On Mount Angeles

It was a long time ago but I remember the day quite clearly. I was working for the Tacoma Metro Parks outdoor program and on this blustery winter day, I had driven a group of people from Tacoma to Hurricane Ridge. Some of them were going snowshoeing, others skiing. My job was simply to drive them there and back. My time, while each of them was off chasing his unique recreational muse, was my own. I had no responsibilities, but I did have a plan.

I had brought gear with me to do some climbing. More specifically, I was planning to climb Mount Angeles. It was a short hitchhike from the Hurricane Ridge visitor's center to the Victor Pass trailhead. I had six hours before I was supposed to begin the drive back to T-town and the whole thing, I figured, probably wouldn't take more than three.

Looking back on it now, the whole effort was doomed to fail, I just couldn't see it at the time. The route was choked with heavy snow. Visibility was poor, and any views that could help me adjust my bearings or give me an insight into the best climbing line were completely obscured. Snow fell steadily throughout. I would have been much more comfortable had I stayed at Hurricane Ridge.

It is hard to know just where I turned around, but I have a feeling it was well below the summit. Hell, it was well short of the pass. I was still below treeline. I had climbed up some nameless gully, scrambling over icy holds and friable rock, until I had arrived at a 20-foot wall of stone that blocked any further progress. I looked half-heartedly for a route up the face, but with the dropping temperature and my turn-around time approaching, I didn't look long.

I slid and scurried down the way I had come, hitched another ride back to Hurricane Ridge, and got the van opened up just as the first group returned. (It's funny... I don't remember anything about the people I had brought. I doubt they would remember me either.)

It was about that time, as we were getting ready to go, that the snow stopped falling, the skies turned blue and the rocky summit of Mount Angeles and the other peaks nearby stood out clearly against the azure background.

I haven't tried it since then, but I bet the conditions are really good right now. I have Thursday off.

Hood's Channel

Hood Canal extends for about 65 miles from its entrance near Foulweather Bluff to its terminus in the muddy tidelands of Lynch Cove. Over this great length, its width seldom exceeds 1.5 miles. Shaped a little bit like a giant letter "L," Hood Canal defines the eastern side of the Olympic peninsula.

Technically, it is a fjord, not a canal.

It got its name from Captain Vancouver back in 1792. Named for Admiral Lord Samuel Hood, he had originally marked it on his charts as both "Hood's Canal" and "Hood's Channel," but over time the easiest of all possible versions won out (as it often will).

The US Navy maintains a base in Bangor, on the Kitsap peninsula side of Hood Canal, that is home to nuclear submarines, which you would think might be the area's biggest environmental challenge. It's not.

In September of 2006, researchers documented the discovery of the largest dead zone in the canal's history. Low oxygen levels meant that, over a four-mile stretch of water in the heart of the canal, there was no normal sea life in evidence. The same conditions have resulted in massive fish kills in the central and southern sections of the canal. Low oxygen levels are caused by a variety of sources, but with small towns and waterfront homes dominating much of the southern shores, nutrient build-up from fertilizers and the effluent from leaky septic systems are responsible for the lion's share of the problem.

Even in the areas that still hold on to some semblance of what a normal sea bottom should look like, there are lower-than-normal levels of dissolved oxygen. Because of its long and slender shape, water exchange is slow between the canal and the fast currents of Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. This near-stagnant condition makes the canal even more susceptible to the environmental pressures that come with a rise in development.

All of this is not to say that Hood Canal is not a raging beauty. She most certainly is. The Olympic peaks arrange themselves in tightly closed ranks, dominating the western skyline. The Kitsap peninsula rolls softly away to the east, a vast carpet of variegated greens and blues, especially in the north. On clear summer evenings, where a soft southern breeze is barely enough to riffle the glassy water, there are not many other places on Earth that could be more delightful to the senses.

To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever traveled the length of Hood Canal on a paddleboard.

Tapestry

I was reading an article the other day that described the pattern of watersheds in the Olympic peninsula as a "mandala of rivers." Author Tim McNulty goes on to say that this tapestry "embodies the long and lovely story of the evolution of life," and that it "Maintains its rich biological diversity in a wilderness system that remains a jewel of untrammeled life on a worn and threatened planet."

I'd say that's about right.

Sunday morning coming down

I'm sitting in the kitchen of our house in Fort Worden, one of the fine old haunted mansions on Officer's Row. It's still an hour or two until sunrise, but I can see that we are in line for another gray day. There are years when the weather has been perfect for a symposium, when the skies are deep blue and the air is warm. This is not one of those years. It's Sunday, the last day of this, the 25th Annual West Coast Symposium, and there is talk that it will likely be the last.

In 1984, there was a group of sea paddlers that put together the idea of a kayaker's gathering, a year-end party. September, while it is often a fair-weather month in the Pacific Northwest, is also unmistakeably autumn. It is typically regarded as the end of boating season, not yet winter, but getting time to batten down the hatches. If manufacturers and retailers, kayak guides and adventurers, could all get together every fall to share the stories and ideas of another year on the water, the notion was that it would be a benefit for all involved.

And it was. For a long time.

My first West Coast Sea Kayak Symposium was back in 1996. It was in its 13th year at this point, but it was all new to me, and I was overwhelmed. The variety of people that were there, the hundreds of boats that waited on the beach and the stories of kayak travel and adventure that hung in the warm fall air were enough to make a person giddy. Recreational kayaks had not yet been invented.

I came back each year, for most of the next decade. I taught classes and gave slide presentations along the way, and sold a lot of books. And it was still a good time, but over the years, the event started to change. There were more rules, less house parties. More fees, but less opportunities for vendors to sell boats and gear, (and a corresponding drop in opportunities for buyers to get the boat that would be best for them). The parties, loud and boisterous, as well as the freewheeling sales and trading were important parts of the symposium from the very beginning. Certain elements have remained the same, but the whole thing has seemed to get more serious all the time.

It's a tired bunch of paddlers up here anymore. The old bulls, many of them, are still around, but most of them are well past fighting trim, and the rest of us have gotten older too. The paddling crowd has gentrified and broadened, as have their behinds. The people are older, and there hasn't been much infusion of new blood. Boats have gone from wonderful ocean-going craft to plastic toys. To be fair, this is a generalization; there are still some true paddling heroes and a few honest boats out there. It's just that there aren't as many.

There is still some time to go before first light. In a few hours I will hear the hissing and popping of the bacon blending with the patter of the rain. That heady mix of frying bacon and eggs, the aroma of coffee brewing and the shuffling of sleepy feet moving toward the kitchen: these all speak "Sunday morning" to me. I think of all the symposium Sunday mornings that I have come through and I wonder where it's going to go from here. I'm going to try to remember to take a few photos today. It may be that it's time for this event to change, to move to Seattle or split into a few different, smaller and local, symposia. In the long run, bold moves might prove to be the best to breathe some life into sea kayaking, to maintain it as a community.

Still, I will miss these Sunday mornings.

Stillness

"A quiet hour is worth more to you than anything you can do in it."

Willa Cather

According to Jochen Sacht of the University of Michegan's Kresge Hearing Research Institute, our ears, "are not made for a noisy world. They're made for spoken communication, which occurs at a level far below what we experience in the streets or at the airport." He goes on to say that our high-volume modern world is moving too quickly and more importantly, at a decibel level that is literally damaging our ears, deafening our planet. "The fact that we are losing our hearing is no more surprising than if we were losing our sight by looking at the sun."

There is a place in the Hoh Rain Forest, approximately three miles from the Visitor's Center, that has been set aside precisely because it is so quiet. The fact is, One Square Inch of Silence is the quietest spot in the country. In the deep, dark evergreenery of the ancient forest, a small red-colored stone placed on top of a moss-covered log marks the precise location of the setting. The place was chosen because of its distance from roads and established air routes, and a significant amount of audio testing has been done here, confirming its rare position in our crazy, loud world.

It turns out that, in a world facing short supplies of oil, food and medical care, one of our most critical deficiencies is in simple peace and quiet. Who knew?

Third weekend in September

In a few days, just over a week, I'll be heading to the West Coast Sea Kayak Symposium. The symposium is the largest gathering of sea kayak manufacturers, vendors and participants in the world, and takes place at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend. Numbers vary from year to year, and I think the official attendance figures are usually inflated, but it's still a big to-do, and I'm looking forward to it. Sort of. I have books to sell, and I'm scheduled for two slide presentations on Friday. The rest of the time will be spent in a mad mix of retail, assisting consumers with boat selections on the beach, and doing demos of models that we may or may not select for our store stock next year.

I haven't gone to the symposium much in the last few years. I used to look forward to it in a much more visceral way, with more excitement and a sense that what I would experience at the event would make me a better kayaker. I don't get that any more, probably because I'm older now and it's harder to get excited about doing the same things over and over. I'm also of the opinion that the rise in recreational sea kayaks, those chubby, tubby tupperware paddleboats favored by large rear ends and greedy manufacturers has not been good for the sport. Dumbed it down, really. What used to be a celebration of elegant craft that could take a paddler anywhere in the world has become, in large part, an emphasis on the idea that anyone can kayak, even those who don't want to learn about the sport, who have no interest in travel and posess little awareness of nature.

It's a situation that has been openly encouraged by the boat manufacturers. Give the people something simple, something that will match their abilities rather than improve them. Make it all about safety, and erase any sense of adventure that may remain. Make it cheap, simple and artless, just like they are.

All right. Enough with the sour grapes. Apparently, I'm in something of a funk this morning.

There will be presentations that I would like to see, stories of intensity and excitement on the high seas, tales and images of discovery and wonder. I hope I can sift through the swill and find a nugget or two along the way. I am also hopeful that I will find some new boats that will capture that excitement, render it in fiberglass, and make sense, according to my understanding of what sea kayaking should be about.

When it's all been said, I think the real reason for my ambivalence is tied somehow to my own memories of symposiums past. The WCSKS used to be more celebratory, more of an event. I got the feeling that there was so much out there, so much exploration yet to be done, and the symposium was the catalyst for me planning my own adventures. When I started going to the Port Townsend symposium, I was one of the younger crowd. There were old-timers there, paddling role models, accomplished kayakers with amazing stories to tell. Now, after almost 20 years of attending, I expect I will find that I am still one of the younger people there.

That does not bode well for the future of the sport.

First crossing

Crossing open water is always a challenge. Regardless of whether you're in a kayak or a cabin cruiser, there is something about the stretch of blue between one shore and another that gives every waterman pause. Maybe it's the fetch, the reality of being exposed to changing elements. Maybe it's the lack of ready landmarks to help gauge progress. Maybe it's all mental, which is not to say that it's crazy to think about. Even if you're the type that doesn't mind the deep-water places, a crossing can still make you think twice.

I took the paddleboard from Owen Beach to Vashon Island and back yesterday. The crossing of the west end of Commencement Bay was done fairly close to slack current and the water was relatively flat. There were some spots where the current was still moving and there were boat wakes at a few points, but it was mostly smooth and easy. I didn't have a watch, but I'm guessing that each leg took about 30 minutes.

So, as far as I know, I have made the first SUP crossing of Commencement Bay. Surely not on a par with climbing Everest, negotiating the Northwest Passage or rounding the Horn, but a first, nonetheless.

When I got back to shore at Owen Beach, a woman came up to me and told me how she and her husband had been watching me since I started on the other side, how they were trying to figure out what I was doing. "You looked like Jesus," she said. I don't know about that, but I do enjoy walking on water.

Slip-sliding away

I'm not sure if it because it's September, and it is perhaps a bit early in the year, but I have been thinking about the coming snow. More specifically, I've been thinking of skiing.

This is odd, for a number of reasons. Mainly it's odd because I don't ski. It's been years since I strapped on a pair of boards and quite honestly, I haven't missed the out-of-control rocket rides and spectacular collisions that I used to have on a fairly regular basis. I was never very good, and there was a period of time where I really tried.

I had a girlfriend who was an excellent skier, and I followed her on the slopes for a season or two like some underachieving puppy. She offered encouragement and she really tried to help me develop some sort of technique, but I never could get past the low-intermediate, spastic ice missile stage of skiing evolution. I won't say it was because of my schussing shortcomings that we eventually went our different ways, but it certainly didn't help.

I have no reason to think that now, decades later, I'll be any better. But it's time to try again; I can just feel it. The idea of backcountry travel on skis is something that intrigues me. Maybe to combine a winter climb with a ski approach... maybe that is in my future. Maybe it should be.

All I know for now is that I will be giving it another shot this coming season. Maybe it's not too late to learn something.