Episode 1

"It's all downhill from here" (1978)

Lat 47º57’15” N, Lon 124º39’35” W

“Well, there’s one thing about it,” I said to George, “it’s all downhill from here, at least.” We were standing at the edge of a formidable bluff overlooking the beach, about three miles north of Rialto Beach on Washington’s Pacific coast. At the time, we were both chainmen on a Department of Natural Resources cadastral survey crew. With the boss and the crew chief both away on vacation, George and I were here to extend a yet to be finished control traverse. But right now, it was time for us to get back to the rig and get a start on the weekend. George had plans: That afternoon he’d set out on a backpacking trip up the Hoh River.

Our hike that day had started at the closed Dickey River Bridge on Mora Road. Just our luck, the Feds had deemed the bridge unsafe for vehicles just before our project had started—adding nearly two miles to our daily walks up and down the beach. Still, I figured I had stumbled into the Greatest Job Ever: being paid to hike (and survey) in the woods every day. Leaving the pavement at the Rialto Beach parking area, we headed north, up the beach, past Hole-in-the-Wall. Our journey took us over sand and cobble beaches, past interesting tide pools in the bedrock and beneath sheer rock cliffs. Finally, we reached the sandy beach where we’d head inland. That autumn, the-Powers-that-Be had pulled our per-diem, and had mandated that we drop 4-10’s for 5-8’s. This meant driving to and from the job—and—from and to Port Angeles each day. Consequently, it was lunch time when we reached our beach.

We thought we were pretty tough. We’d guffawed at the signs the Park Service had posted back at the parking lot warning to hikers to steer clear of the “impenetrable wall of vegetation” that lay behind the beach. Too tough for hikers maybe, but not for surveyors like us! Not only would we penetrate that wall, we’d conquer the bluff beyond it. During my tenure as a chainman, I was nevertheless amazed at how often, on the Olympic Peninsula at least, swamps could be found on the side of a hill. After slogging through several of these, as well as dense thickets of salal, salmonberry and devil’s club, we clawed our way to the top of the bluff. Here the ground opened into a park like setting: an old-growth Hemlock stand with nothing but waist-high clumps of sword fern to wade through. Just ideal: no brush to cut! We laid out several traverse courses and then, thanks to the no-per-diem Edict, it was time to head back to the truck.

I had, of course, doomed us to dismal failure. One should never, ever tempt Fate. This is because Fate is always waiting to teach us something we have not yet properly learned. We reached the beach and headed south, only to find that our route past a sheer cliff was now under six feet of seawater. It seemed that the downhill portion of our journey had just ended. Moreover, while I had taken time to scoff at the warning signs, I had failed to consult the tide tables. Lesson learned. Pulling out the quad sheet, we saw that our only option was to backtrack, scale the bluff (again), get to the end of our newly brushed out line, and then head south, parallel with the water. This would take us inland, allowing us to bypass the cliff and regain the beach near Hole-in-the-Wall.

Fate was not yet done with us, however. Upon reaching our line, we headed south and had good going for a time. But soon the good going was gone, and we began to appreciate the meaning of “impenetrable” as applied to “vegetation.” Salal, it seems, does very well along the Pacific Coast. I had not until that moment considered that salal should maybe be classified as a type of small tree. Here it was growing 8 to 10 feet tall and so dense that a snake would have had a hard time getting through. This slowed our progress considerably. We were looking forward to the easy going we’d find once we made it to the beach again.

It has been my experience that Fate seldom fights fair: it will kick you when you are down, if it can. We’d made it to the beach all right, or what was left of it. Evidently a storm was brewing off the coast, because now spectacular waves were crashing into and flooding all evidence of the exposed beach. We had to pick our path home by walking on the driftwood logs that lay mostly parallel with the water line. This is not as easy as it sounds. Finally, we reached the parking lot, and were home free, except for George, that is. He still had a long hike up the Hoh River to look forward to. Good thing surveyors are so tough.