Paved with fallen leaves.
Category: Trails
Uphill
Lit right even the more ordinary spots on a trail can lift a heart.
Trail to Cape Flattery
Last week we went to Neah Bay, the reservation of the Makah Tribe. It’s located at the far northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula and also the northwestern edge of the continental United States, a bit under three hour’s drive from Sequim. The area is remote. It’s reached via a two lane road that is notorious for washouts and mud slides. At the tip of the reservation is Cape Flattery, reached by a roughly half mile walk through a beautiful rain forest.
The terrain looks like hobbit habitat, or perhaps where you’d find an ewok from Star Wars, beautiful, wild and remote.
DH lived as a fisherman in Neah Bay for about two years but neither he nor I had been there for at least 20. I for one had forgotten that the trail is decidedly lumpy with roots as it descends to the Cape. And 20 years ago I didn’t have an unhappy knee and poor balance. The distance was not difficult but the terrain made me feel old and lame. It was, however, worth the effort. Tomorrow I’ll show you some of the views that rewarded us.
Life is good
This is a view from a trail we walk nearly every day. On grey days it’s hidden behind clouds. When it’s clear like this there’s nothing better.
Olympic Discovery Trail
Nice weather last weekend brought lots of people out to the Olympic Discovery Trail. The trail, planned to traverse over 120 miles across the Olympic Peninsula, was begun in the 1990s. Over 50 miles of the trail have been completed. Walkers, runners and bicyclists favor this popular route.
This stretch of trail looks empty. That’s only because the groups of bicyclists on the trail here zipped by faster than I could catch them.
The broken bridge
Early this month flood debris damaged the western part of the Railroad Bridge, a popular link in the Olympic Discovery Trail. For a couple of weeks the entire bridge was closed, although the landmark railroad trestle portion of the bridge is intact. Then fencing was constructed at either end of the damaged span to allow viewing and walking on the eastern trestle. Vandals promptly destroyed the fencing, which was quickly replaced. Yesterday I peered through the new fencing (which now has video monitoring) to catch this shot of the broken portion of the bridge.
Here’s the debris field just upstream of the bridge. It’s not hard to see how the bridge was undermined. This portion of the river, also, had been a secondary flow. In the course of the flooding the river channel shifted to flow more vigorously under this western side of the bridge.
The Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, which owns the bridge, plans to redesign, repair and reopen it. As you can see, they have their work cut out for them and there’s no estimate yet on how long this will take. In the meantime, trail users are detoured around this stretch of the Olympic Discovery Trail.
Tomorrow I’ll show you the undamaged portion of the bridge.
Winter transformation
I walk along this trail regularly. Most of the time it seems as colorless as the overcast sky. All it took was some bright daylight the other day to bring it to life.