Sunny Beaches!
Pounding sand along the Salish Sea
After spamming followers for months with my not-quite-epic quest to ascend 70 summits in a year (success!!), I wanted to provide a little break from the endless posts on mountains. More will come, to be sure. But lately, I’ve been spending more time at the beach. Not exactly basking in the brisk and waning days of winter, though it’s been quite nice to turn the collar down a notch or two and enjoy the tease of spring these past few days.
So what am I up to? Call it field work. I am headlong into a new third edition of Hiking Snohomish County, first published in 1998 and revised in 2007. Then we moved to the East Coast for eight years, returning to the ‘Ham in 2019, with every intention of publishing a new edition of the book. I started on it pre-Covid, but you can guess where that went. I’ve since revived the thrice-revived effort and am looking forward to finally going to press in the next few weeks.
I guess this is where the beach comes in. My guidebooks extend from the mountains to the sea, so while the former is buried in snow, I’ve been strutting up and down the latter quite a bunch lately.
If you don’t know, some great beach wandering is available from Everett and the Waikiki-ish sandy shores of Jetty Island most of the way south to Richmond Beach near Seattle. There are obstacles and a busy railroad is perched on a stony revetment above the upper beach, but there are also miles of walkable beach when the tide’s right. Most, but not all, of the tidelands are public.
A couple of favorites are sidling south from Picnic Point, south from Lunds Gulch, and north from Edmonds. Plus Jetty Island—just don’t go there on a sunny summer weekend when the foot ferry is running. Without the ferry, you’ll have to paddle, row, swim or leap across the 400-yard wide channel to get there, but do the research and you’ll find a way to soak up some sun at the Jetty. Walk on the sand and rocks, of course, and spare the critters.
Or try Picnic, Lunds or Edmonds when the tide table calls for a low of, say, three feet or less. A good strategy is to use the predicted low as your turnaround time. Start walking an hour or more beforehand, and you can pretty well ensure that the beach will still be walkable on the return. Because there are pinch points that can be a challenge to navigate (or worse) at higher tides, you don’t want to get stranded somewhere or forced up onto the railroad tracks, which would be trespassing, if not dangerous. There are almost no intermediate public access points, so it’s best to assume all walks are out and back.
I’ll provide much more info on the when and where stuff in the new guide. Well over a hundred other walks and hikes will fill out the book, from sea to summit, urban to remote wilderness. I’ll post pre-order information and a publication date soon, but I gotta get the new cover finished first.
Happy trails and c’mon spring!
