February Sun

I went out to visit my folks for a few days, which meant that my dad and I were going to go for a backpack on the ocean. I could not believe it when he told me that the weather was supposed to be good. I have been to the ocean a few times in the winter and each of those times we have had some very interesting weather. This time, though, it was honestly sunny for three full days. We had a modest backpack planned with a trip from Third Beach to Mosquito Creek and back. We did not get to early of a start because we did not want to have to mess with the tides. The trail started out in the trees, which took us down to the ocean. We sat there and had lunch. Then we took off down the beach. It was a very nice spot with lots of stacks coming out of the water to break up the ocean view. After not too long, we hit a headland, which we had to climb up to go around. We spent a little over a mile in the trees before hitting the beach again. We stuck to the beach and passed Strawberry Point and stayed at Toleak Point. We thought about staying up in the trees because the campsites looked meager, but we finally found one to our liking up in the trees. With time to kill, we filled it with games of cribbage and golf. Also we spent some time down at the tide pools enjoying what was left of the low tide. We saw some anemones, but no starfish. Back for some games of cribbage and reading while we waited for Dad's stove to cook dinner. It was having some issues that I felt was due to the cold. Dad was a bit upset because he has had that stove for decades and never had such an issue. The only thing we could think of is that maybe the consistency of the fuel has been changed such that it creates a worse mix for the cold. Mine has seemed to always have those issues, so I was not too surprised. In the morning, we took the day hike out to Mosquito Creek. We had to climb up a very steep headland to get there and it was nearly like climbing a ladder. We made it fine and eventually it took us to Falls Creek with an impressive waterfall. After crossing Falls Creek, we had to cross Goodman Creek and were able to make it past both without getting our feet wet. Eventually we were lead back to the beach where we enjoyed walking near the logs to see if we could find anything interesting that had washed ashore. We crossed Mosquito Creek when getting there to chat with the two people down fishing the surf. The guy was trying to fly fish the surf and it did not seem that he knew what he was doing. We ran into some interesting folks on this trip. The first couple we saw leaving the first day was normal, but the other three groups were interesting. The other two groups were two guys with an ice axe and a single guy who did not seem to actually know where he was and where he was coming from. He struck us as the most odd and we ran into him again near Falls Creek. We were wondering where he would end up and hoping it was nowhere near our campsite. After a couple creek crossings and a climb down the rope ladder, we were back at our campsite. This time we were there for low tide and we got to go out to the tide pools. We saw multitudes of starfish and anemones, but unfortunately I forgot to bring the camera. We played some more games of golf and cribbage. I was doing much better at golf then cribbage on this trip. Dad got the stove to work in the evening, but the next morning it was nearly impossible. We got going a bit earlier in the morning than we were planning, but we figured that we could work with the tide. It actually made it a much more interesting hike on the way out because quite frequently a rogue wave would sneak up on us and we would have to perch ourselves on top of logs. There were places that would be easy to cross on low tide, but we had to plan carefully to cross them during high tide. Dad tended to use his timing and stay on the beach, whereas I went over the headlands more often. We spent a lot of time combing the beach, but the most interesting thing we saw on the beach was on this day when we saw a giant fish head and part of a dead octopus. We were able to make it out a bit after noon, but it was an unbelievable three days strictly because we popped out of the trail with dry socks and dry packs. It is still hard to believe we were that lucky in February.