Vent: I planned my whole Olympic Peninsula loop around low tide and still got cliffed out at Cedar Creek

Richard Burns · 2026-10-08T10:20:03.085601+00:00

I spent two weeks mapping the 34 mile stretch from Rialto Beach to Ozette, timing every headland crossing to a low tide under 1.5 feet. What I didn't account for was a storm swell pushing waves up onto the shelf even at low slack, so at Cedar Creek around mile 12 I had to scramble up a muddy gully and bushwhack a quarter mile through salal to get around. Learned the hard way that tide charts mean nothing without a swell forecast. Anyone else got a rule of thumb for when a -1.0 tide is still too dicey on that stretch?

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Vent: I planned my whole Olympic Peninsula loop around low tide and still got cliffed out at Cedar Creek | Backpacking Routes - Opinions Matter