April 17th was Washington Coast clean up day. I signed up months ago to volunteer hard labor http://www.coastsavers.org/washington.html
Because the Coast is such an epic drive for me i chose to drive in a day early, and hang out overnight. Instead of backpacking on Shi Shi, i chose to car camp on Hobuck beach, since i knew i would be hauling a trash load, and i did not want to haul overnight gear and trash.
When i arrived at Hobuck beach the weather was beautiful. In fact it does not get much better on the rainy Olympic coast. Once in the camp ground i set up camp.....
and then explored the area a little bit, and watched the silly antics of some of the beach goers. Great place to take some candid photos.
I even set up for a short time lapse of the sun set. Although it kind of fizzled out, and was not as spectacular as i hoped.
After sunset i retired to the hammock, and watched a movie on my zune. When the move was over i drifted off to sleep the earliest in the i have in years. Slept like a baby. 4am...i woke to intense rain. My Super Fly handled the Olympic rain forest monsoon easily. By 6:30 am i started cooking breakfast under the shelter of the tarp. Still dumping cats and dogs. By 7:30ish, i turned in my volunteer registration form, and drove down to Shi Shi trail head.
Shi Shi beach trail starts out on a nice board walk.
But then deteriorates into ankle deep boot sucking mud. There's little in terms of elevation change, until the end just before the beach. It took less that twenty minutes to gather up 7 trash bags of trash.
This is me wearing the required rain gear, showing my latest backpacking tool
The beach it self is stunning. So is the volume of garbage that has washed up.
One bag o trash went in the backpack, the six others got tied to a piece of drift wood, slung over shoulder. It was a major PITA climbing the bluff out of the beach to the trail with that load.
I did not spend nearly enough time on Shi Shi beach. It's now on my short list, to re visit this year. But next year, i'll be organizing a sub group to help out the coast clean up.
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