Olympic Coast Backpacking - La Push to Toleak Point

We took a backpacking trip out to the Olympic National Park Coast this weekend. This was Janel's first backpacking trip and she did a great job :). Allen and Chrissy joined us, along with my co-worker Rob, his wife Beth, and two of their friends, Jeff and Colleen. We drove up and stayed in Aberdeen Friday night (home town of Kurt Cobain -- quite a dump), hiked out Saturday to Toleak Point, staying there Sunday, and hiked back and drove home Monday.


You can see select photos by srolling down or looking at them in my photo gallery here. Or you can see all the photos here. Read on for some details about the hike.


We started at the Third Beach trail head near La Push, WA and headed South (toward Oil City). This is called the "Central Coast Trail". There are a couple of campsites and beaches along the way, and it is a great hike. It is ~3-4 hour hike for the 7 miles down to the Toleak Camp.


The trail starts out in a rainforest. You hike down a little over a mile to 3rd Beach through the woods. This first mile is really not all that exciting...





Once you hit the bottom you find yourself at 3rd beach. This is a pretty heavily travelled beach, as it is a popular day hike and you can camp there.





After hiking down third beach, you quickly come to the Taylor Point overpass. This is where things get really muddy, and where we caught up to Rob and crew (they drove separately from us). Below the first pass you come to another short beach. There is no campground down here.





After another short beach hike, you come to Scott's Point. This has an overland pass, or you can try to scramble over some slippery rocks if the tide is out. We decided to do the latter. It was a lot of fun, but I think took a good amount more time than the overland pass would have taken. Below is a picture of Allen balancing on a rock.





Right after the bluff is Scott's camp. There is a good water supply here and a good beach. We kept on chugging and had lunch near Strawberry Point. There is another campground here.





After this we kept on rolling and eventually made it to Toleak Point. There were a lot of people at this site, and for good reason. It was beautiful and makes a good stop-off point for people making the trip all the way down to Oil City.


Here is a picture of where we setup our camp.





Here is a picture of everyone sitting around the fire at our camp looking south to the point.





A picture of the point looking South:





A picture of the point looking North West:





And finally, a great sunset from our campsite looking out towards Strawberry Point:





On day 2 we split up and did a couple of day hikes. About half of us took a long hike south down on the long beach towards Hoh Head, and the rest of us (including Janel and I) took a shorter hike south to Goodman Falls.








Here is a photo looking up towards Toleak Point from a bluff to the south:





Along the overland passes there are a bunch of ladders that are uses for getting up and over the bluffs. Here is a photo of Janel and Chrissy below one of the ladders on the way to Goodman Falls.





We also saw a bunch of bald eagles from our campsite on day 2. Here are two photos:








On day 3 we got up early to try to get home early. We decided to take the overland pass at Scott's Bluff rather than scramble over the rocks and it proved to be a lot faster. We also got to rapel down the far side which was a lot of fun. Here is a photo of Janel on her way down:





On the way home we stopped at "Sully's Burgers" in Forks, WA. It was not all that exciting :).