I allowed the buzz of my phone alarm to wake me in the morning instead of waiting until sunrise. I had to make it down to Port Angeles for a resupply, and wanted to make sure I didn’t get in too late. I ate a quick breakfast, packed up, and powered up a 1500-foot climb toward my long ridgewalk while listening to a My Brother, My Brother And Me podcast in which the hosts discussed racehorse naming (a slightly embarrassing admission, but I’m not too ashamed).

Once I made it up onto the ridge, I could see that there was a noticeable haze of smoke in the air. This was a bit concerning, but I would soon be at a visitor center where I could get information.

It was a pleasant ridgewalk to Obstruction Point, where I joined up with a dirt road used frequently by day visitors. I would have an 8-mile walk to get to the visitor center. Because I was so antsy to get into town, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wish I would have. I had to resupply, pick up a bear canister (required for the Olympic Coast) at a ranger station, and get set up at a hostel, and I wasn’t sure how long those tasks would take.

The dirt road walk was fairly uneventful. I got passed by a white pickup truck and I actually tried sticking out my thumb, but they passed me by anyway. I was smelling smoke in the air and this added to the antsy feeling.

I made it to the Hurricane Ridge visitor center before noon, and stopped in to use the bathroom and get the scoop on the fire. The rangers there didn’t seem to be too concerned; it was a small and controllable fire by their standards, and looked to be contained at the moment. This was early September, well into fire season, and I was pretty lucky that I hadn’t encountered any reroutes due to fires yet.

What I did learn at the visitor’s center was that my next intended section of trail was being closed due to a massive mountain goat relocation project. The NPS would be airlifting (yes, with helicopters) mountain goats out of Olympic National Park in the Hurricane Hill area and transporting them to the North Cascades, where they are a native species. So the Hurricane Hill trail would be closed and I’d have to take a reroute down toward the the Elwha River.

On my way out of the visitor’s center, a soft-spoken older man approached me and asked if I wanted a ride. As it turned out, he hadd been driving the white truck that passed me on the road a couple hours before. I said yes, definitely, and he needed a couple minutes in the visitor’s center, so I bought myself a Klondike bar from a vending machine and sat outside enjoying it.

We had a long, quiet drive down toward Port Angeles. Unlike most people who pick up hitchhikers, he didn’t feel like talking much or telling his entire life story. I asked him to drop me off at the ranger station just outside of town, which he did. I went in to get a physical copy of my permit, which at this point existed only in their computer system and in my head, and a bear canister. That thing was absolutely massive, a two-pound beast that barely fit in my backpack. I wasn’t thrilled to be carrying it. I also emptied my Ursack food bag and buried it under some leaf litter and decaying logs in a forested area behind the visitor’s center (I came to retrieve it a little over a week later after finishing the trail, and it was in the process of getting colonized by some kind of mycelium – spidery white tendrils reaching over the bag’s surface area).

It didn’t take me long to get checked in at the hostel, which had extraordinarily bad vibes, but it was right next to a Safeway, so I knew resupplying wouldn’t be an issue. So I hiked across town to a Chinese buffet to have my first real meal, gorged myself, and hiked back. There was no one else staying at the hostel that night and I couldn’t figure out how to pay. I looked forward to getting back on the trail the next weekend.