Week 19 on the Great American Rail-Trail: Port Angeles to the Pacific
Bernie Krausse's last 3 days ran from the Port Angeles pier to the Pacific at La Push: 25 miles of DNR singletrack, the Spruce Railroad grade, 9 miles of logging road, and a highway shoulder to the ocean. Day 130.
All photos by Bernie Krausse
Bernie Krausse walked into downtown Port Angeles at 9 pm on July 31 and found Lynne waiting for him at a tavern with a cycling friend named Rick. Rick had monitored desert tortoises alongside Bernie on a Mojave pipeline project in 2002 and 2003, and he still remembered the email address Bernie used then: Wayfaring Spirit.
Rain came the next morning, and the two of them sat with it for a few hours. A mountain beaver crossed the yard. Bernie started walking again at noon from the Port Angeles City Pier, 130 miles and three days short of the Pacific Ocean on the first known thru-hike of the Great American Rail-Trail.
Bernie Krausse
Great American Rail-Trail - Westbound
Started: March 28, 2026. Washington, DC, Capitol Reflecting Pool.
Finished: August 3, 2026. Day 130, La Push, Washington.
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Day 128: The pier to the singletrack
The Olympic Discovery Trail runs paved out of downtown Port Angeles and west to the Elwha River. From the Elwha, Bernie left the rail grade for the ODT's Adventure Route, roughly 25 miles of single- and double-track on Washington State Department of Natural Resources land, hilly and forested, with no water or services. It rejoins the paved route at Lake Crescent.
Salal and red huckleberry were ripe along the trail, and Bernie picked both as he walked.
Several groups of cyclists came through from the other direction, all working the same out-and-back: ferry from Vancouver to Vancouver Island, ride into Victoria, then ferry south across the Strait of Juan de Fuca into Port Angeles. Bernie walked until 10 pm.
Day 129: 39 miles and the last of the pavement
He reached Log Cabin Resort on the northeast shore of Lake Crescent by 8 am, ground he knew from a season of sea otter research for the Fish and Wildlife Service years ago. The couple camped next to him had started their own Great American crossing the day before, eastbound out of La Push, aimed at Washington, D.C.
"The baton has been passed, and Bon Voyage is being lived and not worked for," Bernie wrote.
West of the resort, the route picks up the Spruce Railroad Trail along the north shore of the lake. The U.S. Army's Spruce Production Division built the grade in 1918 to haul aircraft-quality Sitka spruce for World War One biplane frames, blasting two tunnels through rock above the water to do it. The line was finished a year late. No spruce off it was ever milled for airplanes, and the railroad ran as a logging and common-carrier line until it was abandoned in 1951. The 4 miles of paved trail and the tunnels are what's left.
An hour of rain showers moved through. Past the park boundary a cyclist sat down with Bernie having already collected enough chanterelles for a good dinner.
The pavement ends there. What follows is more than 9 miles of quiet logging road out to US 101, which is where the built trail stops and the road walk to the coast begins. Bernie covered 39 miles that day and dispersed camped on DNR state land with 20 miles left.
"Is this the end or merely a series of perpetual beginnings?"
Day 130: US 101, La Push Road, the Pacific
A 5:30 am start carried him down US 101 to the La Push Road junction near Forks. Stephenie Meyer set the Twilight novels in Forks and out at La Push, and the town has run on that ever since, though almost none of the filming happened there. From the junction it's about 20 miles to the ocean. The Forks-to-La Push trail segment isn't built yet, so roughly 12 of those miles follow the shoulder of WA 110. Clallam Transit route 15 covers the same ground for anyone who wants no part of a highway shoulder.
About 6 miles short of the water, a two-sided billboard stands at the edge of the lot at Three Rivers Resort. One face welcomes Twilight fans. The other warns that no vampires are permitted beyond that point, marking what the books call the treaty line between the Cullens and the Quileute wolves. Visitors sign it with a Sharpie and photograph both sides. The resort behind it has a restaurant, a store, gas pumps, and a campground, and it is the last of any of that before the coast.
The final stretch drops through the Quileute Reservation, where 1.3 miles of finished Olympic Discovery Trail, built with help from tribe members, carries you to the water.
Bernie reached the Pacific at noon on Monday, August 3. Day 130.
"I have finally arrived also knowing that I have never left."
"Perhaps this walking man has learned to be in tune with his flute and is becoming a Piper calling you to join him. Farewell and yet never Goodbye."
Bernie's finish is written up in full here: Bernie Krausse Finishes the Great American Rail-Trail. It was published last week. It is believed to be the first known end-to-end foot thru-hike of the route.
Hiking America's GPX tracks for the Great American Rail-Trail are free.
Hiking America subscribers get the roughly 10,000 curated service waypoints that go with them, and every one of them from Washington, D.C. to La Push now carries Bernie's 2026 field verification.
Who's next?
Hike Your Hike. — John 🥾