Loaded for Bear
The previous day, Steve had stopped at the Olympic National Park backcountry office and picked up a wilderness camping permit and bear canisters. The canisters are required in the park for food storage, not so much for black bear, which are rare on the coast, but to deter other critters. Raccoons are notorious for raiding coastal camps at night. Since the National Park Service has required the use of canisters, the raccoon problem has all but disappeared.
The hard plastic canisters didn’t fit in any of Beth’s, Rob’s or Judy’s hatches. Mine fit through my oval front hatch. We were all paddling British-style boats, with the three-hatch stowage that limits bulky items. Steve suggested putting them in the cockpit, in front of the foot braces, but gave us the option of not using them at all. Steve had one half-sized canister, which fit in his rear hatch. Scott decided not to use a canister.
We were carrying water for three days, so the fully loaded boats were heavy. We used slings to carry the kayaks down the boat ramp. I buckled my helmet under a deck bungee, slid into my kayak and shoved off. Shortly after 10 A.M., we paddled out the marina entrance and turned left into the Quillayute River.
Underway
Steve was behind the group when he stopped at James Island to record a GPS waypoint. Rob stayed with him briefly, then paddled fast to catch up. The rest of us hardly paused before continuing. We whisked out of the river mouth and into the swell that built as we left the protection of James Island. Our route south would take us past rocky headlands, arches and broad stretches of sand named First, Second and Third Beach. We’d have the option to take inside routes beneath the Crying Lady sea stack at Second Beach and by the Graveyard of the Giants, a set of gargoyle-like sea stacks beyond Third Beach. At the Toleak Point headland, we expected to find a protected sandy beach where we could land and make camp.
Rob rejoined us and we paddled across the open sea fronting First Beach. Rob was ebullient: “There’s no place I’d rather be!” The sky, overcast lifting, hinted blue along the cliffs. After a while, Rob turned around to look for Steve. He was still well behind us, so Rob called for us to halt. We bobbed in the mild swell. A minute later, Judy said she was feeling queasy. The up-and-down motion in the swell was making her seasick. Steve caught up with us, and we continued on.
Steve paddled beside Judy. Scott, paddling briskly, chose a route close to the rocks that split First Beach from Second Beach. The rest of us stuck tightly together. Steve was worried about Judy. She was paddling fine on her own, but seasickness can be incapacitating to the point where a kayaker could need a tow, even rafting up to stay upright. We approached Second Beach. The Crying Lady sea stack loomed like a fortress in front of us.
The Shoal at the Tombolo
Crying Lady is connected to Second Beach by a tombolo—a sandy spit that dries out during low tides. The morning low tide was a minus 1.0 at 8 A.M. The high would be 8.2 feet at 2:30 P.M., so when we approached the tombolo, it would have about two feet of water over it, and waves would surely be breaking there.
We could avoid the waves by taking the outside route, but Steve decided we would go through. His plan was to escort Judy and watch the wave sets, taking advantage of the small, nonbreaking waves. Scott was a bit out in front of the rest of us, and he saw that we were headed to the inside. He could also see the reflected waves bouncing off Crying Lady and thought that going to the outside could be the rougher ride.
Beth had moved left and was following Scott’s line. She suddenly accelerated down a wave face, finding herself in the surf zone. Beth didn’t want to surf, so she steered right to get to calmer water just inside of the sea stack. Scott surfed forward on the next wave and rode it all the way in, crossing the tombolo. Judy and Steve paddled through carefully, avoiding the surf. I was in the rear, back-paddling on bigger waves, moving forward on their backs. I was worried about straining my shoulder, so I didn’t want to surf either.
The Capsizes Begin
Suddenly, a wave pitched up and threw Beth over. I’m sure she felt the shock of cold water, but she set up to roll the way she had recently practiced. Sweeping the paddle, she rose out of the water only to fall back in. She set up again and almost got up but fell over again. Rob sped toward her. Beth wet-exited and came to the surface. Rob arrived, grabbed her bow and, with great effort, pulled the heavy boat up onto his deck for a T-rescue. After he’d drained the water from the cockpit, he slid the boat back into the water. At this point, Beth had only been in the water for a minute or two.
Judy was behind Crying Lady in relatively calm water. She saw Beth go over and thought about paddling to her to assist. She drifted broadside to the waves. A small wave smacked her side, and she braced into it. Then another one hit, and it pitched her over. Judy popped her skirt and exited. It was too deep to stand. Steve, too, had been watching Beth. Seeing that Rob was taking care of Beth, he turned his attention to Judy. Steve instructed Judy to grab the stern of his kayak in one hand and her own boat in the other. Judy did this, and Steve paddled a few strokes to a small patch of sand at the base of the sea stack. Judy, dizzy from seasickness, stumbled as she walked ashore.
I paddled up alongside Beth’s kayak. Mistaking her bright yellow dry-suit top for a paddling jacket, I thought she was wearing a wetsuit and decided it best to get her out of the water fast before she got chilled. Rob stood by at Beth’s bow. Beth reached across her kayak and handed me her paddle. I tucked it along with my own under my left arm. I set the paddles perpendicular to the kayaks and grasped the front and back of Beth’s coaming with each hand. Beth grabbed the coaming and in a smooth lunge exited the water. She landed cleanly on her back deck and hooked a leg inside the cockpit.
The waves bouncing us about weren’t a problem, but I had this sense that we were drifting back into the surf. I yelled to Rob, “Tow the boat out of here!” Rob quickly pulled the towline from his waist belt, clipped onto the grab loop of Beth’s kayak, spun his boat and set off paddling toward the tombolo. Seconds later I looked up to see him stroking powerfully, but going nowhere uphill on the back of a wave.
A Towline Under Tension
As the next wave rolled through, Rob was soon on its face. He surged forward. Beth was seated and working her skirt around the coaming. I held on to the coaming to stabilize her boat. The slack in the towline rapidly disappeared. Rob was paddling down wave. Beth and I were at a standstill in the trough behind him. As the line played out, I thought, “That’s an awfully short line,” and then, quickly, “We’re going to get a hell of a jerk when that line tightens.” I regripped the coaming. The jerk never happened. Instead the line began to stretch, and stretch and stretch some more.
For Rob, the increasing tension on the line felt like what he later described as “a 200-pound force pulling me backward. I was instantly unstable. I was completely focused on staying upright.” The line anchored to his towing belt pulled him back toward the wave crest, where he perched, slapping the water to stay upright. His boat spun parallel to the wave, locking the tension in the line.
For Beth and me, the line was at its tightest just as the next wave approached. In a flash, we blasted down the wave face. I still clung to both paddles. Beth had none. The pull of the towline surfed her directly at Rob. Beth’s bow plowed over Rob’s foredeck, narrowly missing his torso. The collision capsized Rob downwave, then Beth, paddleless, capsized as her kayak slid off of Rob’s. I surfed out of control, just missed Rob’s stern, skidded right, broached and capsized into the wave. As I went down, my right shoulder banged what felt like the blunt side of Rob’s kayak. In just two or three seconds, we’d all gone over.
Upside down, I kept both hands on the two paddles. I pushed them upward and parallel to my boat. I was worried about my shoulder and thought, “This is gonna hurt.” I pulled on the paddles, hip-snapped and rotated toward the back deck. I pushed hard at the finish. A breathtaking pain shot from my right shoulder. Fortunately, I was up.
Rob popped his spray skirt, wet-exited and found himself in a tangle of slack towline. He groped and couldn’t find the ball on the tow belt buckle. He came to the surface for air and shouted, “I’m tangled in the rope and can’t get it off!” Meanwhile, Beth was stuck in her cockpit. The impact of the collision had dislodged the bear canister in her cockpit and moved it aft. As she did a wet exit, it pinned her legs. Still under water, Beth squeezed back into the seat, shoved the canister forward and exited the cockpit. Rob groped again for the buckle, found it, and pulled the belt free with both hands. The two kayaks, cockpits full of water and compartments full of gear, sloshed like logs in the waves. Rob was between them.
Steve looked out from the beach at the sea stack where he and Judy had landed and saw three capsized hulls. He hopped in his kayak and raced toward Beth and Rob. “Get clear of the boats!” he yelled. Steve was worried that they’d be injured if a swamped kayak tumbled over them. Before swimming clear, Rob grabbed his aft deck line and discovered a gaping three-inch hole punched in the stern.
I sat in my kayak and floated hunched over for maybe 30 seconds until the pain in my shoulder subsided. When I looked around, Beth and Rob were still in the water, seaward of my position and close to a shelf of rock at the base of Crying Lady. Steve was shouting instructions. Scott had paddled in and was picking up floating gear: a bear canister, a bilge pump and a dromedary bag dislodged by the capsizes. He put the gear on his spray skirt. I grabbed a bear canister that floated by me and paddled the short distance to the beach where Judy was securing her gear. She was still feeling nauseated. “This was more than we bargained for!” she exclaimed. I told her to take the canister and put it up on the rocks. She replied that she didn’t know if she could do that, but as I shoved the canister off my skirt, she waded into the water, picked it up and placed it in the sand. Scott pulled in and dropped off another canister. He had lost the water bag when a wave pitched him sideways.
Steve decided that the surf, for the moment, was manageable. He clipped his short, on-deck towline to Beth’s kayak. Scott paddled over to Beth and handed her a clip from his towline. She was near Rob’s kayak, and Scott thought it would be easier for Beth to clip the line on Rob’s kayak, rather than risk getting too close himself in a boat. Meanwhile, Steve saw that Rob and Beth would be able to swim to safety on a rock ledge, “Climb up on the rocks!” he yelled. Stroking quickly, Steve and Scott towed the swamped kayaks to relative safety at the little spot of beach.
Beth and Rob clambered out of the water. They scrambled across a rock shelf, jumped down in shallow water and grabbed their kayaks as Steve and Scott approached. Judy saw that the beach was rapidly disappearing with the rising tide. “We need to get out of here,” she said. Steve called out instructions. Judy hopped in her kayak, and she and I paddled together across shallow swaths of foam for a hundred or so yards to Second Beach. The others soon followed. Last to leave Crying Lady were Rob and Steve. Rob showed Steve the hole in his kayak. Steve thought it best to move quickly off the beach. Rob arrived paddling his damaged kayak, and we were soon all regrouped on Second Beach.