Ruby Beach is the only spot where Highway 101 meets the open ocean inside the park, named for the garnet-red grains in its sand. A short, steep path leads down to sea stacks, piled driftwood, and tide pools full of sea stars and anemones. It's free to access off 101, with no entrance booth. Best at low tide for the pools and at sunset for the light. Carry a tide chart, watch for sudden waves, and stay off the drift logs — the surf can roll them.
Round this bend and there it is — the open Pacific, at last. This is the one place on the whole drive where Highway one-oh-one finally shoulders right up against the sea, and the sea it meets is wild. Welcome to Ruby Beach, named for the tiny garnet-red grains that tint the sand a faint rose where the surf has sorted them. Sea stacks rise straight out of the breakers offshore, dark rock islands the waves haven't finished taking yet, going gray to black as the light shifts behind them. Driftwood the size of telephone poles lies piled in great silver tangles where the winter storms threw it. And down in the rocks at low tide, the pools fill with life — purple and orange sea stars, anemones that close around your shadow, little crabs scuttling sideways. A short, steep path drops from the lot down to the sand, so take it slow on the way down — and the first time the whole scene opens up below you, stacks and surf and silver wood all at once, it stops you cold. Before you wander out, though, I need you to respect this ocean, because it does not forgive carelessness. Pull up a tide chart on your phone before you go down — a rising tide out here can pin you between the surf and the headland with nowhere left to climb. Keep half an eye on the surf the whole time; the big waves run up the beach with no warning at all. And those huge drift logs — beautiful as they are, never sit on one or climb across it, because a single wave can heave a log that size and the weight of it takes lives every year. Go at low tide for the pools. Stay for sunset if you possibly can — there's nothing like it on this coast.
Photo: Ron Clausen · CC BY-SA 4.0
Ruby Beach is the northernmost and most-visited of the Kalaloch-area beaches, where Highway 101 swings close to the Pacific and a short trail drops you onto a wild shore of towering sea stacks, bleached driftwood piles, and surf-carved rock. It takes its name from the reddish, garnet-tinged sand that washes out of the bluffs. Just offshore, Abbey Island rises as a fog-wrapped landmark, while Destruction Island and its lighthouse sit on the horizon to the south.
The beach sits within Olympic National Park on the traditional lands of the coastal Quinault and Hoh peoples, part of a rare stretch of undeveloped Pacific wilderness coast. At lower tides you can pick along the rocks for sea stars, anemones, and other tide-pool life, scramble around the stacks, and reach the small creek mouth that cuts across the sand. Sunset, when the stacks silhouette against the sky and fog drifts through them, is the classic time to be here.
- • Getting there: signed pullout directly off US-101 about 27 miles south of Forks; a short, slightly steep trail (about 0.25 mile) leads down to the sand. Small main lot plus an overflow lot.
- • Time needed: 1 to 2 hours to wander the beach and stacks; more if you linger for sunset.
- • Tides: check a NOAA Kalaloch tide table before going. Lower (especially negative) tides expose more beach, tide pools, and safe footing around the stacks; never get trapped against the bluffs on a rising tide.
- • Fees: Olympic National Park entrance pass required ($30 per vehicle, valid 7 days).
- • Pets: leashed dogs (6-foot leash) are allowed here, one of the few Olympic exceptions, covering the Kalaloch beaches from Ruby Beach south. Best light is late afternoon to sunset; bring layers, as it is often foggy and cool.