Ruby Beach: Where the Sea Stacks Are

Ruby Beach is named for the red garnet crystals that wash into the sand from the surrounding volcanic rock, not for anything so rare as actual rubies. The crystals are common enough that if you look closely at a handful of wet sand here, you will find them.

The sea stacks are something else. These basalt columns rising from the surf are the eroded remnants of ancient lava flows, hardened rock that the Pacific has spent ten thousand years cutting back from the coastline. The tallest stand sixty or seventy feet above the waterline, draped in nesting birds and draped with salt. They are among the most photographed landforms on the Washington coast, visible from the short trail that drops from the highway to the beach.

Tide pools form at the base of the stacks at low water. Give yourself two hours on either side of the predicted low tide to reach them and return safely. The pools hold sea stars, purple urchins, hermit crabs, and anemones in colors that seem impossible until you are looking at them.

The logs on this beach require attention. Old-growth timber that fell into coastal rivers generations ago drifts eventually to beaches like this one, and the logs here are sometimes four and five feet in diameter. They move in storm surf and high tide in ways that are not predictable. The National Park Service posts warnings. The warnings are based on fatalities.

Stand with the sea stacks and the open Pacific beyond them and you are looking at the wildest and least interrupted coastline in the contiguous United States. There is no road south of here for eleven miles.