First Backpacking Expedition – 9/4/24

I’ve mentioned this trip a few times in passing in other posts; I’ve been planning it basically since April, and it’s taken up a majority of my free time and money since then. I got it in my head I wanted to visit a US national park after the last trip to Niagara Falls was so fun, and eventually decided on exploring Olympic National Park. The plan was as follows:

1. Arrive in Seattle, WA in the morning; drive to Forks, WA, explore the town, and spend the night there.
2. Start a backpacking trek up the Hoh River Trail; my parents insisted I bring a friend of mine so I wasn’t alone in the wilderness. Day 1 was to be spent about 11 miles in, at a camp just before the trail winds up into the mountains.
3. Day 2 of the backpacking trek was to be spent at Glacier Meadows, next to Blue Glacier at the end of the trail, 7 miles out from the previous camp and several thousand feet up. Hopefully get some good photos of the glacier.
4. Day 3 and 4 were hike back down and out, respectively.
5. Day 5 was going to be the day we checked out the Makah Reservation, and camped out at Shi-Shi (pronounced Shy-Shy) Beach; this got changed before we left to checking out the reservation and its beaches and then driving back to Seattle.
6. Day 6 was flying back home.

Overall, it was a bit ambitious for a trip, especially considering this was my first real backpacking experience. However, we had months to prepare physically and with equipment, and we did just that; there was a good amount of physical training, going on hikes with heavy weight in my packs (mainly camera equipment for me, but still), and doing research and buying backpacking gear, and testing it out. I figured even if we had to bail, we could make it through the first day or so without too much of an issue.

Given how I’ve been writing so far, you can guess what happened next. Pretty much everything imaginable went at least a little wrong.

Day 1

I didn’t even get my camera out day one; we woke up at 2:30am and made our way to the airport for a 7am flight pretty unceremoniously. My friend has ADHD and very quickly realized how much he hated the 5 hours he was forced to spend sitting on a plane without moving or having much to do, while I was too tall to comfortably find a sleeping position in the cramped plane seats. After we touched down in Seattle, the airport promptly unloaded all of the luggage off of the planes and onto the carousels. All of it, that is, except ours. The backpacks filled with all of the gear we needed to survive on our trip simply didn’t show up, even after waiting an extra 2 hours due to some technical issues that the airport was still sorting out.

We filed a report and told them to contact us if they found our bags, and meandered around Seattle, grabbing lunch and dinner in pretty low spirits but unsure what else to do, given we couldn’t really leave to go for the hike tomorrow without our bags. We wandered into some fairly good African food, and then looked around for something to do and found… not much. We weren’t technically in Seattle, per se; we were in Tukwila, a suburb in the greater Washington metro. And as with most suburbs, there’s precious little to do if you don’t like spending money.

As the sun started to set lower in the sky and we grew more despondent and irritated, I eventually suggested something I really hadn’t wanted to: if we came out here to do this hike, we can always buy new equipment from the local REI. Given the choice was either that or fabricate an entirely new plan and likely spend just as much on hotel rooms as we would have new equipment, we reluctantly opted to do the former. Thankfully, the staff at the REI had run into this issue before, and were extremely helpful in getting ourselves re-outfitted. However, getting re-outfitted to the tune of $1000 after an extremely rough day, knowing we had a three and a half hour drive ahead of us, still stung immensely. Just before we pulled the trigger, however, the airport called us; they’d found our luggage. My friend thankfully bought the hiking boots he was planning to get anyway, as otherwise he would’ve just had sneakers for the trip.

Following a triumphant recovery and dinner, we started the long drive to Forks, in better spirits but extremely tired. I drove the majority of the trip in darkness, following the Olympic Highway across the north of the peninsula. The drive was fairly uneventful, though I grew a little nervous at seeing the many chicanes in the road in front of us in total darkness. I knew there wasn’t any ground on the other side of the guard rail, but wasn’t sure if I was driving next to a cliff or the ocean; not like it particularly mattered which. Turns out it was actually Lake Crescent, which would’ve been just as bad as driving into the ocean if I’d managed it.

Twenty-four hours after we woke up that morning, my friend and I finally arrived at the inn we were staying at and went to bed, barely even changing out of our day clothes before falling asleep.

Day 2

My friend had realized the night before that he’d brought the tent, but had forgotten to bring the actual tent-poles due to packing last minute. Unfortunately, that meant we had to get a whole new tent. We’d tried to do so the night before at Forks Outfitters, but had arrived a bit too late to be able to do it that night, so we had to wait until 8am when the store opened to get it. This was likely our first sign things were going to go poorly.

As an aside, Forks Outfitters is a pretty cool place; it’s the equivalent of an entire strip mall packed into a single store. The sporting goods, camping goods, hardware store, grocery store, clothing store, and bakery are all packed into a single building, with a smaller room being given to a tiny cafe. I can imagine it gets a bit monotonous getting your goods from the same store every single time you need anything, but admittedly I liked the novelty of it, and so did my friend.

Following dinner in the town, we left for the trail at 9:00 or so. The line to get to the trailhead was thankfully short (as planned; we started the hike on a Monday with that in mind), and the drive in was beautiful. I’d never been in a temperate rainforest before; the way the light was bouncing off and wrapping around the trees, moss, and rocks was just fascinating to me, and certainly did a lot to help me feel less anxious about the hike we were going on.

As soon as we parked, however, we had to rearrange our bags; my friend was to carry our tent, and was struggling to get it put in a spot that wasn’t hurting his back. During our test hike the previous week with all of our gear, he was struggling with his bag, even though it wasn’t fully packed; I had assumed it was due to bad weight distribution, but it turns out it was due to the sheer weight of the pack. Weight distribution was also not great due to how small our packs were; I was struggling to re-fit all of my gear in my pack to help him remove some weight from his. 50L bags were simply not enough for all of the things we were carrying, but we managed until I got a quarter of a mile away from the car and realized my camera had the power switch jammed on and was dead, and I’d accidentally left the other battery in the car. Like I said, all bad signs.

A woman near the entrance to the trailhead had told us it was supposed to rain that day. That didn’t worry us, as we had brought rain gear, and had put garbage bags over all of our stuff inside our packs. What did worry me was how often we had to take breaks due to my friend needing to get the weight off of his back, especially this early on. He was complaining about his back hurting, and said he could push through with a break every 10 minutes or so. That had me concerned, as we’d be moving a lot slower with breaks happening so often. My friend is rather thin, for context; he was pushing 130 and working on gaining muscle when I asked him on the trip. He was simply carrying too much weight for him, and the 5 lb. tent strapped to the bottom of the bag because he couldn’t fit it in the bag itself wasn’t helping.

A few hours in, and it started raining, as the woman said it would; we pulled out our raingear and kept trudging on. The trail felt like it was far longer than was stated on the map; even the trail markers seemed off, as the time and distance between campsites seemed to increase further and further. We met plenty of friendly hikers who stopped for a moment to chat, or walked along with us, or even just smiled at us. It was comforting to see people being friendly in such an unfamiliar place, at least. The ground was a lot more uneven than we expected, with the extra weight of our packs making every 100 ft. gain feel much more impactful; coming from Maryland, where most of the state is about as flat as can be, hearing this described as “flat” felt wrong, but I suppose it’s all subjective.

About 6:00pm and things felt very off; we’d lost the trail, and I hadn’t taken detailed enough trail notes to know where we’d gone wrong, nor had we seen any forks. My body was soaked; I’d brought a “weatherproof-breathable” raincoat, which had very quickly lost the weatherproof adjective. Thankfully, the weather was fairly warm, and my own body heat was keeping me at a fine temperature. Somewhat despondent from appearing to get lost and not knowing where to go, we turned back and started backtracking, very aware of how quickly we were losing sunlight. I told my friend to get his headlamp out; it was still in the packaging, without batteries in it, much to my chagrin, and our soaked hands couldn’t open the headlamp to put the batteries in.

Before we got too far along, we met some older gentlemen who were slowly moving up the trail; we asked them for some help, and they noted that there was a river crossing further up the trail, which we had seen but written off, as the trail map I had didn’t note any crossing. Another half-mile or so and we arrived back at the river crossing, walking across a log while soaking wet and in the pouring rain. Needless to say, it wasn’t particularly fun, and my friend and I were in low spirits and physically tired.

A bit more fumbling around along with some other hikers led us to a second river crossing, in which we couldn’t identify where the crossing was supposed to be. Instead of doing the smart thing and taking some time to find the crossing, I forded the river, and dragged my friend along with me, soaking our boots and socks through for the remainder of the day’s hike. Had I taken a look around for a moment or two longer, I would’ve spotted the log crossing next to us. Drying what we could out of our shoes, we bid farewell and gave thanks to the hikers we’d met as we continued on, daylight quickly slipping away.

Thanks to the older gentlemen, we made it to the Olympus Guard Station, where a ranger informed us that it was about 7:30pm, and we had a mile and a half to our campsite. Far earlier in the day, my friend and I had agreed we were going to hike up to our site and bail the next day; when we relayed this to the ranger, she told us that we could spend our 3 days’ reservations at any of the campsites we’d already passed, including at the ranger station, or continue on. Naturally, my friend and I are stubborn and a bit foolhardy, and pressed onto our campsite in the dark. The rain got harder; the weather started to cool down, and I got a bit chilly.

Just as we started to think we weren’t going to make it to the campsite soon, that the distances on the trail were marked wildly incorrectly, we arrived at camp at about 8:30 or 9:00pm. Even the campsites were mostly flooded; we picked a site under a large tree and hoped for the best. We put the batteries in my friend’s headlamp, set up our tent, changed into dry clothes while trying not to track more mud and water into the tent than absolutely necessary, ate trail snacks for dinner, and promptly crawled into our sleeping bags.

The night was damp; I kept my earbuds in until close to midnight, trying to pass out while listening to a podcast before overheating and having my eyes shoot open. My sleeping bag was so close to the soaking wall of the tent that it got damp several times throughout the night, but it kept me warm. After giving up on listening to podcasts, I took my earbuds out and attempted to doze off for a few hours, only to be woken up by the myriad sounds of things moving through the woods repeatedly. Despite my fatigue, my brain wouldn’t let me sleep. My friend fared about the same.

Day 3

We woke up at about 7:30am; the rain had mostly stopped, thankfully, but all of our things were still thoroughly soaked. We had gotten about 8 hours of sleep between the two of us, if that. My friend hadn’t brought a set of shoes for camp, so I let him borrow my flip-flops to walk around camp until I got tired of my feet being cold and dirty. Our boots were still damp all the way through. It was impossible to clean the mud off of everything. I had a blood blister on my toe I had to pop with my knife and hope for the best. We took a bit of time to explore the camp, finding the toilet and making ourselves a camp meal with dehydrated food, which we choked down after using the camp stove to heat up some water to rehydrate it with. The sun hadn’t come out yet, and didn’t look like it would for a few hours; fires weren’t allowed, per park regulations. My hands were too shaky to tie knots to hang our wet clothes on. My friend’s back, spine, and shoulders were in a lot of pain, and painkillers weren’t helping as much as he’d hoped. The positives were:

1. We had a stove that worked.
2. We had a shelter that was more or less dry.
3. We were going to get out of there, that day.

Digging the spare socks out of my bag, I was thankful that the trash bag had worked as a bag liner, at least. Unfortunately, my other hiking clothes were far too damp to use still; the weather had gotten too cold. And so, I prepared to hike in cotton sweatpants, which I knew was a bad idea. For those who aren’t aware, cotton is a horrible material for hiking because it gets very heavy and saps moisture when wet, and it has a tendency to chafe. The day was supposed to be relatively sunny and comfortable; I had to bank on that, as I didn’t have any other spare clothes.

Packing our wet clothes, our wet tent, and our damp everything else into our bag, we went to go get water from the river using the water filter. That, at least, worked perfectly; the river was quiet and comfortable in the morning. I’d have taken pictures, but my camera had gotten so waterlogged the previous day that both the lens and body were fogging up. I knew the camera would be fine, but knowing it wasn’t usable for the day was an annoyance, given how nice the views were in the sun.

We had vowed to leave the trail that day, and despite my friend’s obvious pain and my suggestions we could stop and make another camp for the night, he insisted we pressed on, and made less frequent stops than the previous day. Starting our hike around 10:00am, we quickly realized that the trail may have, in fact, been marked “as the crow flies,” rather than as the trail actually goes. Knowing the way back did very little to make the trip easier. Both trail signs and my map seemed to underestimate distances between two camps. I’m willing to chalk the perceived length down to our packs and exhaustion, but my friend insisted it’s a 16 mile trail from trailhead to Lewis Meadow, trusting the accelerometer app on his phone over the signs and estimates by fellow hikers.

It was almost humorous how long the last section of the trail felt; the 3.9 miles or so suggested between Mt. Tom Creek and the trailhead stretched on for what felt like ages. Even asking several hikers, each of them simply said to us “about a mile and a half more!” We had barely stopped for food and had guzzled down most of our water before trudging out to the trailhead and sitting in the car, recovering for a moment in joy and appreciating the Hi-Chew I had left in the car beforehand. Sore, in pain, and absolutely exhausted, we drove back into Forks. My thighs were so chafed and my feet so sore I could barely drive, but my friend was in enough pain I was worried he might go into shock, so I drove back. I texted my friends and family we were out and we’d bailed. We spent $500 we hadn’t wished to spend on a few more nights at the inn we were staying at, dry clothes, and some pizza; credit card bill be damned, we made it out, and we were celebrating and resting tonight. My camera was so waterlogged the Bluetooth connection to my phone to transfer pictures wasn’t working right; I told myself I’d dry it out tomorrow, took a shower, and fell in bed.

Day 4

We had the room for the next few nights; we slept in until 8:30 or so (11:30 for our body clocks used to east coast US time). Moving was painful; I was walking like a penguin, and my friend wasn’t doing much better. We drove the 500 feet over to Forks Outfitters for some coffee and donuts. It was my first time actually enjoying a coffee, to be quite honest; I can’t tell if they just make it better in Washington or if my tastes are changing, as I used to hate the stuff. I also picked my friend up some fast-release Tylenol to go with the Advil he had already been using; he immediately felt better. The sun was alone in the sky, without a cloud in sight, and it was a comfortable 60-70 degrees Fahrenheit (~15-21 degrees Celsius) or so out. A really lovely day, that we were going to appreciate from the balcony of the inn, as moving was out of the question today.

The rest of the morning and most of the afternoon was split between setting things to dry on the balcony, looking at our phones, and watching satellite TV. I found it very entertaining how little had changed about TV since the last time my family had a satellite TV service; even the UI hadn’t changed in the 4 or 5 years since we’d dropped it. It got me thinking about what that sort of availability does to good media; if a hundred channels are showing something potentially worth watching all at once, are any of them showing anything worth watching?

A few hours later and my camera was dry enough to get photos off of; the fog had cleared up too, just as I’d expected. I wouldn’t put my Fuji X-T4 through all of that if I didn’t know it could handle it, and given how much I’ve dropped it into dirt, dust, and solid asphalt, I knew it’d be just fine. I should still probably get it serviced soon, though.

In the evening, we got a hold of some good food at a Native American-run place: the Longhouse Cafe, in Forks. My friend was left flabbergasted at a flavor of chicken he hadn’t tasted before; he even stopped the waitress to ask how it was prepared, and just sat and stared at it for a few minutes. The woman even gave us my friend’s coffee for free; I know we were interacting with a lot of service people, but everybody just genuinely seemed nice and more calm out there. I suppose living close to DC (or any major city for that matter), people are just more likely to be assholes.

I’m not sure if it’s their choice or they just gave up on trying to teach people otherwise, but it seems like a lot of tribes in Washington state have taken up just being called Indians when referring to the whole indigenous population. I still struggle to use the term Indian, but that might just be to avoid confusion at this point.

After the sun went down, I mentioned to my friend that we should go take night sky photos; he said he’d wanted to get into astrophotography for a while, and kept checking out the window to see if there were stars out. When he started complaining about how long it was taking, I took a look outside; Forks is absolutely lit up with massive LED street lights at night. So we drove 20 minutes or so out, to the banks of Lake Pleasant.

I’ve gotta say, I knew it was going to be dark, but I didn’t expect it to be “see the Milky Way with the naked eye” dark. We pulled into the entrance to a little RV park next to the lake and disturbed everybody trying to sleep as I made a U-turn, not knowing where I was going. I just stood next to the car with my tripod experimenting with different exposures and angles for an hour or so, slowly getting more and more creeped out by some of the noises I heard from the woods nearby until I started to get a chill and decided to go. Very happy with these despite this being my second or third real attempt at night sky photography. I made a vague attempt to teach my friend something, but I don’t think it clicked; I think he needs to get some research done and a camera in his hands.

Day 5

We felt significantly better than the day before. The chafing burns I had on my thighs were dry skin now, soreness turned to stiffness at best, and my friend’s back finally stopped hurting.

Laundry was the first task of the day, and we ran into some of the hikers we’d gotten lost with on the first day of our hike. They’d also bailed on their way to Glacier Meadow, and had come off the trail the day before. It’s a unique feeling to meet someone again like that; even though we’d only met once, there was a sense of shared experience we got from hiking in the rain together that was altogether not something I’d really experience previously. It put a smile on my face.

After laundry and breakfast, it was nearly noon, and we took off for the Makah Reservation; pulling it back to Thursday meant we had the entirety of Friday for travel back to Seattle, rather than trying to cram everything in the same day. Even the roads up to the reservation were absolutely lovely; running directly along cliffsides overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca, out to the Pacific Ocean. That was my first time seeing the Pacific in person, and I couldn’t have asked for a better day. Just like the previous day, it was sunny, with barely a cloud in sight. The water was clear and blue, and my friend and I were both in a good mood as we winded through the Olympic Peninsula.

Neah Bay is a small Makah town on the coast; boats are tied up along piers, and the town has just about everything you could need, including a general store. Any place that’s native-run allows you to buy a Makah Recreation Permit, which you need if you visit any of the wilderness areas on the reserve. It’s only $20 and honestly 100% worth it. If you happen to have another $20, I’d recommend checking out the Makah Cultural & Research Center’s museum: the museum has a massive number of incredibly well-preserved artifacts from Makah people going back over 500 years. There’s no photographing or sketching allowed inside, as some of the artifacts have family crests, designs, and names on them, but it was genuinely worth the admission just to learn more about people from the area. I was also tempted to pick up a blanket or such from the gift shop, but unfortunately it was a bit too much for me at the time after having to pay for the extra food/days at the motel. However, I plan to buy something from their website later.

After grabbing a drink from the general store, we drove the 20 minutes off to Cape Flattery, the most northwestern point in the continental United States. Both the drive to and the hike on the trail are absolutely gorgeous, and I can’t recommend it enough. The hike is only about a half-mile or so, but it is a bit steep, particularly going back up. The views, however, are unmatched.

I caused a slight hold-up on the trail because everybody started photographing the banana slug I spotted on a tree.

Feeling satisfied at having finally gotten some good pictures and not being wet, miserable, and sore, we drove back to Forks and got something to eat before rushing off to try and catch the sunset. The initial plan was to try and get the sunset at Shi-Shi Beach, but given how poorly our last backpacking detour went, we opted for the much more accessible and popular Ruby Beach instead. Initially I thought we might miss it; we had 15 minutes once we got to the parking lot to get down to the beach.

And as usual, my favorite shot is the one I didn’t expect to get; this was from halfway up the tiny trail to the parking lot, while every other person with a camera was running to try and catch the sunset. I took a ton more, and there’s a few below in the full gallery, but I think this is my favorite picture from the trip partially because it was extremely spontaneous; I saw a photo, and I took it. No trying to grab famous landmarks, or anything else. Just adapting to things as they came along.

We stuck around the beach for a bit after sunset, then got concerned wondering if we were supposed to be out there; we got anxious and ran back to the parking lot, only for my friend to get his shoes wet again fording a small river headed into the ocean just before we stopped to take more night sky pictures. If the sunset picture is my favorite from the trip, this one isn’t far behind.

Day 6/7

There’s not much to talk about for Day 6; we checked out around 10:30/11am, and drove back to Seattle. In an effort to try taking less toll roads while also getting to see the northern coastline during the daytime, we ended up getting stuck in traffic and taking an exceedingly long time to get to the motel. We did, however, find this lovely ’69 Camero in Port Angeles at a gas station; it’s a long shot, but if anybody knows who this belongs to, I’d be happy to send them the photos. We went to bed early after arriving in the motel.

The next morning, it was pretty simple getting on our flight, despite it being Labor Day Weekend. The only hang-up was the airport holding our luggage due to a thunderstorm, which admittedly set me a bit more on-edge than I’d like to be. However, despite being weary from travel, I was overall satisfied.

Summary

Would I do this sort of trip again? Sure, with a few years’ more experience with backpacking. I need better rain gear and a bigger bag, but aside from that I felt relatively well-prepared materially. I need to learn how to tie my tarp out properly to avoid lugging around my tent, and maybe some more strength and endurance training. Maybe some smaller backpacking trips are in order, preferably without going up a mountain.

Despite all the planning, things sometimes still go wrong, as was the case here. I tried to plan around some things, but others were simply not possible to plan around. The sour mood we were in the first few days gave way to a pretty good trip by the end, and I’m overall pretty happy with it. Learning how to adapt and not get upset when things don’t go your way is a big part of landscape and wildlife photography, and the same applies to a lot of things in life, trip planning included. I went somewhere cool, I got some really amazing pictures I’m quite happy with, my friend and I made it out relatively unscathed, and we learned some things. Can’t really ask for more than that.

Plans Going Forward

I think I’ve got a few weeks’ break from photography coming up again; this was really the last thing I had planned to add to the website for a while, possibly until the winter or spring. I’m currently waiting on my next paycheck so I can buy some 4×5 sheet film and developer to mess with the new 4×5 camera I got recently, so I’m sure I’ll share scans of those negatives once I figure out what I’m doing.

Oh, yeah; I got a 4×5 camera recently. I’m going to take some time learning how to shoot large format, so expect those eventually. Not sure how active my digital photography will be this fall, though.

Overall, I think I’m in a bit of a recovery/cleanup period; summer tends to be my high time for social interaction and hobbies. I’ve got one major personal thing planned in October, and I need to make my way to a doctor before then. I’ve also got to finish up a video that I’ve finally finished the script for; it’s sitting at 19,000 words, I’ve just got to start planning and filming shots. Very excited to get working on that.

Lastly, I think I’d like to move on from my current job at least somewhat soon. I should be getting paid more for what I’m doing, and despite how comfortable I am here I need to push myself to find another job offer at least, preferably doing something more in line with what I’d like to be doing. The job market for undergrad students, even engineering students, is damn near impossible right now in the US, so I think I need to put a lot of effort into networking and making connections. If anybody has any recommendations or connections they think might help me get into engineering drawing or design work, particularly with robots, feel free to email me at davbolen@protonmail.com.