks.

It would have been hard to beat the day. We had great skies, there were people but not enough to get in the way; although I would caution to get there early. It was the end of February, we were at the entry gate at 9 and there was no line. The parking lot was near empty as we started and near full when we returned. The trail was all but empty on the way out and sporting one group after another as we worked our way back. They'd come from Bellevue, Seattle, the Kitsap Peninsula, and Eastern Washington and they could not possibly have been disappointed. There was plenty of hill for good exercise and, at 5,000+ feet, some decent altitude, not the 10,000 we shoed in Colorado, but plenty of work.

.AND JUST AN HOUR AWAY

Three days later, we were on our way to the coast. I had been reading and hearing about the Ozette Triangle since before we moved out to the Peninsula. The Triangle starts at massive Ozette Lake, south of the Makah Indian Reservation clinging to the most northwestern nodule of the contiguous United States. Draining toward the Pacific via the Ozette River, the lake hosts the Triangle's trailheads, the Cape Alava trail edging northward, the Sand Point trail to the south. The third edge of the triangle follows three miles along a riotous coastline rich in wildlife and the markings pre-European men and women left behind. Taking that coastline path depends upon the tides. Shar and I wanted to go, to try the whole triangle, but the days were still short and the tidal charts, always a must read when venturing near the water, said high tide had control of our day. So, we decided to take the three miles one way to Cape Alava, which turns out to be the most western point of the contiguous U.S. Tromping in snow just 72 hours before, look at what we found an hour and a three mile hike away, Ozette Island there just off of the Cape. And look at our trail to get there.

Lake Ozette is big and, as with any lake, it is beautiful, but there isn't much stunning about what we saw driving in. Except, sadly, so much of the country on the way to the lake is forest in one stage of the harvesting process or another. While logging is a big part of the modern historical culture and the livelihood of this place, it is not beautiful, it is not entrancing, it is a landscape to get through as quickly as possible on your way to someplace wonderful. And that place began with the surprising moss caressed bridge across the Ozette River. We found only two cars in the parking lot asI hung my old guy, forever National Parks pass on the rear view mirror. We ran into a squad of trail menders scraping inches of mud off of the walk ways at the closed visitor center. The record rains this winter had flooded the paths, layering them with thick silt...that would have been something to see. Then we got to cross this beauty, the surprising moss caressed bridge across the Ozette River, and disappear into the old growth.

They appeared as if sensing the malaise we carried from those industrial forests, especially from those large roadside tracts where there been no replanting, where the stumps, certainly decades old. maybe a century, speak of ancient trees gone to the ax without apparent care. This magnificent, drawfing cedar was only one of so many we passed, thank God.

The giants grow among nursery stumps telling the tale of a saw a century ago, before the National Reserve or Park rescued their brethren, or, less likely of a stump this height, of a natural death. Whatever killed them,, these stumps host the richly disordered growth of the forest's next generations.

And this mighty twisting snag telling the tale of a behemoth allowed to live and die in the coastal rainforest.

And this Saguaro cactus wanna be, sunlight craving arms from a busted snag of a root tree reaching with enough desire for life to beat back any virus of any century, quietly bordering the amazing wooden path leading the three miles to the Cape.

And the path itself, somebody worked their ass off to keep this trail a trail, to keep the trees safe from our footsteps, to save us from leather and toe suffocating mud.

And then we reached the Cape, the Pacific, the coast, high tide swamping what will one day soon be an amazing low tide, tidal pool community for us to explore and the water's edge trail to negotiate. Can't wait. We spotted and identified our first Hooded Mergansers, so close, so beautiful, and, as with so many birds, their impossible colors and configurations making you wonder if they are real.. Far off. near the breaking waves, dark, live, bulky form's moving about, some creatures, maybe otters, maybe seals or sea lions . We had a chilly lunch of cheese and apple and scooted back out of the breeze after a short hour. Black tail deer were grazing at the camp site along the flat. We saw no one on the trail, coming or going. In love with Cape Alava, the Triangle is now hard in our sights and will be ours before the heavy crowds of summer.

But in the meantime, just a few minutes down the road from both the lake and the Farmhouse, the Aurora Creek Trail had been ghosting me. I'd spotted it on an Olympic National Park map, noting that it starts on the south side of the incomparable Lake Crescent and heads up, climbing the steep mountain bordering the lake, topping out at the Aurora Ridge Trail. Since the lake rests at around 650 feet above sea level and Aurora Ridge is at around 4,000 feet, that's a good 3000 plus gain in a little over three miles of trail. It looked interesting but, as many times as I had driven that edge of the lake, I had not noticed either Aurora Creek or the trailhead. So, a week or so ago, wanting some exercise nearby, I decided to try to find the trail and climb up for an hour or so. One on-line trail description said to go 2.6 miles past the Crescent Lake Lodge turn-off. That turned out to be spot on, although small wonder I'd missed it on past drives. Below, the Conestoga sits in the wide spot across Highway 101 from the creek and trailhead. Maybe three vehicles can fit in that spot and it is hardly noticeable at all. Obviously a stunning spot to begin a hike but the highway, flush with passenger traffic and logging trucks, is right behind me as I take this photo. The blind curve to your left makes for an exciting sprint across the road to get to the woods.

But, having survived the highway, the trailhead is fantastic. You step off of asphalt, swing your legs over a fallen tree, and duck into the world I had been looking for.

I saw no one on this National Park trail and there was but one set of boot prints that stopped maybe 15 minutes in. There didn't seem to have been any attention paid to the path during the winter, as you can see by these slabs that fell from a very old snag above the trail, making for an interesting, belly rubbing straddle over the widest one just above a section of the trail partly worked away. Along the way, trees had fallen cross the trail and made for fun, but not intense, scrambling.

This snag (dead tree) is like the one that calved those pieces above.

The trail works its way back and forth across the wide shoulder of the mountain bordering Aurora Creek to the east. It is steep, heavily wooded, deliciously green and moves from the perfect sounds of the creek's falling waters toward deep woods silence then back to the noise of the rush. As you can see, some trail builders paid tribute to this majestic, fallen Douglas fir, and to themselves, carving it so beautifully and leaving so much for all of us to clamber and wonder over.

Occasionally I would get a peek at Lake Crescent below and the ridge line leading to Pyramid Mountain on the north side of the lake. That wide cut in the side of the mountain across the way is the result of a 2009 landslide that sliced away the trail leading up to Pyramid Mountain. It is also the site of one of our more interesting adventures when the trail across the cut gave way under Shar's feet and I had to use a shirt with knots tied in the sleeves to get her off of the crumbling slope. We'll get up Pyramid one of these days, but from the other side of that ridge.

This picturesque little family of mushrooms may have been as beautiful as any grouping I've seen yet;

this massive stump hinted at the snow I was climbing into;

and this section that finally told me that maybe, after an hour and an half, I'd do best to turn around (I had not grabbed any spikes and decided not to flirt with the slick); I had all of it to myself, every step. I'll get to the top here soon, now that the days are longer and the hours have changed. Once again, the mantra, can't wait.

This is a fantastic trail, seldom used, no waterfalls and up for miles; maybe not for everyone but a pure Pacific Northwest trail. Feeling lucky to be so near such opportunities. I hope that everyone seeks and can find their places where there is air and space and rest from all the troubling noise. Wishing you good health.