This Saturday, March 12th, this web page's author will lead a hike out to Glass Beach to explore for glass treasures on the beach! We will meet at the North Beach park and parking lot around 9:00am or 9:15am in Port Townsend to begin our hike out to glass beach. Please pack a lunch, plenty of water bottles (2+), rain gear, good rubber boots and a hunger for sea glass. It will be about a 3 mile hike out to McCurdy Point to begin the hunt for sea glass around that area. For directions see the field report about Glass Beach on this web site.
New Entry: 2.22.16
On Monday, February 22nd, I made another exploratory hike heading west on North Beach in Port Townsend. A few weeks ago I made my first hike out to Glass Beach and found an abundance of sea glass as time allowed. During that hike I experienced a great deal of difficulty making my way along the beach because of the rising tide. The the tide was getting higher and higher and I was forced to go up on the rocks at the base of the bluff. After making it out to the beach below McCurdy Point I began finding fragments of glass immediately before the point and southward after it. The beach area called "Glass Beach" actually begins at McCurdy Point and spreads southwesterly. I had heard from many locals that the primary concern when taking a hike out to Glass Beach and McCurdy Point was the TIDES! The higher tides tend to cover the beach and make it very difficult to hike out to the point if you haven't done your homework! (See my video uploaded from Youtube about "Hiking out to Glass Beach, Port Townsend, WA- tips and tide concerns for the sea glass hunter.")
So, I decided I needed to do a little more exploratory work on North Beach to determine the best times and best tide levels to make the three mile hike. The high tide a few weeks ago was 8.8 feet which made hiking the beach very difficult.
On Monday I deliberately set out on North Beach just before low tide in order to explore the exposed gravel beds, hunt for agates and sea glass and to determine what tides would work best for a trek out to Glass Beach. There are several places along the beach with obstacles that pose difficulty whenever the tides are higher. These obstacles actually protrude out onto the beach and as the rising tides come in the exposed beach becomes pinched off. These obstacles were observed at six feet "high tide" levels to determine whether they posed difficulty at that level. Most hikers who are determined to go out to Glass Beach beyond McCurdy Point must make that trek when tides are at least less than seven feet. When the tide rises higher than seven feet a hiker will be forced up onto the rocks or sandy bluff. The following map illustrates my route this week that brought me only 1.5 miles west on the beach from the North Beach parking lot. Several of the obstacles were passed and measured for tide levels at those points.