We probably ended up camping about halfway in between Norwegian Memorial and Chilean Memorial our second night, so we were able to cut a few miles off the third day's mileage. This trail took us around several points that we could not do during high tide. Our first hurdle was a point that should never be rounded even at low tide, so we had to climb up over a strip of low land bisecting the beach. The low wispy clouds made for some cool photos.
We stopped after this at the next freshwater spring to fill up our water. You would think there would be a lot more fresh water springs but we definitely had to make sure to keep our water full on this leg of the trip because there weren't that many. When we got to our campsite, we did not have fresh water nearby so I'm glad we filled up as much as we did.
We did have to stop again for high tide so we found a tree that we could string up the hammock and relaxed for a bit. Once high tide passed, we rounded the bend and found some otters again! Squee! This time there were several of them and we heard the cracking of shell on rock as they opened up clams to eat as they swam by. They can swim so fast too. We were trying to take pictures of them but they were on a mission doing otter things.
After several more miles of hiking alternating with rock climbing, we finally rounded what felt like a fairly dangerous out-cropping of rocks right on the edge of a cliff going into the ocean and saw our target: Hole-in-the-wall. We also saw a break in the clouds right at this point. Dan got some great photos.
We hiked through the hole and found a nice campsite roughly 2 miles from the end trailhead, so we wouldn't have far to go in the morning. Most of the campsites at Hole-in-the-wall and along the beach to the trailhead are made from tons of driftwood, raised up on elevated parts of the beach. Ours also had a campfire. We didn't have fires for the previous two nights despite having a fire pit available. So we decided to try to start a fire at this one. It started to get warm because the sun was actually out for once, but we still needed to dry some of our gear so a fire would be nice. We didn't have a fire starter, nor a lighter. However, whoever occupied the campsite prior to us did not fully put out their fire as it was still smoldering a bit after we poked it a bit. This worked out for us since we wanted a fire, but shame on them for not checking their fire pit before breaking camp! Anyway, we coaxed the coals back to life and had our own fire that evening.
The evening was very pleasant and we finally got some break in the clouds during the night, the moon was full and blanketed the beach in bright light. The morning after was nice too and took only an hour or so to get to the Rialto Beach trailhead. All told our first backpacking hike was about 22 miles. Not too shabby. We had set up a shuttle ahead of time to pick us up at 1 pm so once we got to the trailhead, we made some coffee, washed up in a real bathroom, and waited for our shuttle.
Shout out to Olympic Hiking Co. for our awesome shuttle and really nice shuttle driver. Definitely get these folks if you hike this route (they are really the only option though).