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Musings From Kalaloch In Olympic National Park

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Kalaloch beach at Olympic National Park/Lee Dalton

The moody beach at Kalaloch in Olympic National Park is perfect for long walks and beachcombing/Lee Dalton

Kalaloch lies along the Pacific Coast in the southwestern corner of Olympic National Park, roughly halfway between the Hoh and Quinault rain forests. It is certainly the most heavily used camp area in the entire park. Reservations are a must if you want to camp there in summer. Even though I went to work online with Recreation.gov about four months before I planned to visit, there were only a few sites available. Fortunately, I was able to latch on to one of them. It was literally just a few feet from Highway 101 and my morning alarm clock became the roaring rumble of passing logging trucks. But that was okay. I was at Kalaloch!

Memories are powerful and mine include a long-ago visit with my family when the kids were young. Some precious times then, and I was anxious to return to see if some were still hiding there.

And there’s the ocean. No matter how many times I stand at the edge of an ocean there’s a feeling that washes over me. It’s hard to describe, but it’s there. Perhaps it’s the vastness. Maybe it’s the endless procession of waves that have traveled countless miles to reach this final edge of their journey. It’s the sound. That constant, eternal, dull roar of water meeting sand and rock.

Whatever it is, it draws me to it. It draws others, too. I met many people in my week at Kalaloch who told me they have come to this place every year for all of their lives. The most sought-after campsites are those that hang on the edge of a 50-foot precipice that drops to the beach. To snag one of those sites, they say, you must be online early in the morning six months to the day before you want to visit.

Although the campground – and the rest of the Kalaloch area as well – is clean and well maintained, it is also showing what can happen when very heavy use meets limited budgets.

It’s most noticeable in the camp’s restrooms where stall doors and panels are made of that hard blue plastic that was used in a lot of park areas back in the 1980s and '90s. You know. The stuff that was supposed to be impervious to vandalism.

Trouble is, someone didn’t tell the vandals.

Although ink washes off pretty easily, a determined vandal with a knife can make some very permanent monuments to his or her stupidity. Painting does no good because it simply enhances the carvings. If dates are accurate here, some of these decorations go back to about 1994.

There are other examples that illustrate the National Park Service maintenance backlog at Kalaloch. Little things, really. Like broken door latches, rusted fixtures, faded signs, paving that needs some attention. Probably not things that a normal person might easily notice, but things that stand out like a canary in a coal mine to one with some experience in park management. Indications that park maintenance crews are trying to improvise with whatever they can find to make it work.

Ranger-led tour at Hoh Rain Forest/Lee Dalton

Interpreters like Ranger Bob Coon in the Quinault Rain Forest in Olympic can be hard to find due to staffing shortages/Lee Dalton

Then there are the limited interpretive offerings posted on bulletin boards. I learned that there are only three interpreters in Kalaloch. The only permanent interpretive position has been vacant and isn’t expected to fill for some time. Saves money for other things. So a long-time seasonal interpreter is filling the void. Carrying extra responsibilities for the same pay. But she loves the place. So she does it.

She does it very well. Study the schedule of interpretive activities and you can see a lot of creativity. You can pick out interpreters’ days off and even when they break for lunch.

Just after I finished setting up my camp, I headed for the gazebo that sits at the edge of a cliff amidst cabins at Kalaloch Lodge for a daily gazebo gathering. I hadn’t been there very long when a very angry woman came raging up shouting accusations at Ranger Rick Stokell. She was ranting that he had nearly run over her children as he’d driven like a madman through the parking lot. Somehow, Ranger Rick managed to remain outwardly calm and polite as she shouted and stomped while, in the background, her flock of varmints raced madly around the parking lot causing other drivers to dodge and slam on brakes.

After she stormed off, Ranger Stokell resumed his program where he’d left off. I decided I’d better go to the visitor center to fill out a witness statement. When I did, I learned that another man who’d seen the tantrum had completed one also. I hope the raging woman wasn’t able to cause any trouble.

As soon as Rick finished his time in the gazebo, Ranger Bethany Stokes showed up to lead a walk down the trail and along the beach. But by now a rather heavy rain had started falling and I was the only one to accept her offer. We walked and talked and she introduced me to a wide variety of wonderful things completely unfamiliar to a boy from places far from the nearest ocean shore.

Wonders held in tidal pools at Olympic National Park/Lee Dalton

One of the fascinating joys of a visit to Olympic's beaches is searching tidal pools for marine life/Lee Dalton

When I got back to my little trailer, everything that hadn’t been covered by my rain jacket was soaked. I turned the furnace on, stripped down, and tried to figure out how I was going to dry the wet stuff in a rainy place. Then I took a wonderful nap with a raindrop lullaby.

My jeans were still damp four days later. Even when it’s not raining at Kalaloch, humidity is still somewhere around 114 percent. Yet this was still the driest summer at Kalaloch and Olympic in all 141 years of weather records.

Rain or fog or mist is almost constant along the shore. But no one seemed to really notice. Of course, almost all the vehicles in the camp bore Washington license plates, and I swear some of the RVs and trailers had moss growing on them. So did some of the people. Thus, even though a light rain fell on and off, the evening program at the amphitheater was still well-attended.

When I got there, Ranger Li Clinton and some visitors were trying to get the cover doors open on the projection screen. Someone had jammed something into the padlock and the key refused to work. A large painting on the screen cover reduced slide pictures to a colorful muddle. Someone suggested a bed sheet and ran back to camp to get one. But the only bed sheet to be found was blue and not white. Then someone had to run to camp for some duct tape. It sort of worked.

Ranger Li started her talk called Something’s Fishy. It was just becoming interesting when the tape let go and the bed sheet fluttered down. More tape. Mist turned to light rain. Rick Stokell showed up off duty in response to a radio call and tried to help. He charged off in search of something to cut the lock. Then Ranger Li’s remote control began having fits. I moved over so I could reach inside the projection booth and push the computer button when she signaled me. Just as the bed sheet slid down yet another time, a maintenance man showed up with a little power saw and cut the lock.

Light rain became a bit heavier. But no one left. Ranger Li kept on bravely waving her remote control in the air whenever the computer button needed to be pushed. She had hidden bags of toy fish under benches throughout the theater and asked kids to find them as she introduced each new fish. Excited kids kept parents interested. I learned things about fish I had never even imagined.

Once again, the talent and dedication of NPS people was on full display as about 60 determined visitors in a drizzling rain enjoyed an absolutely excellent evening program presented by a 12-year seasonal at Kalaloch.

Marine Litter Task Force/Lee Dalton

Volunteers help keep Olympic's beaches clean/Lee Dalton

The sun came out the next morning.

There’s a mid-week hiatus in interpretive programs at Kalaloch as rangers take their days off. So I headed for other places. Down to Quinault Rain Forest a few many miles south where I met seasonal Robert Coon, the lone ranger at Quinault. The law enforcement position there was vacant. Ranger Coon is a former forester with the Washington State Department of Forestry and a professor of forestry. Along with a family from somewhere, Ranger Bob and I walked through an alarmingly dry rainforest. As we talked afterward, he mentioned that Olympic is so large and distances between stations are so great that it seems as if each station, Quinault, Kalaloch, Hoh and others, are separate little parks with their own independent operations.

Every interpretive program along the coast begins with tsunami instructions. Blue and white signs beside highways point out Tsunami Evacuation Routes. We’re told that if the earth shakes, we must grab the kids and make a dash for high ground immediately. If earth shakes far away and a warning is broadcast, we’ll be warned by park staff to head for high ground. Every town along the way has those signs everywhere. It looks like they take it seriously.

I’d noticed a small flyer at the gazebo advertising a beach cleanup at Beach Four. So I headed up there the next morning where I met a lively young seasonal named Annette Archuleta and an American-Chinese Student Conservation Aid supervisor named Dana Wu. Three terrific teenagers from Tacoma joined in. After filling out some government paperwork – liability releases and promises that none of us would die of cardiac problems on the beach – Annette gave us the Tsunami Talk and we headed down the trail to become The Official Marine Litter Task Force.

The teens, Mikela, Peter, and Jeffrey and I had a great time with Dana and Annette teaching us all sorts of fascinating things about the environment we’d entered. As we learned, we wandered back and forth, up and down searching for junk. It wasn’t hard to find. Mostly plastic of all colors, shapes and sizes. Pieces of polystyrene rope from oyster farms along the coast. Bottles. Insulating material. Some things familiar and many not.

Dana told us of a crew of young high school SCA volunteers from some of the coastal native tribes who were on a three-day wilderness trek along the coast north of us. They were collecting and packing out all the trash they could find and carry.

When we’d finished, we had collected 32 pounds. Most of it, however, was light weight so it might have been better to have measured volume instead of weight. How much more lies buried in the sand or hidden behind driftwood logs where we didn’t think to look? And how much more will wash from the sea tomorrow?

Unfortunately, this would probably be the only Official Marine Litter Task Force expedition for 2015. After all, Annette and Dana have other duties to perform. Annette is the lone ranger at Mora, several miles north along the coast. Dana runs the Student Conservation Aid program at a number of tribal high schools.

Another day trip took me to Hoh where I walked the rain forest with Ranger Marcia Phillips. Hoh was crowded that day. The large parking lot was overflowing. Ranger Marcia is not very tall and she was swamped by a nearly unmanageable crowd of about 70 visitors as she led a guided walk along the Hall of Mosses Trail. She did a great job of trying to make sure everyone could see and hear. She mostly succeeded although she herself was usually hidden by a fence of larger bodies.

As we walked through another terribly dry rain forest, she explained the incredibly intricate web of ecological interactions that keep a forest like this alive and thriving. Pioneer species preparing the way as soon as glaciers receded. Generation after successive generation of trees fed by coastal rains until we reach this forest of majestic proportions we were walking through. Great trees growing, dying, decaying, nurturing and feeding still more generations of their descendants.

She pointed out one thing that struck me. I’d been looking at how rapidly forests seem to reclaim logging clear cuts and was thinking to myself that clear cutting might not be so bad as some would have us believe. Then she pointed out that after three or four generations of clear cutting in surrounding forests, new trees were struggling and forest health was diminishing. Probably, she said, because the grand cycles of growth, decay and regrowth have been interrupted and soil is becoming depleted.

This along a trail called Hall of Mosses where rich green moss has turned a sickly gray-green and leaves crunch beneath your feet and thermometers were reading in the 90s. Her talk left me wondering. Wondering how much harm we humans may be doing to this little part of our world – and how much we are damaging the rest of this tiny planet we call home. And wondering why some people simply refuse to even care.

Back at Kalaloch, I faced some tough choices. Attend evening programs – including another by Ranger Li Clinton – or watch what promised to be a couple of spectacular sunsets? Sunsets won.

Then came one of those unforgettably wonderful experiences that tuck themselves away in your memory forever. I got to see the ocean glowing in the dark. Tiny plankton. Billions of them. Bioluminescent plankton.

I’d heard of them but had never actually seen it. You can see it only on a dark, moonless night when there are no artificial lights around. I walked about midnight to the edge of the bluff and stood watching as my eyes adjusted. Suddenly, I started to see it. Here and there a breaking wave became a dimly bright glow of bluish white light. Flashing back and forth, one wave crest and then another. Dancing glows like long rows of swirling fireflies. I walked down onto the sand and stood at water’s edge for an hour or more watching in dazzled fascination.

Not bright. Sometimes many waves lit at once. Other times only darkness. Sometimes the water at my feet lit up. Dim but bright at the same time. I began to think I was just imagining what I thought I was seeing. Impossible to photograph. You have to store it in your memory. No way to share it with others except to take them to see it themselves.

A miracle.

But only one of so many miracles our little spinning sphere of air and water and rock holds for us to share and, hopefully, treasure and protect. It was a perfect end to a wonderful week in a place called Kalaloch.

A sublime Pacific sunset at Kalaloch in Olympic National Park/Lee Dalton

A sublime ending to another day at Kalaloch/Lee Dalton

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Comments

Thank you Lee for bringing back some great memories.  I've only been to Olympic once, but my time there was amazing.  The best part were the sunsets at Kalaloch.  The only National Park Campground that rivals Kalaloch for me is Jenny Lake.


Ah - Kalaloch.  Stayed there one night.  The site was spacious but in the forested area.  Most of the sites with views of the Pacific were RV-only.  Saw one heck of a sunset on the beach with a backdrop of driftwood logs.

The only issues were that a neighbor left out a cooler.  Nothing really got into it, but there were crows all around making a lot of noise seeing if they could get into it.  Also - I saw someone using a saw to remove some brush, which I could have sworn wasn't allowed.


Good to see you back in the mix, y_p_w, it's been too long.


The Ranger that lead tge beach cleanup is named Danielle, not anette.


Uh Oh!  I just went back and checked my notes and found I had written Annette.  I thought I even took that off her nametag.  But I have a bad feeling that you know her better than I do.

So if I messed up, I apologize, Danielle.  Regardless of whether you are Annette or Danielle, you're one terrific park ranger!


Hi Lee,

Thank you so much for bringing back some wonderful memories.  I was actually doing a search to see if I could find any pictures of the carved panels that covered the projection screen.  The last time I visited Kalaloch in 1995 to show my then-husband, the interpretive area was overgrown with weeds.  I was hoping it would be used again someday, and looks like it is.

I grew up in Issaquah back when it was nothing but woods.  From the time I was a baby in 1968 until my parent's separation in 1975, we stayed a minimum of 4 times a year - the 5 of us in our Monitor trailer (I was the baby), and always stayed in spot F1.  Whether it would be spring break, Memorial day break or a long weekend, my brother and I would be paged at the elementary school where my father would be waiting in the bus area with trailer in tow.

We had clam guns and would razor clam, where my mom would make chowder with salt pork and heavy cream.  Dad would also fish for perch, and even gerry-rigged a makeshift crab trap from a simple forked branch with heavy wire across the "Y".  My sister and mother would look for agates and would find dozens of stones.  My brother and I would climb among the stacks of huge drift logs.

I'm so glad you mentioned the bioluminescent plankton:  my sister and I were walking at night along the beach and every step we took glowed and then faded.  At 6 years old I was completely freaked out, but at the same time found it fascinating.  I never knew what it was until now.

I remember we brought our aunt from Montana there one year, and on the way back from an evening slideshow at the interpretive area, we ran into a group of bats, and one of the poor dears got stuck in my aunt's massive curly up-do.  That little guy was a helluva lot more scared than my aunt.

My early years were anything but peaceful and happy.  The only happiness of that time was our trips to Kalaloch where I got to experience an abundance of natural beauty and gifts of nature, such as fish, salmon berries.  My family taught me so much about the flora and fauna around me, and I wouldn't have traded those experiences for anything else - especially things like trips to Disneyland.

Thank you again for capturing my childhood second-home so beautifully.

K.

 


Gee, K, thank you so much for this note.  Kalaloch is a very special place, and like all our parks, deserves the most careful care we can give it.  Like so many of our parks, Olympic and Kalaloch are suffering.

I hope you're able to get back there from time to time. 


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