In light of the shockingly high temperatures forecast for the weekend, kayaking the inland waters was out. Even staying indoors was a miserable prospect. There was only one hope: an escape to the coast.
I’d long been eyeballing an unnamed, sandy island in the middle of the spits and shoals in the mouth of Willapa Bay. With temperatures on the coast forecast for thirty degrees (17°C) cooler than Seattle, there would never be a better time to head out there.
Route map: To get an early start Saturday morning, I car-camped Friday night at Bruceport County Park. All campsites were reserved, but by arriving late in the evening, I was able to nab a campsite from a no-show.
The sand spits at the Willapa Bay bar are fickle. Every couple of years, the waves rearrange all the various shoals and islands. Old islands submerge, new islands accrete, formerly broad channels fill in, and new channels are carved. The mouth of the bay is a never-ending mess of rip currents and breakers, hard at work tearing down old islands and casting up new ones.
In 1981, DNR designated Gunpowder Island, then one of the largest in the bar, a natural area preserve. At the time, Gunpowder Island was an important overnight roost for brown pelicans. Almost immediately following the designation, however, the breakers attacked. Gunpowder Island began to migrate and sink. No two sources could ever give consistent coordinates for the island as the relentless waves pushed it to and fro.
By 1999, Gunpowder had turned from an island to a shoal. Now its sand emerged from the water only at low tide. The pelicans fled. By 2001, WDFW, which manages a commercial razor clam fishery on the Willapa Spits, reported that no islands anywhere in the bar remained dry at mean high tide. Then, in 2004 and 2005, a new island began to emerge north of the former Gunpowder Island. Year by year, it grew. Today, there is quite a substantial island out on the spits, and that’s where I was headed.
All this history was relevant to the question of whether I could camp. The rule on DNR lands is that camping is allowed unless posted otherwise. Newly accreted islands among the Willapa Spits will, in most cases, belong to DNR, since DNR owns the submerged lands north of Leadbetter Point. I was concerned DNR might apply the old natural area preserve designation of Gunpowder Island to the newly accreted island present today, even though the new island is several hundred yards north of the old Gunpowder Island. Fortunately, however, DNR never published a management plan or posted usage rules for Gunpowder Island, so even if today’s island did inherit Gunpowder’s natural area preserve status, camping is still not prohibited.
DNR’s only site-specific regulations for the Willapa Spits are the right-of-entry permits it issues to commercial razor clam harvesters. These permits prohibit the harvesters from setting foot on the upland portion of the spits, but the requirement to obtain a permit applies only against commercial harvesters. Non-harvesters like me do not need a permit and are not bound by the permits’ prohibition against upland traverse.
This kind of research may seem tedious, but it’s how I come up with unusual kayaking trips. My reward for poring over obscure governmental reports is the chance to spend time alone in some of the most remote, beautiful places in Washington.
Shellfish beds, Palix River. Most of the tidelands in eastern Willapa Bay are privately owned, the individual parcels jealously delineated by hemlock stakes.
Caspian terns, Ellen Sands. During low tide, vast stretches of the bay turn to mudflats, much to the delight of terns and gulls.
Common loons, Willapa Bay. These individuals must be non-breeders, to still be on the coast in June.
Leadbetter Point forms the western arm of Willapa Bay. The point’s long, sandy beaches are ideal breeding habitat for snowy plovers. These small, pale shorebirds only nest among undisturbed dunes, an ecosystem that has not fared well during the last century. Snowy plovers have been so decimated by industrial society’s endless development of the shorelines WDFW estimates fewer than eighty adults remain in all Washington.
My plan to search the Leadbetter Point shoreline for plovers came to naught. At low tide, emerging shoals formed a barrier that kept me hundreds of yards offshore of the dunes, too far to see such tiny birds even through binoculars. However, I did meet a lone coyote who was taking advantage of the minus tide to forage for clams far out into the bay. Whenever it spotted a likely-looking clam show, it would dig furiously with its forepaws until it came up clutching a delicious razor clam.
From Leadbetter Point, it was only a short distance north to the Willapa Spits. At low tide, it was difficult to distinguish the shoals from the true islands. There were low, sandy spits in every direction. Farther out to sea, a vast, confused field of breakers announced the presence of yet more shoals. Outdated topo maps were useless on the ever-changing bar; even satellite imagery would only have been good for a few months at most.
Eventually, I spotted a conglomeration of some three hundred harbor seals hauled out on a beach. I reasoned seals would likely prefer proper islands to shoals, so I headed in their direction, careful to land around the corner where I wouldn’t stampede the animals.
The island proved to be perfect, even better than I’d hoped. At low tide, miles of sandy tidelands stretched far out into the sea, perfect for hiking. In the uplands, short, soft dunes formed a cushion for comfortable walking and sleeping. Though there were signs of wave action all the way across the top of the island, there was also a substantial tide line that assured me I’d probably have a dry night—although I still set an alarm for two o’clock in the morning, just to make sure the breakers weren’t coming too close!
Kayaking coast of Leadbetter Point. The Willapa Bay bar is subject to currents up to six knots, so it’s important to travel with the tides.
Coyote, Leadbetter Point. My presence scarcely disturbed its clam-digging at all.
Harbor seals, Willapa Spits. I searched the crowd for elephant seals but did not find any.
Alex on Willapa Spits. Landing is best from the east or south. Long lines of breakers obstruct passage from the north or west.
Having arrived well before noon, the rest of the day was mine to enjoy this desert island. As forecast, the coast was much cooler than the inland, especially with a five-knot sea breeze. To provide shade on the barren island, I set up my rainfly without a tent.
On a minus tide, it was possible to walk for miles seaward across the sand spit. Out here, the breakers surrounding the island came crashing down all around me, illustrating the story of how the original Gunpowder Island was moved, obliterated, and reformed. I kept a close eye on my escape route, lest the rising tide cut me off from the uplands and leave me at the mercy of the ocean.
Though there were other shoals and spits surrounding me, I was miles from anything else that could be called land. Through binoculars, it was just possible to identify cars driving on the mainland to the north, but they were tiny specks to the naked eye. Thinking no one would notice in such a remote location, I took off my clothes to enjoy the warm sun and balmy breeze...just in time for the Coast Guard to swoop low overhead in a Jayhawk helicopter! The coasties must have been quite surprised to observe a full moon in broad daylight.
Low tide, Willapa Spits. The sand was full of clams of every description: razor, butter, soft-shell, Manila, cockle.
View toward Cape Shoalwater. Owing to the extensive shoaling in the Willapa Bay bar, no deep-draft vessels have entered the bay since 1976.
View from tent. During the hottest part of the day, the only shade was the one I brought.
Alex on beach, Willapa Spits. I spent most of my time near camp to avoid frightening the seals.
Sunset, Willapa Spits. Regrettably, there was no green flash this evening.
In the morning, a rare surprise awaited me on the beach: an adult snowy plover and with it, a juvenile! The parent and the young one scurried around the dunes, plucking insects too small to be seen by the human eye. I was filled with hope to see a healthy new generation foraging alongside the old. With so few snowy plovers left, each individual bird is precious.
At the lowest point of the morning minus tide, I walked out to the very edge of the spit, perhaps two miles from my campsite. I was now standing in the very spot where earlier, the mess of breakers had been churning. The wave action had packed the sand into rows of firm ridges. In a few years, this spit, too, will be gone, shifted or obliterated by waves, perhaps to be cast up somewhere new elsewhere in the bar.
At the very tip of the spit, so far out to sea the upland sands behind me were lost to view amid the haze, a flock of brown pelicans had returned to preen for a moment by the water’s edge.
In the afternoon, I paddled back to the marina at Bay Center. The deeper inland I went, the hotter it became. Just three miles inland from the coast, it was already sweltering. An offshore breeze, straight from the state’s boiling interior, blew into my face like the breath of hell. It was so hot the Douglas-firs were “sweating,” spraying the air with aromatic terpenes so thickly I could smell the forest from the water.
Snowy plover, Willapa Spits. The bands on its feet help researchers identify this individual.
Snowy plover tracks. The pattern of ridges in the sand is likely caused by wind, not waves, but the presence of driftwood in the uplands is evidence that waves do overtop Willapa Spits.
Brown pelicans, Willapa Spits. On the way back across Willapa Bay, a pair of American white pelicans flew over my kayak, making for a coveted two-pelican day.
Kayaking back to Bay Center. The flooding current pushed me so much farther south than I intended that I nearly missed the channel through the shellfish beds.
A desert island is more than just a refuge from the heat. It’s a place to observe how birds and animals behave when people are not around. It’s also a place for me to behave how I do when people are not around, a rare opportunity on our crowded coast.
—Alex Sidles