Olympic Beach Memories from Student Leah Risom

By wpdev February 19, 2009

by Leah Risom,
Northwest Adventure Student

I don’t have a “most memorable moment” from my Northwest Adventure; I have many. One of my favorite memories was on the second day of hiking on the Olympic Coast, Day 36 of a 44-day trip. This day was especially special to me because it was also my sweet 16 birthday.

During the trip we did not have much rain, only during the nights once we were all in our tents about to fall asleep so it never bothered us but, this day it was raining when we woke up. Need I remind you that it’s my birthday and we had made it 36 days without rain, it couldn’t wait just 12 more days for our trip to be over to rain. My trip leaders, Jay and Denali, tried to make the best of the rain with waking me and my tent mates up with a horrible and I mean horrible rendition of Happy Birthday. As we were walking the morales were sinking due to the slippery, wet rocks and the constantly falling rain.

When we stopped for lunch everyone was wet and ready to get to camp but we were all surprised with a backcountry style no-bake cake, which cheered everyone up until later that night when we had smores. The rain that day ended when we got to camp around 3:00. This is on my memorable moment’s list because it was my birthday but it was also the only day that it rained when were hiking. I remember being told that we got lucky with the weather through out the entire trip because on the days surrounding our Olympic Beach hike were beautiful. Jay said that the fallowing day had the best weather that he had ever seen on the Beach. Even though my birthday was marked with rain it was still one of my better ones because I was surrounded by beautiful nature and with 11 friends.

Sledding in the Three Sisters Wilderness on Leah’s Northwest Adventure