During Washington’s shelter in place, I applied to be a Wild Keeper for Keep Nature Wild. What started as a hiking blog for locals in Arizona turned into a clothing/accessories company that promotes giving back to the outdoor areas we frequent. They established The Wild Keepers in 2016 to build communities by picking up trash outside. Could be on trail. Could be on your neighborhood street. Volunteers have picked up thousands of pounds of trash around the globe. Rock a few cool shirts and stickers, pick up a few bags of trash, hike. It seemed like a match made in heaven for me.
About a week after applying, I got an email saying I had been selected! I will admit, I am no good at interacting on our Slack account. This girl is WAY too busy most days. But I can commit to their Impact Days, picking up trash and posting content on social media at least once a month. For June, I decided to hit up Staircase Rapids in the Olympia National Park. You know I am all about Leave No Trace! If you wanna check them out, click here. They have some pretty cool clothing items and a ridiculous amount of stickers.
To get to Staircase Rapids, we drove north on Hwy 101 towards Hoodsport. We turned left onto Hwy 119, hugging Lake Cushman along a gravel road that suddenly was paved when we reached the National Park boundary. Thankfully, I still had my parks pass. I swear I will only buy those for the rest of my life. $80 for a year for all National Parks and Monuments in the US. To put it into perspective, a week pass in Olympia National Park is $30. I can easily go there 5 times in a year. No brainer.
The road to the park was busy with various people all looking to get outside and enjoy the lake – either rock jumping, swimming, or having cookouts. I had no real interest in the lake cause I know that water was fucking cold! I jumped off some of the rocks there many years back. They have cables bolted into these massive formations, possibly 30 feet tall. Once you get to the top the only way down is to jump. As we got to the main parking lot, it was packed. We found a spot on the side of the secondary lot. At this point, I debated going any further. The drive was just over an hour, nothing substantial. But I also didn’t want to go home. We walked to the bathroom area at the trailhead. There were fewer people present than cars so we decided to stick with our plan. Plus we had masks and hand sanitizer as always.
Staircase Rapids Loop is an easy 2.1 miles through tangled forests with views of the Skokomish River. There is also an impressive suspension bridge over the river. The trail starts on a paved bridge that takes you over the river, offering some great photo ops and even benches to sit down. From there you hit the forest and are surrounded by mossy boulders, tall evergreens, and hundreds of ferns. Stone once again led the group with me close behind.
At some point in the trail about a mile before the suspension bridge, you can choose to continue the loop or venture onto other trails. The junction for Flapjack Lake is 4 miles, First Divide (the valley between Mount Gladys and Mount Cruiser) is an extra 13.1 miles. Next time I go back to the rapids without small fry, I will check those areas out. The rapids bridge was definitely a high light. We stayed on the bridge admiring the view while staying socially distant.
We crossed the bridge and continued on the opposite side of the river. We had been keeping our eyes peeled for any signs of trash while staying on the trail. I am sure if I had ventured off trail, I would have found more trash from bottles to cigarette butts to diapers. As we walked past a family, I noticed that they had taken one of the smaller children off in the woods to go potty. And apparently they were not the only ones that had used that spot. They reported there were wipes back in the woods too.
One thing I have learned while hiking with children is that you have to plan, plan, plan. I always find the public bathroom as soon as I arrive. On a 2 mile hike, Stone can definitely manage as long as he has a bathroom break before and after. And if you are hiking and know your little one will need to take a potty break, refer to Leave No Trace for the proper procedures for human waste. The basic rule is if you pack it in, you pack it out. So diapers, wipes, food wrappers, bottles and even the foil that seals the tops of bottles needs to be taken with you to be thrown away properly. In terms of human waste, every environment is different. Maybe one day I will write a post all about poop. Gonna have to come to terms with it eventually….
We slowed down as we made our way back, noticing the different textures and sounds and colors of the forest. I found a small water fall surrounded by ferns. Stone checked out the various moss that was growing on fallen trees. Kaylin noticed how peaceful and untouched groups of trees looked, and how many rings the tree trunks had. She and Stone counted some of them but lost track quickly.
The trail went up hill briefly then opened up to a cliff side overlooking the Skokomish River. This area has no guard rail and drops pretty much straight down. It’s also easy to slip in the crumbly dirt and gravel. I crouched down and held onto Stone as we inched closer to the edge. We stopped about one foot from the drop off to look down below at the bend in the river. It’s not as grand as the bend in Arizona but it is much greener and quite relaxing.
We got back to the car and decided to walk the parking lot to find anymore trash. There were napkins and the occasional cigarette butt. I had a feeling that park staff had already been cleaning round the clock because the large dumpster style garbage containers were overflowing. When the parks had closed due to COVID 19, several people still went out camping and hiking without open facilities. This resulted in a lot of garbage everywhere and a rash of “surface poop” from no bathroom access and no shovel. Back to the damn poop again…. When my roommate took a trip on the coastal side of Olympic National Park to the Hoh Rainforest, she said there was poop everywhere. We figured it wasn’t from animals.
We loaded up into the car after having a few snacks and packing up our trash. A group of people also got back to their truck, beers in hand, screaming “white claws matter”. And here we go….
In my previous blog post I had stated that I wanted to provide more insight to the people on the trails and the surrounding towns. Those folks getting in their truck pretty much sums up the general feeling of Lake Cushman. When we started the trail I saw only three people of color (two Black, one Southeast Asian). They were all part of one group. The scores of families flooding out of cars and taking over viewpoints and rocky shoreline were white. There was still enough space on the trail to feel distant and secure within our group however, and sadly we didn’t see another person of color for the entirety of our hike. As we moved away from the trail and on to Hoodsport, the scenery changed and the people remained the same. We traded forests for small shops and ice cream stands. Every bathroom was closed but had provided portable toilets.
We stopped at Hoodsport Coffee Co in the middle of town. Town isn’t very big and basically consists of a couple eateries, some gift shops, a gas station, a hardware store, and a grocery store. Most people were practicing social distancing and were wearing masks even with the heat. Also here, I saw only two other people of color. Everyone pretty much kept to themselves and avoided each other, which is both simultaneously comforting and sad right now. As we sat down for Stone to eat his strawberry ice cream (which was delicious so kudos to the Coffee Co), someone threw a firework out of their truck as they drove by where some people were sitting down to eat. It was startling, and I blamed it on people just generally being stupid before the 4th of July. It tends to happen here.
I have struggled lately with wanting to go further up the Olympic Peninsula due to what happened to a travelling multiracial family in Forks. They were harassed and then followed by a group of white locals to their camping spot. Then those locals proceeded to cut down trees with chainsaws to block the family in. You can read this article from KOMO news for more info. There is also some speculation that one of the individuals involved is the son of the Mayor of Forks. Investigative journalists have also stated that he has been following any “liberal” outsiders, posting their license plates on social media, and outright threatening people. This doesn’t look good for the Forks community. Not that they had much to offer before other than Twilight. The peninsula has long been known for racist and bigoted beliefs that spillover into language and now, shitty actions.
Based on the National Park Service, 3,245,806 people visited the Olympic National Park in 2019. The NPS puts out Visitor Use Reports each year for the parks. In these reports, they survey a group of people asking for demographics as well as their general use of the park. The 2020 report does not list demographics by race. Not sure if that is intentional as the park system has been trying to appeal to “minorities” since 2013. I don’t think it’s working too well.
Most recent data from 2015 shows of the 1,213 interviewed, 1,211 answered questions on their race, and the results are troubling. Note: The results total to 106.3% because some identified themselves as more that one Race/Ethnicity.
Out of the surveyed group:
• 95.4% said they were White
• 3% said they were American Indian/Alaskan Native
• 3.2% said they were Asian
• 2.7% identified themselves of Hispanic or Latino
• 1.5% identified themselves as Hawaiin/Pacific Islander
• 0.5% said they were Black/African America
To put those numbers into comparison with the State of Washington census during the same year:
• 77.3% said they were White
• 1.5% said they were American Indian/Alaskan Native
• 7.2% said they were Asian
• 8.8% identified themselves of Hispanic or Latino
• 0.6% identified themselves as Hawaiin/Pacific Islander
• 3.6% said they were Black/African America
I will see if I can track down data from 2019/2020 to compare. But I strongly feel it will look eerily similar. It’s been 5 years and we still haven’t done much better….
