Hoh Head

The Wildest Shore: Backpacking the Southern Olympic Coast

By Michael Lanza

On a remote, sandy beach on Washington’s Olympic coast, we stop in our tracks and gaze up. A wall of muddy earth rises some 300 feet into jungle-like rainforest. A thick strand of hemp rope dangles down this steep, eroding embankment. A ladder of wooden steps built into the muddy ground rises in tandem with the rope.

We’re going up it.

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Hiking to Strawberry Point, Olympic coast, Washington.

Photo Gallery: Backpacking the Wild Olympic Coast

By Michael Lanza

You can’t order fried seafood or buy a T-shirt anywhere along the 73 miles of seashore of Olympic National Park. What you will find is the longest strip of wilderness coastline in the contiguous United States, home to seals, sea lions, sea otters, bald eagles, tufted puffins, and many seabirds, and humpback, gray, minke, and blue whales. Salmon spawn in wild rivers. Up and down the coast, scores of stone pinnacles—called sea stacks—rise as much as 200 feet out of the ocean. It’s one of the few remaining pieces of ocean-view real estate in the Lower 48 that Lewis and Clark or Capt. George Vancouver would recognize.

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A young boy backpacking the wilderness coast of Olympic National Park.

Featured Video: Backpacking the Olympic Coast

Washington’s Olympic National Park protects the longest wilderness coastline remaining in the continental United States, and the season for hiking it is fast approaching. Watch this short video of a classic, three-day, 17.5-mile backpacking trip along the southern section of the coast, where you’ll see sea stacks rising out of the ocean, seals, sea otters, and tide pools filled with …

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