Day 2-3: Central Wilderness Beach

After dinner in Forks, we drove out towards La Push to go to Third Beach. It started as any idyllic beach hike should:

After a couple miles, though, we ran out of beach. To get around the rocky outcroppings, we had to use a series of treacherous ropes to climb up to the headlands. To make matters worse, the sun was setting and we found ourselves tromping through a Fern Gully like forest shin deep in mud.

As the natural light was failing, we decided to make camp at a rocky beach outcropping:

After we set up camp, we noticed that the water level was slowly rising. We were hemmed in on three sides by nearly vertical walls. In a panic, we called Emily (it required holding my cell phone at a precise position to avoid dropping the call) to get the tide charts. She assured us that high tide was only a couple of hours away -- but that didn't stop Owen from tying his boots to his pack in ensure that they wouldn't be swept out to sea.

Behold the illusion of a nice beach side campfire. All the wood was so wet that we couldn't keep it going after half a dozen fire starters had burned out:

The next morning, the tide had receded and left some spectacular tide pools full of starfish, anemones, and mussels:

After exploring for a couple of hours, we broke camp and headed back to the Civic. For the third time, we loaded five people, five large packs, and five sets of bulky snowshoes into a compact sedan:

We pointed the cars back to Seattle and headed home.

OK hardcore fans. Here's a couple of bonus videos. In the first, I demonstrate my superior sliding skills by dominating Owen both in terms of speed and distance.

In this video, Owen demonstrates his superior creek jumping skills (it was about 2.5 feet deep).

I, on the other hand, cleared the creek but failed to stick the landing.