Late September I left Pam at Vancouver airport, hard, I was ready to head home myself but had another three weeks to go. Drove to the US border unsure whether they'd let me back in again under the visa waiver system ... it seems to depend on the whim of the Dept of Homeland Security officer. My best Brit accent cut no ice; the guy was curt, aggressive even, gave me the third degree whilst another rummaged through stuff in the back of the car. No doubt they had my misdemeanour in Yellowstone on record, and, under pressure, I was ready to come clean about everything ... including the time I was done for hitching on the M6 and my part in the great Turkish delight heist. However, I was then referred for 'secondary processing' which involved joining the queue inside, looking suspiciously racially biased to me, and another round of interrogation, this time conducted more civilly. My plans were pretty solid and I had a return flight booked from Vancouver, so, after confiscating two tomatoes and an apple, I was free to go. I assume they wanted the tomatoes for the forthcoming pro-Trump rally in the mid-term elections.
I'd decided to head for the North Cascades National Park, not too far from the border and a potential place to 'regroup'. I drove south and then east through the Skagit Valley, farms and orchards, stunning fall colours on the maple trees, great webs of nest moth caterpillars amongst the alder canopies, and sun sparkling on the river. Popped into the visitor centre at the Park to pick up a map and get some recommendations for day hikes ... it promised to be a fine autumn weekend. Many of the Park facilities were already closed down, including most of the campsites, but there were free spaces I was told at the Colonial Creek site.
Next day I headed for the Maple Pass trail, recommended both by Todd at the visitor centre, who seemingly told everyone about it, and by folk I got talking to at the campsite. The car park was already pretty full and it turned out to be a busy day. To us Brits, Americans have the reputation for being loud, only to be matched perhaps by the Chinese, and there were groups of both on the trail that day. I started off just behind a group of mid-aged American women, and we passed each other a few times as either they or I stopped to take it all in or get a photo. They chattered non-stop, and I overheard one memorable line about how meditative walking could be. Thankfully I started to outpace them and they veered off along a lower trail. It was like that all day; it's a stereotype but the blokes were quieter, more focused on the ascent, although on the way down I passed a group of noisy youths who'd even taken their boombox along.
I knew nothing about the Cascades but have to say they are gloriously spectacular, jagged granitic peaks like a child's drawing, with distant views of higher snow capped tops including the volcanic Mt Baker. However it was the fall colours that had brought out the crowd, with orange-scarlet rowans, and the dusty pink through reds and russets of bilberry and huckleberry carpets, spread across the open slopes up to and above the treeline. Here the sub-alpine larch was now in autumnal gold. It's hard to imagine a more lovely mountain setting on a day of perfect stillness.
That night was rough thanks to a partying group of young folk on the campsite next to me; I regretted that I'd left the best spot when I’d pitched my tent, realising it would be a good group or family location, and although I had words and they turned the music down, I ended up sleeping in the car. Next day I moved on, didn't want a second night of that, and over a coffee in the small town of Marblemount I leafed through a copy of the local Concrete Herald, 'the voice of the Upper Skagit Valley'. There was a comprehensive pullout section on local disaster preparedness which covered floods, storms, landslides, wildfires, earthquakes, dam failure and volcanoes. Whoa, this is a dangerous place! ... and they'd not even mentioned the Columbia nuclear station, just a stone's throw away as the radiation flies.
Outside, oblivious to impending doom, the town had been taken over by a classic/vintage car rally, turned out to be the 19th annual Swindlers Poker Run. Around 130 motors had gathered, dating from 1920/30's Fords, some hot-rodded, to the wonderful 1950/60's Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, Chevies and Pontiacs, with acres of chrome, tail fins, leather and maple interiors, the lot. They were immaculately restored, some lowriders with metallic paint jobs, one guy telling me he'd been working on his for ten years, was almost finished. My favourite was a low slung curvaceous Buick Dynaflow in a less ostentatious matt green; unfortunate model name, sounds like some kind of sewer clearing device, and right enough it took off like the proverbial off a shovel.
That afternoon I drove up the Cascade River and hiked through the forest of silver fir to the pass at the watershed, good timing as other walkers were on their way down by then. Another great vista of montane colourscapes backed by snowy peaks, but a fierce wind at the top this time. I've got to say I'm impressed by the restroom provision on these trails, this one like many, strapped down by ground anchors; they're very basic but save that gross 'tripping over toilet paper' experience. On the scree slopes below the summit the pika were busy scurrying around, cute furry critturs, stopping to whistle to each other and harvest more hay for their winter store. Given climate change they're regarded as the coal mine canary of the alpine zone, not hibernating but dependent on deep snow cover to survive amongst the rocks beneath.
You can't miss Concrete, it's marked by a huge silo at the highway, made of guess what, with the town's name painted in great letters. I called in as I headed back west on the Sunday morning, to refuel at the very nice 5b's bakery and cafe, and to catch up on wifi. I'd been singing along to the song by the Spooky Men in the car (see 'spooky men concrete' on youtube) and was going to ask the waitress if she'd heard of them but then realised it might sound a bit weird. Don't think there's a working cement plant anymore but the town didn't look like it had fallen on hard times; I had a walk around chuckling to myself at the variously named establishments, including the Concrete Laundromat, the Concrete Dental, sounds better than mercury to me, and the Concrete Assembly of God, no messing with them. No Concrete Shoes though.
I was heading now for the Olympic peninsula, and pleased to be avoiding the major urban sprawl around Seattle, set off for Deception Pass and the ferry across the Puget Sound. I camped that night at the Fort Ebey State Park on a headland above the entrance to the Sound, where there were huge gun batteries installed during WW2 to face a possible Japanese invasion. Had stew and a good campfire that evening, and then drove on to wait for the ferry at Coupeville, watching two harriers quarter the salt marsh in the early morning. The ferry cost just $11, a short ride right enough, but pretty good value for a car; it's an essential link for the locals I guess, transport providers in Britain please take note, and this is not meant to be a country that favours public services.
Port Townsend on the north east tip of the Olympic peninsula is billed as 'one of the coolest small towns in America', with a historic centre and waterfront dating from the late Victorian era, now mostly restored and lively with urban chic ... any town that has three independent bookshops and two cinemas must be doing well. The Palace Hotel was welcoming visitors to take a self-guided tour, and inside it was like stepping back an age, with fine period detail in ornate fixtures and furnishings, a colourful stained glass rooflight, original bedrooms with cast bedsteads, and bathrooms with iron tubs.
I'd heard about the town from ex Findhorner Andrew Tree, who lived here for some years, and he'd put me in touch with the well-named Erik Kingfisher who works for the Jefferson Land Trust. I met up with Erik after work and we went to sample one of the local beers. The Trust has protected around 16000 acres mostly through conservation easements, where they buy out certain rights on private land in perpetuity. As a community driven organisation they focus on local culture as well as nature, and think laterally about conservation; that afternoon he'd been in a meeting about a possible green burial ground and he was considering whether to get involved with social housing provision. This led onto a discussion about the place of people in nature, I told him about hearing in Banff how they regard the historic indigenous landscape as 'natural' and Erik was in no doubt that to do otherwise would be a form of racism. See saveland.org.
Moving on I camped by the shore one night and watched two otters swimming past whilst I ate my porridge in the cold morning; a bald eagle flew overhead, swooping to snatch a smaller bird from the beach, sending the gulls squawking into the air. By this time, early October, it was getting wetter, windier, cooler at times, and the forecast was pretty mixed, with alternate days of wet and drier conditions. The Olympic National Park has three broad habitats to explore ... the coast with wild beaches and seastacks, the mountains, of which Mt Olympus is blue-glacier clad at 7800ft, and the famed temperate rainforest valleys which claim some of the largest trees in the Pacific northwest.
Next day, wet, I explored along the Sol Duc River; like those on Vancouver Island, these forests get 4-5m of rain each year and capture an additional 1m through mist condensation on the leaves. There were some stupendous Douglas fir there, up to 600 years old, and smaller hemlock often growing on rotting nurse logs. I watched Coho salmon attempt to jump the falls, the recent rain making this more of a challenge. At the nearby fish hatchery a young guy was vacuum cleaning the tanks; they raise three species here for release to boost local populations. He told me that opinion is moving against offshore fish farming, especially since a recent escape of Atlantic salmon, supposedly bred sterile but always a risk that some are fertile and will interbreed. I was wet, and having passed through many hot spring locations on the trip I finally succumbed and had a pleasant soak in a slightly sulphurous 90 degree pool at the 1920's Sol Duc Resort in the dark early evening, the forest all around, a few stars now peeping through.
I chose the right day to head up to Hurricane Ridge, the most easily accessible mountain area in the Park; there's a road that takes you up to 5200ft to the visitor centre and panoramic views around treeline level. The day was gorgeous, deep blue sky above lower cloud in the valleys, with views of the snowy glacier peaks in the distance. The Ridge trail itself was closed for maintenance, so I headed off along the Klahhane Ridge; again it was busy, everyone had checked the forecast, and I could hear the traffic on the road up, so when the trail split, an unknown destination uphill to the north, I took that. Another day, another geology, this turned out to be the route to climb Mt Angeles, with cliffs of basalt and breccia rubble above. On my own, peace at last, I wound my way up to a craggy spot for lunch and surveyed the scene. There were chunks of cindery reddish rock lying around looking like they'd been spewed from some great furnace.
Along with the now familiar sub-alpine fir and juniper there was a new tree for me, the yellow cedar; it can be a substantial and long-lived tree lower down, and grows to a great age, but here was growing in scrubby fashion right up onto the highest scree slopes. I was visited by a cute Olympic chipmunk, one of several endemic mammals here due to much of the peninsula being left isolated above the ice during the last glaciation, and three bold grey jays, all probably used to hikers' crumbs. Heading up to explore further, I found myself climbing towards the top on knobbly basalt rocks, with a hazy view north across the strait to Vancouver Island; the scrambling got a little sketchy though, and with cloud cover coming in I didn't make the summit. On the way back, rejoining the main trail, there were still a few folk heading out; one guy in shorts walking barefoot, with the cloud now around, how do these people ever survive?
Camped for a second night at the lovely Crescent Lake and next day drove on further south and west to Forks. Formerly this claimed to be the logging capital of the world; nowadays it's apparently known as the setting for the Twilight saga, and I popped into the museum to take a few photos for Rowan my daughter, who'd been an avid ... props and costumes from the films and a scary animatronic child, Renesmee.
That evening it was back to the Pacific, at La Push, wild and windy, a few surfers out, the beach backed by the largest washed-up timbers yet, some of them great trees with rootplates half buried yet still taller than me, wood that could have been
lying there for centuries. The town is within the Quileute Reservation, thankfully not as developed as it might have been elsewhere, just a small rv park, some cabins to rent, a store and a very nice restaurant where I ate some tasty salmon. The forested sea-stacks just offshore include A-Ka-Lat, at 160 ft above the waves, where traditionally the chiefs were 'buried', with their canoes, in the treetops. Check out the tales of Bayak, the raven trickster, at quileutenation.org. The following day a little out of town I hiked down to Third Beach, through the wet forest, clambered over the washed-up timbers to run around on another great stretch of sand.
The road south took me through Jamestown, where, in contrast to the Quileute's apparent lack of affluence, I passed the smart new waterside admin office and nearby '7 Cedars' casino of the S'klallam tribe, complete with totem poles.
I'd had a fantasy before the trip of camping by some big river in the wilds and realised that the Hoh Valley rainforest was my last opportunity to do it. I headed off with my tent late afternoon, awesome trees again, Sitka and hemlock, and
fantastic large-leaved maple 'ents', their canopies festooned with mosses. I stopped to watch a great bull elk destroying a young tree with its antlers; the so called Roosevelt elk are the largest in the country and certainly put the Highland red deer to shame. A young woman stopped to watch, returning from her hike, she told me she'd seen two snakes, possibly rattlers. Further on there were three excited young Chinese guys who'd just encountered a bear. So, I thought, an opportunity to face my fears; although there are no grizzlies here, Washington does have an estimated 2500 cougar. After a while I veered off the trail and found a peaceful spot to camp beside the river, got a fire going with some difficulty, this is a rainforest after all, cooked rice and beans and sat there cowboy style with the stars emerging. Didn't get the harmonica out. No scary beasts, just elk browsing quite close but we'd eyed each other earlier and now kept our respective distance. Rain started in the night and was heavy by morning ... I packed up early and hiked back to the car, pleased that I'd spent at least one night on my own in the backcountry.
Further south is the Quinault Valley, the 'valley of the giants', where several champion trees grow; I had to see those. The world's largest Sitka spruce is a short walk off the road, and commands a lot of respect, an awesome tree of 52ft girth and 200ft height, great buttressing roots spread around; I'll never cut another Sitka down without thinking of it. Then I climbed uphill to visit a grove of giant Douglas, the world's largest somewhere nearby off the trail. And next I headed over to the south facing slope of the valley to pay my respects to the world's largest red cedar; however, I discovered that the leaflet was out of date and, stopping to enquire, found that the tree had blown down a couple of years previously. The guy I asked worked for the State forest service, which he thought did a good job of delivering timber revenue into the local economy, no exports allowed, all wood processed in Washington, providing jobs and a lot of funding for education and other services. He was less complimentary about the National Forest service, who have extensive landholdings all around the Park, saying they'd sold out to the environmentalists and had stopped felling. And he was positively angered by the Park authorities, who, he said, were buying up properties when they came onto the market, demolishing houses and extending their idea of 'wilderness'.
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