Mora & Rialto Beach · Olympic National Park, Washington
Twice a month the water drops far enough to walk out onto the shelf at Hole-in-the-Wall. When it does, we go — and anyone standing in the parking lot is welcome to come along. Free, volunteer-led, about two hours.
The next five Saturdays What to bring
The whole thing, explained
The tide pools at Hole-in-the-Wall only exist for about ninety minutes on either side of a low tide, and only when that low drops under about a foot. That's the window. Everything else — the meeting time, the pace, the walk back — is arithmetic around it.
The schedule
Meeting time moves week to week because the tide does. We meet in the Rialto Beach parking lot at the end of Mora Road — look for the driftwood log jam and someone holding a green umbrella, rain or shine.
| Saturday | Low tide | Height | We meet | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 25 | 8:12 am | −0.6 ft | 7:30 am | Good clearance. Sea stars on the north face. |
| Aug 1 | 7:04 am | −1.1 ft | 6:20 am | Best of the month The shelf drains all the way to the surf grass. |
| Aug 8 | 12:41 pm | +0.7 ft | 12:00 pm | Shallow low — we stay in the mussel beds and don't cross. |
| Aug 15 | 6:26 am | −0.4 ft | 5:45 am | Early and usually foggy. Bring a headlamp for the lot. |
| Aug 22 | 11:44 am | +1.2 ft | — | No walk. The shelf never clears at this height. |
Predicted lows for the Quillayute River entrance at La Push. Tides move; check the current forecast the night before you drive out — it's two hours from Port Angeles and we'd hate for you to make the trip for nothing.
Underfoot
Rialto's shelf is basalt, and basalt holds water. Four things we find on nearly every walk — plus whatever the winter storms rearranged.
Pisaster ochraceus
Orange or purple, and no one has satisfyingly explained why. Wasting disease emptied this coast of them a decade ago; the ones wedged in the north-face cracks now are the comeback, and counting them is half of what we do out there.
Anthopleura xanthogrammica
The green isn't pigment — it's algae living inside the animal's tissue, paying rent in sugar. That's why you find them in open pools and never in the shaded overhangs six feet away.
Pollicipes polymerus
They live where the surf hits hardest, packed in with California mussels, and they feed by throwing a fan of legs into the backwash. Stand still by a good clump on a swelly day and you can watch the whole colony do it at once.
Pagurus, Hemigrapsus, and friends
Purple shore crabs, hermit crabs wearing borrowed shells, a chiton clamped down like a bathtub plug. Turn a rock over if you like — then turn it back the way it was, animals down. That one habit is most of tide-pool etiquette.
Before you drive out
Rialto is cobble, then rockweed, then barnacle. The rockweed is genuinely slippery and the cobble rolls. Ankle support beats waterproofing.
It is fifteen degrees colder on the shelf than in Forks, and the wind comes around Hole-in-the-Wall like it's been waiting for you. A shell over a fleece.
Two hours, no facilities past the parking lot, no water past the trailhead. Ellen Creek is not drinking water.
The best winter lows land before sunrise. You'll want light for the log jam, not the pools.
Camera on a strap, phone in a zipped pocket. You'll be using both hands on the rocks more than you expect.
This is a national park: everything living, everything dead, and every rock stays where it is. Photographs only.
No sign-up, no cost, no minimum interest in marine biology
Come to the Rialto Beach lot, find the green umbrella by the log jam, and bring anyone. If it's raining, we're still there — the pools don't care.