Miles: 9.2+ miles
Elevation Gain/Highest: 100ft/190ft
Map: Green Trails Ozette No 130S, Olympic NP map
Favorite Eats After Hike: Pacific Pizza, Turnip The Beet, Nourish Sequim, Linda’s Wood Fired Food, Finn River, Sunsets West Co-op, or just Pack A Cooler. You can learn more about these places in my Must Hike Must Eat Eating Out Guide.
Find out current conditions and as always, practice Leave No Trace. Pretty please.
Hike details:
The Ozette Triangle Loop is an iconic day hike or backpacking trip in the northwest corner of the Washington State peninsula that offers coastal forest boardwalk stroll combined with sandy and cobblestone shoreline and the promise of Makah petroglyphs, eroding seastacks and evidence of wildlife like bear, eagle and sea lion. The land is the ancestral home of the Makah tribe and borders the Ozette reservation on the south.
Starting at the Ozette national park campground, one has an option of heading towards either triangle corners of Sand Point or Cape Alava through coastal forest on raised boardwalks. Both areas offer abundant tents sites and privies. There are a few other tent sites sprinkled in the trees along the beach between the two points, all campsites within the triangle must be reserved ahead of time year round. Don’t expect solitude or wilderness on this hike, it is incredibly popular and accessed by a wide variety of people.
My trip report:
9/18/2020, my GAIA
As is par for the course this year, this was not our Plan A for the weekend. But in looking at the state for any patch of green air, the coast was it. Thursday night I was able to find some permits for Ozette, a hike I have yet to do! A lovely ranger had the permits ready to print by 8:30am on Friday and we were off.
We arrived at the trailhead around 3pm after a detour to the Heart ‘O The Hills entrance to buy our ONP pass since I accidentally left my America The Beautiful in my car only to find out it was possible to purchase by envelope here. Learn from our mistake!
We had a permit for Cape Alava the first night and South Sand Point the next. Of course, the weather was forecasted rainy today, getting better into the weekend. Oh well, that’s the PNW. We were loaded up with rain gear and extra layers that we never really ended up using as it only rained overnight the first night and the temperatures stayed mild.
It is true what they say about the boardwalks hiking in and out of the triangle BUT having hiked on the North Coast Trail in Canada this is NOTHING to fret about. You just need to take care with your steps and you will be fine even when wet.
Cape Alava was a grey and moody affair, we had a campsite in the trees just past where they are building a new privy on the south end. That one was out of commission and we never found the one that is supposed to be on the north end so it was cat holes for us. The way some folks had their tents, I’m guessing it was blocked or obscured. Quite a few were camped on the trail or right next to it so you had to walk through them.
I was surprised how many folks hiked in after dark to camp, at least 3 groups. Don’t expect a wilderness experience, we were lucky to be far enough away from the music of at least one group. And the seal symphony from the preserve travels about 2 miles so you may need earplugs. There were lots of friendly deer munching around the sites, super cute. A pair of young bucks were showing off for a young lady on the edge of our camp site.
If walking north, you have to keep your eye out for a small sign tied to a piece of driftwood to know where to stop at the Ozette reservation boundary, it is easy to miss if you are further down on the shore. We weren’t able to walk far enough to find the end of the PNT or the whale bone shack but there’s always another trip. We think winter will be a good time to come back, hopefully fewer people and maybe a good storm to watch.
Having packed in enough water, we didn’t fill up here and started our hike south in the morning around 8:30, close to low tide. There was SO MUCH seaweed, it was an obstacle course through downed trees and over loose cobblestone. A few folks were camped at Wedding Rocks and we had fun exploring the petroglyphs and seastack with the picture window hole. We stayed mostly on the sand which allowed us to find most of the etchings in the rock and kept us from stepping on the billions of small sea creatures amongst the rock. We only passed about 3 groups heading north and despite the prints in the sand, we did not get to see any bear.
We rounded Sand Point around noon, roughly 3.2 miles of hiking. The beach changed from the rocky formations and cobblestone to mostly soft sand here. I can see why it is popular.
In another ¾ mile we reached the junction with the Ericson’s Bay Primitive Trail and the privy and began looking for a spot. There were a few up in the trees but neither of us had camped on the actual beach before so we opted to do that. We set up our tent to claim a spot and then took a stroll further down the beach towards Yellow Banks. The tide was high at this point and we couldn’t go more than a mile so we explored the campsites up on the bluff at the end of South Sand Point, all needed a rope to climb up. There was another privy, too. The sun had come out at this point!
Back at our camp, we decided to also take the Ericson’s Bay trail to Lake Ozette for dinner. This was a wonderful trail, filled with large old growth, huge upturned rootballs and NOT ANOTHER PERSON. The trail was a bit more of an obstacle course than the triangle trails due to haphazard maintenance but fun nonetheless. There were even a few berries. Lake Ozette was tranquil and we even got a rainbow! We filled up water here for the rest of the weekend as the water back at the beach was definitely tannin filled and low. Definitely worth the 4 miles round trip walk.
We got back to the beach by 6:30pm, just enough time to settle in and watch the sunset. The beach was filled with campers by this time but not so many as to feel like a zoo. This is when we discovered we had a dead otter close to us, so there’s that. Gotta love the beach. Oh, and the size of the sand fleas! The whole beach looked like it was dancing in some spots. Cool, in a let’s get in the tent kind of way. Luckily, they seem to like the compact sand more and were not up where our tent was.
The most interesting thing was how few people camping on the beach itself we saw actually use the privy. Only ONE other person ever went up to use it the whole time we were there. And it wasn’t a bad privy.
The next day we hiked out around 8:30am again and did our usual beach garbage pickup with the trash compactor bags we lined our packs with. My husband likes to strap big things to his pack so he always looks like some sort of weirdo but hopefully we inspire at least a few others to pack garbage out when they leave, too. And we lucked out back at the trailhead that a ranger had just arrived and he took all the stuff off our hands.
Don’t forget when driving out that long road out to stop at the tiny Ozette Organics stand and pick up some jelly and jam. We even scored some pickled fiddleheads! Oh, and the Co-op in Clallam Bay is a find: homemade soups she will warm up and you can put a Cat Stevens LP on a real record player.
PS. There was a couple with an off-leash dog on the beach at the junction with Ericson’s Bay Saturday afternoon and it was clear after awhile they had come in on the Ericson’s Trail. I am not exactly clear on what an ONP ranger would say, but I am guessing this is not okay and someone’s idea of a work around.
Directions: Leaving Port Angeles, drive west on Highway 101 for about 4.5 miles, then turn right to continue west on windy SR 112 for 38 miles. Be prepared for your phone to tell you that you are have entered Canada! Turn right again at a “T” onto 112 west towards Neah Bay (curves through Clallam Bay). After 10.5 miles, turn left Hoko Ozette Road / Ozette Lake Road signed for Ozette Campground. Follow this road for 21.2 miles. There is a ranger station and large trailhead with a privy. For camping, you will need both an America The Beautiful pass (or Olympic NP pass) and a backcountry permit. You can purchase the parking pass at the trailhead but the permit is acquired from the NPS. A bear canister is also needed for all food and toiletries storage. You can find out more at the Olympic National Park website.
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