By Bret Wirta-The Incidental Explorer

Distance: one mile – Time out: 90 minutes

Degree of Difficulty: 2 – Pet Friendly: No

January 8th 2012.

“It’s not called Hurricane Ridge for nothing,” Olympic National Park Ranger and Naturalist Janis Burger said. So I dressed appropriately and checked the road conditions, but there were no worries; the road was bare, the sun shining and the air brisk – perfect for the guided snowshoe walk that Ranger Janis was leading that afternoon.

Ranger Janis helped us strap on our snowshoes at the Hurricane Ridge Visitors Center. The snowshoes were lightweight pads of aluminum tubing, leather lacing and flexible harnesses that strapped around my hiking boots. In no time our group of twenty-five was headed across the snow. Even the family from Texas, experiencing snow for the very first time, was walking along the snowy trail with the ease of mountain-men of old.

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By Bret Wirta-The Incidental Explorer

Distance: 11 miles – Time out: 6 hours

Degree of Difficulty: 1 – Pet Friendly: No

December 6th 2011.

I was disappointed that the day I chose to walk to the New Dungeness Lighthouse in Sequim was so gray, but in the end, that day ended up being a lucky choice. This was my second try at reaching the lighthouse. Recently I took a late autumn walk along the Dungeness Spit but had to turn back because of storm tides. Above the beach, the spine of the Spit is crisscrossed with piles of drift logs. Too high a tide and you have to climb over slippery logs – dangerous business guaranteed to end your journey. This time my friend Joel and I checked the tide chart – no abnormal high tides, so we set off on the five and a half miles to the lighthouse.

We walked the length of the Dungeness Spit on beach rocks and hard packed sand. The salt air smelled clean. Seagulls cried. We saw waterfowl and a seal swimming in the distance. We met a birder searching for a snowy owl that she said lived on the spit.

It took us a couple of hours to reach The New Dungeness Lighthouse. We left behind dry sand and brown grasses when we passed through the gate. In the center of a lush lawn rose the stark white lighthouse. It loomed into the slate sky. This would be a perfect photo if today was a sunny day, I thought once again. Where was the famous Sequim Blue-Hole? I was still cursing my bad luck with the weather when Marcia Bromley bounded over and introduced herself.

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