Looking for 50~100mile backpacking route in PNW (WA, CA) for the 2nd week of March.

Rogue River West of Grants Pass – 40 mile segment is good – http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Southern_Oregon_Hikes

Beach of Olympic Peninsula is good, like between Rialto Beach and Ozette. 20 miles, but that is fairly difficult walking along the ocean at places so it's more difficult. You could go North from there maybe another 20 miles. http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Washington_Coast_Hikes

Lost Coast South of Eureka is supposed to be good – http://www.climbwild.net/INFO_The_Lost_Coast_page_one.html

I can't help with PNW or with northern California. If you're considering heading further south to central California (within an hour of San Francisco Bay) there are many options. If you haven't already browsed some of our trip reports, you might want to take a look. We've posted trip reports here on BPL for many of these trips.

http://amyl.smugmug.com/Backpacking/BayArea

For example, here's a 100 mile loop trip that is only suitable for somebody willing to stealth camp. It has the advantage of starting and ending a short BART ride from SFO or Oakland airports, so no transit hassles.

For 90-ish miles in PNW the Wonderland Trail just leaps instantly to mind. I'd reckon it would still be snowed-in in March, though. Like snowshoes? :)

There are ways to do longer Olympic beach-walks than just 20 miles, but it involves getting permits from the reservations. I've always wanted to do one. Heck, I suspect that you could hike all the way from Aberdeen to Cape Flattery if you wanted to. But Queets to Flattery would be more realistic- less hassles. (I.e. I'm not sure how the Quinault feel about issuing hiking permits. I know that the Makah do, though.)

Research the beach walks before setting out. You have to time things with the tides in some spots, or you're left mountaineering over a headland.

Difficult to cross Bogachiel – you'de have to road walk from Third Beach to Rialto Beach about 10 miles

Difficult to cross Ozette River – swim?

But, then you'de have maybe 60 miles. And walking along the beach can be more difficult, walking on slippery rocks and so forth.

As a resident of NW Oregon who has hiking family in both WA and northern CA, I think Jerry (also a NW OR resident) has pretty much nailed it for anything available in March, which is definitely still winter above 2,000-3,000 feet.

In the past 2 weeks, the Pacific NW has gone from drought conditions to almost normal snowpack, so don't expect higher elevation trails to be accessible as they were in January. Due to the feet of fresh snow on top of an icy base layer, avalanche danger is extreme or close to it right now. No, Dean, the Wonderland Trail is definitely not an option, between exposure, avalanche danger and Mt. Rainier's making its own weather. If it isn't storming anywhere else, it often will be there!

Southern California might offer better options, since, unfortunately, they have been pretty much missed by this constant barrage of storms. Do expect continuing fire restrictions there. Of course this situation could change, and we all hope it will!

For more on the Olympic NP Wilderness Coast, see the official Olympic NP website at nps.gov. They have excellent trail descriptions there. Although not as long as you want, it's slow going due to frequent storms, the necessity to climb rope ladders over headlands, lots of mud and the necessity to wait out high tides.

You might be able to do a series of low elevation hikes at shorter distances, such as the Hoh River Valley and the Enchanted Valley in Olympic National Park.

Dean has lived everywhere : )

Good question about the Queets. Long section of coast without highways. I've always just written it off because it was reservation. But like you said, the Makah don't mind us non natives.

>>> Dean has lived everywhere : )

Not everywhere…

Pittsburgh, PA (yes I speak Yinzer when required)
Monterrey, CA (The Presidio)
Fulda, GE (Sickels AAF)
Rockville/Bethesda, MD (USUHS)
Tacoma, WA (Madigan AMC, Fort Lewis)
Landstuhl, GE (Landstuhl RMC)
Colorado Springs, CO (Evans ACH, Fort Carson)
Orgun-E, AF (2nd FST (commander), Paktika province)

And those are just the 1 year or greater stays…

Then there are various prolonged visits (between 1 to 12 months):

Fort Dix, NJ (southeast of Trenton)
San Angelo, TX (Goodfellow AFB)
Fort Devens, MA (north of Worcester)
King Khalid Military City, SA
Doha, KU (just outside Kuwait City)
Honolulu, HI (Tripler AMC)
Fayetteville, NC (Fort Bragg)
San Antonio, TX (Fort Sam Houston)
Naray, AF (160th FST, Kunar Valley, Nuristan)
Bagram, AF (Craig JTH, Bagram Airfield)
Gelan, AF (2nd FST, Ghazni province)

There are probably a few I'm missing- service rotations at military hospitals as a medical student. And (predictably) at least one that I'm pretty sure I'm still not supposed to tell people about- but trust me, it wasn't very interesting, and barely counts as a new location anyway.

If I started listing vacations and other week-to-month-long stays I might overflow the buffer…

My boss just got back from a TDY to Guam! Lucky bastard…

Military life tends to lead to such ridiculousness. Still, I'm quite certain that there are folks on this forum who have moved about even more.

We just got several feet of snow in the Cascades. If you want to see how things are going, there is an interactive map at http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/snotel/Washington/washington.html

+1 on the Olympic Beaches and lower level trails. I use 2500' as my snow benchmark with an eye to actual conditions just before. I would plan as many alternates as possible.

It will be wet in March, so pack your rain shell, pants, gaiters, etc. You want a shelter that can handle wind for the coastal hikes.

See wta.org and nwhikers.net for trail reports. Also, I search the USFS by the road number for current trailhead access road conditions. A week of heavy rain can wreak havoc on the roads and hose your plans.

I like the NOAA snow model. You can pan around to any location in U.S. Uses Snotel data.

http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/interactive/html/map.html?ql=station&zoom=&loc=45.367+N%2C+121.816+W&var=ssm_depth&dy=2014&dm=2&dd=22&dh=17&snap=1&o9=1&o12=1&o13=1&lbl=m&o7=1&mode=pan&extents=us&min_x=-122.2&min_y=45.083333333329&max_x=-121.26666666667&max_y=45.783333333329&coord_x=+-121.816&coord_y=+++45.367&zbox_n=45.36411111110678&zbox_s=45.36411111110678&zbox_e=-121.81500000000137&zbox_w=-121.81500000000137&metric=0&bgvar=dem&shdvar=shading&width=600&height=450&nw=600&nh=450&h_o=0&font=0&js=1&uc=0

I forgot to mention another option for PNW in March. The Oregon Coast Trail is viable, along with the northern end of the California Coastal Trail. The best part of the Oregon Coast Trail is south of Gold Beach; from there to Arcata is pretty nice.
http://amyl.smugmug.com/Backpacking/UT-OR/200807-ORCA-Coast-Backpacking

I don't think we wrote a trip report for this trip, but there is some info tucked into the captions of the photos. It's definitely not wilderness, and some parts are sub-par, but there are some very nice stretches if you enjoy coastal scenery.

If we're lucky though we'll have rain in March, hopefully LOTS of rain to help mitigate the drought conditions. March is not an ideal time to hike it.

I've always thought the Oregon Coast Trail was mostly a road walk. I'll have to check your smugmug page

That's a pretty cool hike Amy. Not exactly wilderness but beautiful areas to go through, elevation change, no snow. Because I don't own a car or driver's license, hike's that take you from your front door step and back are really interesting to me. When I was living in Bogotá, Colombia the past 3 years and doing a lot of hiking in Cundinamarca, my favorite hikes were the ones that ended by arriving on foot to the city, jump on a bus and you're home. Jun, if you aren't yearning for utter isolation (granted in March this hike probably wouldn't be that crowded) I'd go for Amy's route.

I've done the ONP coastal hike several times, and I'd also recommend that one for March. Very mild temps but do expect rain and wind as others have already mentioned. I just did Rialto to Neah Bay this past year and it was a very nice hike but you have to like rock hopping and have good balance and strong ankles as the rocks are very slippery and in many cases quite unstable. I've heard a lot of people say they were less than happy about moving across the rocks, which is saying a lot considering it has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. Custom Correct maps are the best for the coastal sections because they include minimum tide levels for certain headlands/iffy points. Once you leave the north end of the hike in the Makah Reservation you can walk an additional 4-5 miles on the road to the Makah Tribal Center where you can catch a bus back into town (they also gave me coffee and donuts for breakfast at the Tribal Center; very nice people). Public transit is your best friend on the OP allowing you to do thru-hikes and move all over the peninsula for VERY cheap. Many fares are just 50 to 75 cents! The Makah bus is 25 cents.

Amy and I thru hiked the OCT in July/August 2008. We extended the route by about 130 miles by continuing down to Arcata in California. In answer to Jerry's comment about road walking. Yes the OCT has road walking, but how much depends a lot on your ability to get rides across the various water obstacles on the route. If you can cadge or pay for a water taxis, the road walking is significantly reduced. Based on our mapping, the OCT is currently 428 miles if you take no ferries at all and walk around the obstacles. If you do, there is 168 miles of walking on pavement (39%). Some isn't bad, with little traffic and other parts are not so good. If you can get ferries across all of the water barriers, the route is 395 miles (including 9 miles on the boats). Of this, only 88 miles is on the pavement (22%). And actually, some significant portions of the road walking is in the various towns along the way, where you can resupply and get meals, as well as experience the ambience of the small coastal towns. Most of them are quite nice.

James for Amy

Amy here, adding to what JIm said…

Jim built a pretty detailed spreadsheet of the OCT and posted it on the OCT Yahoo Group. You can find it here:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/oregoncoasttrail/files

My own opinion now, not necessarily reflecting Jim's opinion. The OCT is a nice option for PNW hikers who want a convenient local trip. But I don't think it's a world-class coastal walk. For my money, it's not as nice as any of the other coastal paths we've hiked — Southwest Coast Path (England), Pembrokeshire Coast Path (Wales), the northern coast of Scotland (which doesn't have a named path but is a fine walk none-the-less), Brittany Coastal Path (France), or the Great South Coast Walk (Australia). If I lived on the east coast and was planning to travel a long distance to hike a coast, I'd go to the UK or France instead.

The Three Sisters Wilderness Loop in Oregon's Cascades is very nice…glaciers, volcanoes, lava flows, etc. in ~50 miles, with 1/3 of it along the PCT. Andrew Skurka said that it was one of his favorite spots during his Great Western Loop. You can also hike (no technical climbing) up the 10,350' South Sister as a nice side trip.

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/xdpy/forum_thread/10125/index.html

Gordon has nicer photos than me…

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/xdpy/forum_thread/36509/index.html

Tom

That's a great hike Tom mentioned but I don't know about doing it in March. Be prepared for snow and avalanche danger. As others have mentioned, anything around 3,000 feet is going to have snow cover through June. Check out the link Jerry put up, it's very good, thanks Jerry.

Three Sisters not so good in March, too much snow. Snowshoes? And GPS to find route? And good luck avoiding avalanches. August and September are better.

If you dont mind heading up to Canada, theres a 180km low level trail called the Sunshine Coast Trail:

http://www.sunshinecoast-trail.com/

Theres also a network of huts along the way. I believe the elevation is pretty low throughout.