PNC Days 3-5 – Ocean to Rainforest

These three days took us from the ocean to the rainforest! The PNT is a relatively new national scenic trail, as compared to the PCT or even CDT. We had some gravel road walking, as it is not fully built yet, but the ocean and rainforest were spectacular. We walked through Hoh and Quinault ancestral lands.

Day 3 – PNT Mile 49.6 – Racing high tide

We woke up later than we meant to this morning and didn’t start hiking until 7 am, which was a concern because some of the beaches aren’t passable during high tide. At first it seemed like no big deal because low tide has been getting later and later every day — 8 am today. After a relaxed breakfast and first few miles, Tim looked at the map again and saw a tide restriction we hadn’t noticed 5 miles ahead. If we didn’t move quick, we’d get stuck on the coast for another day! We started walking fast. During a section of overland trail (trail on land rather than on the beach), we met some people camping who said it took them 7 hours to complete the overland trail due to overgrowth, mud, and steep trails with ropes. We kept moving quick but told ourselves another night on the coast would be more than ok if needed. Better safe than sorry! It ended up taking us 1.5 hours, and we made it across the tide restricted beach with plenty of time to spare. We celebrated by going for a COLD swim in the ocean. We left the coast shortly after and spent the rest of the day walking gravel roads towards the Olympic mountains. -R

Day 4 – PNT Mile 63.9 – First town stop

It was a rainy morning as we packed up camp and hit the trail, but fortunately the rain wasn’t very hard. The trail followed a dirt road all day. At around 12 the rain cleared long enough for us to sit down and take a break, but just as we finished making coffee it returned in full force! We put our rain gear back on and continued down the trail. In the afternoon we made it to highway 101 and hitchhiked into Forks to resupply.

Town chores should be easy — showers, laundry, shopping, charging, done. But they’re never easy. A lot of the complications stem from charging. We use phones for maps (and video making), so we can’t leave town without having our phones and power banks fully charged. The laundromat had no power outlets, the showers had outlets but no laundry, and the RV Park had nothing at all. We ended up taking turns doing laundry or showering, and walking across town in between. When we finished that we went on to the grocery store. They didn’t have much hiker food so we got creative with snacks (peanut butter on graham crackers = bars). After resupplying we caught a bus back to where we left the trail, but we never got our power banks fully charged so we decided to spend the night camping at a state park (with outlets) that the PNT passes next to instead of out in the wilderness. Town wasn’t easy, but we accomplished all of our chores! For dinner we had sloppy lentil “sandwiches”. Yum! -T

Day 5 – PNT Mile 82.2 – Ooops

We woke up at the state park this morning with full batteries in our power banks and cell phones. We set our bear canisters on the picnic table in our campsite overnight, so Tim decided to make coffee at the picnic table. He also pulled out our snacks for the day and set them on the picnic table—granola bars and peanuts (all in packaging). Everything was super wet though because of the recent rain, so he brought the coffee back into the tent for drinking . We heard a loud noise as we were peacefully enjoying our coffee—a crow was on the picnic table. It flew away with one of our granola bars!! Tim chased it down to the river, but then it flew to the other side and our granola bar was gone forever! We started hiking later than we meant to because we had power outlets and cell service at the state park. When we finally started walking, Tim looked at the maps. We had food in our packs for 6 days (104 miles at 17 miles per day). He did not see access to our next town where expected on the maps though. We used a nice resupply guide made by the PNT association to determine our town stops and mileages. We hadn’t noticed they assumed we would take an alternate and go into town from that alternate. We aren’t planning to take the alternate though. The town is accessible from the actual trail 60 or 140 miles ahead, not 104 miles ahead. So looks like we’ll have to go into town earlier than expected. Only bummer is that we are carrying extra food!! Then again, the amount of snow in the mountains is still a big question for us, so maybe extra food isn’t a bad thing. It was a morning full of oopses!!

We continued following gravel roads for a bit this morning. Then the trail turned back into single track, and we re-entered Olympic National Park. We walked through a beautiful rainforest for the rest of the day! It is super green with moss everywhere and lots of ferns. It was pretty wet though with lots of stream crossings and boot-sucking mud. Our feet were wet all day. We did not see any other people on the trail today, but we saw lots of wildlife, including a deer swimming across a river and two snakes. -R