Olympic coastal wilderness Toleak Point
— the headland where the tide tells you to wait.
Not only on a wall.
“A headland on the Olympic National Park wilderness coast, six miles south of La Push by foot. There is no road. The trail starts at Third Beach, drops down a forested bluff to the sand, climbs back over Taylor Point on a length of fixed rope, and meets the ocean again at Strawberry Point. Toleak is the next prominent point south. Sea stacks stand offshore, all of them named on the chart. Bald eagles work the line where the kelp meets the sand. You time the rest of the walk by the tide table, not the clock.
Olympic coastal wilderness Toleak Point, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Toleak Point is a low headland on the wilderness coast of Olympic National Park in Jefferson County, Washington, about six miles south of the trailhead at Third Beach near La Push. The South Coast Wilderness section of the park runs roughly seventeen miles south from Third Beach to Oil City near the mouth of the Hoh River, and Toleak sits about a third of the way down that stretch. The coastal strip is bordered on the north by the Quileute Indian Reservation and on the south by the Hoh Indian Reservation. The Olympic coast was added to the park by Congress in 1953, and the offshore waters are protected as the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.
The hike to Toleak is a tidal walk. Three of the headlands between Third Beach and Toleak Point are impassable at the base and must be crossed by overland trails, two of them assisted by fixed ropes anchored to the bluff. Tide tables are required reading: a passage walked dry at minus tide may be neck-deep four hours later. Pacific swell along this coast averages roughly six to ten feet through the spring and fall hiking season, with frequent winter storms above twenty feet. Sea stacks line the offshore water and shelter resting harbor seals, with sea otters worked back into the offshore kelp since their 1970 reintroduction at Destruction Island.
This is one of the longest stretches of roadless wild coast in the contiguous United States. The Olympic National Park wilderness permit system caps overnight use and bear canisters are required, since black bears and raccoons learn the beach quickly. There are no resupply points between Third Beach and Oil City. Cell signal disappears within a mile of the trailhead. Most of the people you meet on the beach are through-hikers walking the full seventeen miles in three or four days. On a clear evening the loudest sounds are the surf, a raven somewhere up in the Sitka spruce, and the hiss the wave-foam makes on the way back out.