NOTE: if you are looking for the sea kayaking trip up the hood canal, click here

9-20-05
Returned from a 7 day trip with my old buddy M.L. this evening. We spent the week in Leavenworth climbing routes we'd not done in 20 years. Both of us maxed out our climbing skills in the first 3 years of climbing back in the late seventies. Speaking at least for myself, I peaked at a moderate level of difficulty (5.10c) and maintained that skill for a decade before beginning the long slide into old age.
   This week in Leavenworth though, we worked hard at regaining some of that lost skill and I was surprised to find myself climbing routes I never thought I'd do again. These are routes that tax the skills of hot twenty year olds, but there we were, the geriatric duo, climbing gracefully up the scary old cracks we used to climb when we were young. It was a good feeling to know that with the right partner, and the time to warm up, I could "be young again"...at least for a few days.
      Many of the routes over there haven't changed one iota since we climbed them 28 years ago. If there has been any change at all it's that the granite is slightly more polished from the three generations of passing climbers. The "Scary Canary" route in particular was a truly stunning lead to repeat after 26 years. I've walked under the route a dozen times on my way to easier climbs, but never thought I'd get that good again.
      Having and raising kids takes so long that you begin to wonder if the good times are over. But, things change, they grow up and begin to spend more and more time flying away from the nest on their own adventures. Pop looks around and says, "Hey, there's no reason to keep the home fires burning anymore...it's time for a road trip!."

     In looking back over the last three weeks of sea kayaking and climbing it's hard to know where to start telling the story of all the fun I've been having. I guess I should start right after I returned from our sea kayaking trip up Hood Canal. I remember sitting out in the yard in a daze, sooo' thankful to be back on safe dry land with nothing to do but relax. No agenda to pursue, no point we had to round before dark to reach a safe harbor.
        After three days of rest at home Clint and I packed up his truck again and drove 6 hours down to central Oregon for five days of rock climbing on the vertical cliffs of Smith Rocks. Clint hadn't been there since he was 11 so he enjoyed seeing the familiar park with more mature eyes.
  We spent a few days warming up on easier climbs like "Easy Reader", "Bunny Face", "The Peanut" and "Cinnamon Slabs" before I began to tackle some of my standard 5.9 hard climbs. While Clint didn't care for the delicate, balancy face climbs so typical of the area, he did like the muscle routes like "5 gallon buckets", "9 gallon buckets" and steep crack routes like "bookworm" and "Old Testament". I tried to get him interested in the tricky face climbs, but something about them rubbed him the wrong way. He got up them ok but complained about the dicey holds and exposure. Perhaps it was just that learning to climb in perfect balance up marginal holds takes longer as compared to simply hauling oneself up a jug fest.
   It was fun camping with him over the 10 days we spent sea kayaking and climbing. We'd never done any overnight father-son only trips before, and it was interesting sharing my backpacking and car camping expertise with him. He has some weird habits left over from his cross country road trip last summer with his buddies. Sleeping in the car is the strangest.
      I was sleeping in the old Eureka family tent, which sleeps four, but every night after we cooked our dinner on the coleman stove Clint would build his little nest in the front seat of his Toyota truck, claiming he slept better there than in our old tent. Perhaps he really did, he seemed as alert as I was in the mornings.
    On Friday, as the weekend crowds began to trickle in we loaded up his truck and headed north. Our only excitement on the drive home was coming over Mt Hood with the gas tank gauge on empty. Who would have thought all the gas stations would close by dinner time? We coasted into Government Camp on fumes, with Clint swearing he would never pass up a gas station again, despite the high priced Oregon gas ($3.13 a gallon).
    After another 3 days at home my old buddy M.L. picked me up at the house and we headed off to Leavenworth for a week of climbing. I've known M.L. since 1976 when my future wife introduced us on a cross country ski trip at Mt. Rainier. The three of us went through the Basic Mountaineering course together in the Tacoma Mountaineers club, then climbed together off and on for the next 8 years. We gradually drifted apart as old friends do: Sue and I pouring our time into our kids while M.L. and his wife took up sailboat racing.
   Nineteen years later I got an email out of the blue, sounded like the same old M.L., ready for another adventure. Our first day climbing over in Leavenworth we headed up Icicle Creek buttress on a route neither one of us had ever done before called the "R & D" route (rated: 5.6). It started with a run out pitch called the "Cocaine Connection" (5.7). I'm chagrined to admit that I put up the "Cocaine Connection" years ago from the ground up, drilling each bolt by hand with a hammer and a rock drill, brushing the moss off each foot and hand hold before moving up the slab.
    I've not led it since the kids were born, and leading the familiar old run out pitch was a trip down memory lane. From the perspective of middle age, it's almost as if there are two Mark Webster's: the young Mark Webster and the old Mark Webster.
   The old Mark Webster thinks he can do what the young Mark Webster used to do, but it turns out they were/are two entirely separate people. We share the same memory, but inhabit different bodies. As I clipped the first bolt on the route, and looked at the next bolt the young Mark had placed 25 feet up the steep, featureless cliff I began to understand what old age is all about.
   Hell!, I thought, if that young twerp could do it, I could do it. I was wearing the same damn shoes (re-soled 1985 Fiery's), there was nothing stopping me but...courage? I began to inch my way up the slippery rock, amazed to find my feet could stick to the steeply angled slab of rock. After 10 feet I found a small crack where I was able to place a tiny piece of imaginary protection, good for moral support at least and continued tip toeing out to the bolt where I was pleased to see, not my 20 year old one quarter inch bolt, but a brand new three eighths inch stainless steel bolt. Someone clearly cares about the route and has done some maintenance, keeping the bolts up to date.
   Each of the bolts was runout, but the landings looked relatively safe, just long sliders. As I climbed from bolt to bolt I began to realize the route was very do-able. There was a bolt before every crux, and while there were long run outs between bolts, the climbing was easy 5.7, and as long as I kept my cool I was fine. The years fell away as I moved gracefully up the rock, enjoying the lovely line I'd created so many years before.
   We continued up the buttress, easily locating the line followed by the "R & D" route, swapping leads at each belay station. The climbing became more airy and exposed with each of the four pitches, but it was never extreme, always staying at about 5.6 or seven at the hardest. We could see why the route is so popular with the mountaineering crowd.
  We had lunch on top, thankful that we'd carried up water and sandwiches in a small daypack. After lunch we looked up the hillside and spotted "Bob's Wall" where we climbed a 5.8 and a 5.9 up lovely cracks in excellent granite. I placed a friend wrong in the 5.9, but after a 40 minute battle M.L. was able to extract it and save us having to walk away from a $60 piece of hardware. We got down to the road just as twilight was setting in and cooked dinner in the dark, sharing a beer as the moon rose though the stars over the windy Icicle Canyon.
      After dinner I walked down to the pay box to deposit our $13 campground fee. I turned off my headlamp on the way back and was surprised to see I didn't need it. The road was entirely lit up by the moon. I stood staring for a while at the moonlit cliffs rising from the deep canyon thinking how fortunate I was to have the time to simply stand there without a care in the world, pondering the meaning of it all. This job of mine leaves a bit to be desired in some respects, but you just can't beat the time off. It's not paid vacation time, still 7 weeks of freedom a year is valuable in and of itself.
    We spent the next couple days climbing at Castle Rock, a 500 foot tall monolith rising above the road five minutes west of Leavenworth on the Steven's Pass Highway. Castle is a hard man area, and by that I mean there are very few pre-drilled protection bolts, even at the belays. You either place your own gear or you don't climb at Castle Rock. The young bucks who climb the bolted routes at Smith Rocks and Exit 38 would be lost at Castle. Placing ones own protection takes several years to learn and many young climbers never bother. We old school traditional climbers enjoy the solitude found on Castle Rock.
    On our first day we climbed up an obscure 5.6 route called "Cat Burglar". It doesn't get done too often and we found ourselves off route a few times, wandering up long steep mossy passages. When we got back to our packs a rain storm swept over the cliff from the South East and we sheltered under an overhang, watching the water stream down the cliff from our perfectly dry cave. After the rain stopped we hiked down to the car and drove to the Peshastin Pinnacles where we found dry rock on the Potholes route.
   The next day we returned to Castle and M.L. led the "Winter Solstice" route (5.6). Not knowing the route, he led the two pitch climb in one long push, leading both cruxes. Both pitches are fairly thin and I admired his fortitude as he carefully waded through all the difficult sections.
    The next day I was feeling confident enough to take on the famous "Scary Canary" route, an aptly named 5.8 that has terrified hundreds of climbers over the years. During the 3 days we spent on Castle, we saw three parties back off the second pitch.
       Fortunately, all the climbing I've been doing this summer had me well prepared for the difficulties and I cruised through the first pitch with only a five minute hang at the exit move under the roof. I was safe enough but simply ran out of arm strength and had to rest before climbing over the lip of Saber ledge.
   I wasn't the first person to pause under the roof as there were about 10 slings tied around a horn under the overhang. It appeared many people are unable to make the exit move out from under the roof to the safety of Saber Ledge and bail at the rap slings under the roof. I didn't rappel but I did carefully clip my rope into all 10 slings for protection. When M.L. followed the pitch he complained most vociferously about my thoroughness: "Jeez, Mark, did ja' really have to clip every one of the damn slings?!! Aaaaah! Crap!! Two or three of them would have been plenty!"
    When he caught his breath up on the ledge I tried to talk him into leading the next pitch with it's scary step across but he said he wasn't feeling up to it. With a sinking feeling I realized I'd have to lead it myself unless we were going to totally chicken out and head for the top via the much easier Saber route (5.3).
     We exchanged gear and I mentally psyched myself up for the lead, remembering all the hard climbing I'd been doing all summer. I placed a questionable number 2 friend to protect the step across, made one more careful check of all the gear and M.L.'s belay. Everything was ready, except my confidence.
     Holding onto the near wall, I stepped out over the 120 feet of air and tentatively placed my toe on the first foot hold of the step across. It felt very secure, and suddenly I knew I could do it. Pushing off with my right foot I committed to the move, reached out and grabbed the jugs and placed both feet on the holds over the roof. I made one step up onto better footholds and motioned for M.L. to take some pictures. He snapped away while I hammed it up, waving at some beginners far below on Logger's Ledge, with the traffic rumbling by another 300 feet below that.
    The next day we did two brand new roadside 5.6 bolted climbs at the base of Icicle buttress. At the rap station I tried to continue up the cliff on the slightly mossy "Love Donut" route (5.9), but there is a possibility of a 20 foot screamer and I chose to lower off, donating one of my 1979 karabiners to the cause. There was a time when I could handle long runouts like that, but not this year. In the afternoon we did one last classic on Castle Rock called "Catapult" (5.8 and a truly lovely hand crack) before driving over Steven's Pass and throwing our bags out next to the river at Index, where the camping is free.
   In the morning we swapped leads on four pitches of high quality granite crack climbing in the free area (5.7) before hitting the highway for home around 4 PM. In looking at the pictures after we got home, we had some good laughs joking about how my buddy M.L. could be the new poster child for the AARP (American Association of Retired People). For a 50 year old guy, he has these huge carpenter's arms and would look great on the cover of their magazine, right next to the ad for Geritol.

Five days on the Hood Canal
9-4-05
In the deepening twilight Clint and I paddled as fast as our exhausted hands could carry us past the long row of million dollar mansions, casting nervous glances back at the sinking sun. When I saw a short stretch of beach without a house, and then picnic tables, I paddled closer, thinking maybe it was a park where we could camp.
     A carefully coiffured silver haired woman walked her elegant poodle along the shore and waved. I waved back and asked her if this was a public park. She said no, it was private. When I told her we were looking for a campground, she became confused, as if never having considered that someone might travel along the heavily developed shoreline in a boat, looking for a place to throw out a sleeping bag...I mean, Lewis and Clark is soooo last century!
     She was kind enough to tell us that the shoreline became less developed after the next point and that we might have some luck there. On rounding the point we saw a long stretch of undeveloped beach, and stared in wonder at a shoreline with no houses. Sadly, we saw the dreaded yellow signposts and beached our kayaks to read the bad news. "No: camping, picnicking, campfires, collecting plants, shellfish, driftwood, littering or hunting. Privately owned, managed by the Nature Conservancy."
     I saw a couple walking down the beach and asked them if the No Camping rules were enforced. They hesitated at first and I could tell they were sizing us up. When I told them we were a father and son team on vacation, and had started four days ago, and 70 miles away at the start of the Hood Canal, they warmed up and admitted that the beach wasn't patrolled, and as long as we kept a low profile (no fires, gone by early morning) we probably wouldn't be hassled.
     Despite these reassurances, Clint wasn't comfortable with breaking the law and we paddled on. We passed a man made harbor in a weird ultra expensive development (Coon Bay) built on what must have been an old sand spit. There was about half a mile of curving shoreline protected by a 20 foot seawall of huge black boulders. The houses were packed in shoulder to shoulder and the seawall curved around into a small protected bay where there were small yachts moored in the blue water.
    As we paddled by the mouth, admiring the lovely manicured lawns running down to the shore, Clint commented that it would be cool to paddle into the little harbor. I replied, with some envy, that I didn't think you could enter the harbor unless your income was over $130,000 and instead of 'No Wake', the sign ought to read: "No poor people allowed".
     Half a mile further up the shore we saw more undeveloped beach and paddled closer in the gloaming. This turned out to be a lovely place called "Foulweather Bluff" and was a long sand spit protecting some quiet marshlands. Half a dozen fishermen plied their lines in the water as we beached our boats and climbed up to read the signs. This time they just read, "Private Tidelands, no shellfish harvesting", but nothing about trespassing or camping.
     Clint thought we should keep going, but I saw a fisherman hiking up the beach toward us.

"Let's ask this guy if we can camp here Clint."

"No dad, don't ask him, that'll just be one more person who knows what we are doing."

"Clint look, it's getting dark, we're out of options and it's quitting time. These guys don't care what we do, they're just interested in the fish," I replied.

"Good Evening!"

"Hey, how's it going? Nice kayaks you have there!"

"Say, we're wondering if anyone ever camps here. We've come a long ways and are looking for a place to sleep."

"Dude, I see people camping here all the time, it's public access, be careful with fires though, the grass is dry. How far have you come?"

"We put in at Belfair, back at the start of the Hood Canal, 4 days ago, I guess that would be about 70 miles."

"No kidding! That's a long ways." He paused after he said that, sizing us up. "Are you guys on some kind of a mission or something?"

"No, no, nothing like that. We're just on vacation. I'm a teacher and this is my summer break. My son is in college, and this is his break too. We have two weeks and we're going as far as we can."

"Wow! That's awesome. What a cool trip: father and son...well, I'm off to do some fishing, have a great time!"

      We hauled our boats up the beach and began setting up camp in the gathering darkness. Half an hour later, as I blew up my Thermarest sleeping pad inside my bivouac sack I heard a shout from the beach. There was my fisherman friend holding up a 20 inch salmon.

"Holy smokes!" I cried, "that's awesome." I dropped my bivy sack and ran down the beach to look at his fish. It was a beautiful salmon, fresh from the sound, and he held it up proudly to the light from my headlamp.

"What did you use to catch it?"

"Oh, it was just one of those 'Buzz Bombs'.

"What's a Buzz Bomb? I used to fish when I was a kid, but I've forgotten how all that stuff works."

"Here it is", he said, opening his pack and pulling out a small white and green lure about the size of a peapod.

"What's a fishing license cost?

"About twenty bucks. I made my money back in two trips. What's salmon cost a pound now: seven, eight bucks? I caught a nine pounder yesterday, and now this one today."

"You want some of this...do you guys have a fry pan?"

"Oh yeah, we have a fry pan. We were planning on cooking rice."

"Oh jeez, fresh salmon and rice, that would be perfect after a long day of paddling," he said, pulling out a long knife and laying the fish in the sand.

"Are you sure you want to give that away? I don't mean to take away your food."

"It's no problem, I come out here to relax. I don't even need this fish, I still have a nine pounder in my refrigerator, and I live just up the hill. How much do you want?" he asked, laying his knife at the half way point. "This tail section is actually my favorite part, but you can have it."

He severed the fish with a quick movement of his razor sharp knife and handed me the tail section, about 10 inches long by 5 inches tall. I thanked him again, shook his hand and he walked off into the darkness along the spit toward the mainland. As I walked up the beach toward Clint, I saw he had been watching the whole thing. I held up the fish for him to see.

"See Clint, if you open up a little and talk to people, you learn things and you might even get stuff."

This is a day by day breakdown of our trip up the Hood Canal:

Day One, Tuesday: 12 miles; 2 PM to 8 PM. We launched from Belfair State Park (good water access, but a couple miles from the true start of the Hood Canal) and paddled to the southern elbow of Hood canal where we found a small grassy area just beyond the high tide line at the mouth of the Tahuya river. In a winter storm at extreme high water it'd be submerged, but at least it wasn't festooned with no trespassing signs and no houses were in sight. Clint cooked half a package of "Little Smokies" for dinner and I heated up the first of what was to be many cans of chili.

Day Two, Wednesday: 17 miles; 11 AM to 7 PM. Tahuya river to about 9 miles south of Seabeck (Holly). Because of our late start, by the time we rounded Musqueti Point and got our first look up the main stretch of the Hood Canal, the afternoon winds had begun and the water changed from glassy calm to a brisk chop and a head wind. A couple hours later at the half mile crossing at Dewatto Bay we were paddling against a 15 knot headwind and white caps on 2 foot swells. It was the biggest water either of us had ever been on and I looked at the crossing nervously.

"Should we stay close to shore?" I asked my son, the more experienced paddler.

"No, it would take much longer, let's go straight across." he replied.

"Stay close, I might need your help in a hurry if I get knocked over."

"You'll be fine dad, just remember to brace with your paddle if a big one hits you."

     I was just beginning to learn what a brace was. It appeared to mean that you paddled normally and waited for a large wave force you off balance. If you felt the boat going over, paddle harder on that side to force it upright. it was something I'd begun doing instinctively, as long as my arms didn't blow out. Inevitably exhaustion took it's toll and I was surprised to find that I could simply give up and rest, letting the boat find it's own natural stability. Because it was so loaded down, it rode low in the water and was quite stable as long as I didn't fight it. It simply rode the waves as a log would, gently bobbing up and down and side to side.
      It got scary when I was paddling forward at speed and the bow would ride up a white capped crest, launch out into air and crash down into the trough of the next wave, burying it's nose 6 inches deep in the dark green side of the wave. The first couple of times this happened I worried that it wouldn't recover, but it rose out of the water every time, streaming buckets of cold green water and plowed doggedly forward. "Oh lord," I thought, remembering the old seaman's prayer, "my boat is so small, and the sea is so large, keep my boat safe in these troubled waters."
     As evening approached the wind and chop died down to more manageable levels and we began scanning the shoreline for a camp spot. Even on this relatively roadless East side of the canal we'd begun noticing a disturbing trend: wherever there was a bank low enough for us to haul up our boats to level dry ground, there was a luxury home and No Trespassing signs. We got close to shore and began looking closely at the high bank, hoping to spot a small shelf where we could camp above the high tide line.
    In a long stretch uninhabited high bank beach, I saw a strange sight: thirty feet above the water, poking out between a couple small fir trees was the square edge of a flat sheet of plywood...apparently a small platform jutting out from the steeply wooded bank. I beached my boat and scrambled up the 8 foot overhanging bank where I saw a welcome sight. It was an old fisherman's camp with room for two tents. They'd brought shovels and carved out one good tent spot, then built up a driftwood "foundation" on which they'd laid the sheet of plywood I'd seen from offshore. Over in the corner of the 15 foot shelf was a very old, slowly rotting wooden packing case, the kind with brass reinforced corners. Clint had climbed up by then and we opened the creaky old lid with reverence, hoping for long lost treasures.
     It was very dirty inside the case due to the hole in the lid, still, we found a full set of stainless steel silverware, half a dozen old enameled coffee cups and a rotting sack of charcoal briquettes Behind the case we saw a small cast iron stove of a very strange design. It was shaped like a 5 gallon can of white gas, but had fold out legs on top and bottom, probably for the pot and the ground, and had a vent hole at the top that would never move again.
      The whole camp spot had the look of a long abandoned and forgotten fishing camp. After our long day of paddling it felt like the Ritz and we moved in, sweeping off the 40 years of leaves and branches to make flat sleeping spots. Because Clint felt uneasy about leaving his kayaks at the high tide line, we emptied them out, then hauled them up the 8 foot bank and stashed them in the woods by the platform.
      We had chili for dinner and built a small protected fire down on the sand in the shelter of a huge old stump where no one could see us. In the cool of evening the north wind had died completely and we ate our dinner looking out on a golden sunset over miles of glassy calm water with the stunning Olympics and the lights of Lillywaup in the distance.

Day Three, Thursday: 20 miles; 9 AM to 8 PM. Holly to Bangor. We'd realized by then that we needed to get up early and paddle before the afternoon winds kicked up. It took us about ninety minutes to go from waking up to launching. There is a surprising amount of work to do in the morning while sea kayaking. Because we didn't like to leave the boats at the high tide line, we carry'd them up by our camps. This can be as little as 60 feet, or as much as 300 yards (Tahuya river). The boats are too heavy to carry more than a few feet fully loaded so we'd empty them out, carrying the dry bags to the campsite before we moved the boats up.
     In the mornings we had to reverse this process. Strike the camp, load the dry bags, carry the boats down to the water, carry the dry bags down to the boats and pack the boats at the waters edge. All this moving boats and gear takes time, and there never seemed to be enough room for all our gear. What were we thinking when we brought the 12 inch fry pan?!! Still, we were giving our legs a workout.
     By five PM on Thursday we were beginning to run low on water and were paddling close to shore, hoping to spot a friendly homeowner who would offer to fill our water bottles. As I paddled along past luxury home after luxury home I spotted some people picnicking on woodsy stretch with an unusual looking sea wall. There was no house, but the sea wall had concrete steps coming down with hand rails. It was unusual enough that I paddled in for a closer look. There were picnic tables too. We'd seen this before but it had turned out to be a private park. I asked one of the beach strollers if they knew where we could get drinking water.

"There's a faucet right up the hill," she said.

"You don't mind if we use it?"

"No, go right ahead, it's a public park."

"Awesome, what's it's name?"

"Scenic Beach State Park, and there's camping off to the left up that hill. Where'd you guys come from?"

"We started at the beginning of the Hood Canal at Belfair three days ago."

"Wow! That's a long way, where at you headed?"

"We have two weeks, we'll go as far as we can, maybe to the San Juan's."

   After watering up we headed around Misery point and paddled South though choppy waves and a stiff current to the little town of Seabeck where we were able to buy a few things at a general store next to a marina. This turned out to be the only resupply store on the trip. If we'd stayed on the West side there are more towns (Hoodsport, Lillywaup, Potlatch) but it seemed an unnecessary crossing, and much more populated with Highway 101 running along the shore.. I picked up a disposable camera (never again) because my 1979 Pentax had finally died (always test a camera before a trip!). We also bought two apples, 4 bananas, a pound of hamburger, batteries for our headlamps, Advil for aching muscles and a couple lighters for the stove.
   Speaking of cameras, I should have just brought my good digital: a Canon G5. I had bought a waterproof Pelican case big enough for my old film SLR (no batteries required), but it turned out that I simply didn't do that much photography and my two batteries for the G5 would have been plenty.
       We paddled out of Seabeck into the main channel again and pondered the crossing to the other side. Though it was just over two miles across, there was a light but steady wind causing a rough one foot chop, and it was 6:30 PM. We needed to get over to the West shore. The next day we would be passing the sub base on the East shore where we couldn't put in for rest breaks. The East shore was all luxury houses for as far as we could see, but the West shore (South end of Toandos Peninsula) looked pretty wild. We decided to go for it but stopped to put on our wetsuits as we weren't certain of the weather and darkness was only 2 hours away.
    The crossing itself was actually fairly routine, just your usual 2 mile crossing in 1 foot chop and wind with the occasional large scary swell. I pestered Clint a little, asking him to stay close for reassurance. I lean on his expertise a lot. He's been paddling regularly for a year and a half, whereas I only had (before the trip) a dozen hours in kayaks.
   When we reached the far side the sun was down and we raced northward along the deserted shore, hoping against hope to find low bank without a house. Finally I noticed a gully coming down to the water that did not appear to have a house. I beached my boat and found a small creek with a rough steep trail heading up the gully. People had camped here before, but probably not white men as there were no beer cans or fire ring, just a lot of oyster shells and some relatively flat spots in the forest by the creek.
   We chose to sleep right above the high tide line in order to avoid the arduous boat carrying ordeal. Clint ate protein bars for dinner and turned down my offer to share another can of chili. As we ate, we watched the light in the nearest luxury home a quarter mile north up the beach. We worried about them spotting our headlamps and coming down to kick us out, but the place turned out to be deserted as the same light was on the next morning. We came to the conclusion that at least half of these million dollar homes that line every available inch of low bank shoreline are simply unused vacation cabins for the super rich. Another toy to be bought and ignored.

Day Four, Friday: 21 miles; 10 AM to 8:30 PM. Bangor to Foulweather Bluff. We got off to a late start the following morning, once again eating energy bars for breakfast. Packing the boats had become a tiresome but unavoidable chore. Clint didn't want to stop for lunch since we'd got such a late start, but by 1:30 I was dragging and pulled in at the next sandy beach. He got interested, real interested as soon as he smelled the hamburger cooking and we both enjoyed chowing down on some real food. We were back on the water in just over an hour and I felt much better.
     As we came up alongside the sub base at Bangor I was amazed at how big it was. I'd seen pictures of the sub hangar there, and I'd read that it had been designed to withstand a near-direct hit from a hydrogen bomb, but seeing it up close made me realize once again just how serious the "cold war" used to be. It's basically a huge concrete bread box big enough to hold a Trident submarine.
   The hangar was empty as we passed, but half an hour later Clint spotted a submarine coming down the channel escorted by 2 medium sized Coast Guard patrol boats and a tug. All three boats were dwarfed by the long menacing black sub. I'm sure glad these guys are on our side. Because the sub was moving along so slowly, and we were across the channel, it took 15 minutes for the wake to hit us but what a wake it was! The swells looked like ocean breakers rolling slowly toward us across the wide channel. It was a gentle ride and a couple splashes for me, but Clint caught a breaking wave over his head and got a soaking.
    Once we'd passed the Bangor restricted area we crossed back over to the East shore in calm waters and paddled North past an increasingly urbanized shoreline. I was surprised when Clint first spotted the Hood Canal bridge. I'd had no idea we had come that far already. At about a mile from the bridge the luxury houses were packed in like sardines and we paddled close, marveling at all the opulence.
    Hearing a shout, I saw an old white haired geezer running down his driveway/boat launch toward us, waving his arm. I heard him say something about a "Coho" and realized he was a Pygmy fan. I turned in toward shore where I could hear him better. He said he'd built a Pygmy Osprey, and asked if ours were Pygmy Coho's (they are). I realized this might be a good chance to stretch my legs and beached my boat at his feet.
    It turned out that he had indeed recently built a Pygmy, and was interested in talking to another owner. I told him we'd built ours over a winter in the evenings but he said his had taken him much longer because he'd been diagnosed with "lung disease". We had an animated conversation about the trials of building a wooden boat with no previous experience. He had an easy manner, and a great smile, and judging by the glamorous beach front home behind him was well set up in life...except for the lung disease.
    He gave us some good advice on our upcoming crossing to Whidbey Island (wait for slack tide and zero wind) and wished us well on our journey, giving me a warm handshake.
    We came up on the Hood Canal bridge quickly and stopped for a quick break below someone's house before going under. On the far side the bay opened wide in three directions and I asked Clint which way we were headed. He had the $20 waterproof map case, I had the $40 deck mounted compass. Clint's map was a waterproof marine chart, but we found it relatively useless as it didn't show campgrounds or roads. He'd had the foresight to bring along a Washington state atlas and we found it much more useful.
    He pointed his paddle at a far point. I looked nervously across at our biggest crossing yet, almost 4 miles at the end of a long day. Still, it was stable weather and we pointed our bows north toward Coon Bay, camping that night at Foulweather Bluff (see opening story above).

Day Five, Saturday: 6 miles; 7 AM to 9:30 AM. Foulweather Bluff to Point No Point Lighthouse. The dawn fishermen woke us up early as they walked up the sand spit past our camp. We were packed and on the water by seven and arrived at the Point No Point Lighthouse in a few hours. We'd planned on making the crossing to Whidbey Island, then up the coast to the San Juan's for our second week, but Clint had decided he'd had enough.
     He doesn't have the extensive experience I have in backpacking and mountaineering. While I've become accustomed to roughing it over the years, I could also relate to his desire to "get a good nights sleep in my own bed". Besides, the blisters on my hands were getting ugly, and he'd said he might want to go rock climbing in the desert...I never turn down a climbing trip.
     We called Sue for a pickup on the cell phone and soon found ourselves on the freeway in a Labor Day traffic jam, far removed from the endless calm blue waters of Puget Sound.

Click here to visit the previous month.

home  |  journal  |  landscapes  |  seascapes  |  structures  |  still lifes  |  climbing
web design  |  art statement  |  pricing  |  easel places  |  site index  |  photos  |  email