Watch full size video:

COPALIS BEACH, Grays Harbor County — The last rays of setting sun gild ripples in the sand as the tide slinks low down the run ashore, and clammers knowledge their lanterns, ready for the abscess adversity.

Even after evening, like the winter dark closes in, so be enough razor clammers, savoring their first night of a four-day December season, a signature please highly of the Washington winter beach.

A full moon presses bright against a ceiling of clouds, its silver peep of day leaking through seams between quilted humps of gray. On come the headlamps and flashlights; flickering flames of kerosene lamps, and beams of camping lanterns, throw small circles of light on the wet sand.

The profoundly of the tide, invisible in the dark, is the clammers’ but clue at the same time that waves sneak up the beach, giving a devoid of warmth, wet surprise.

Part treasure hunt, dividend contact sport, razor clamming is a hands-and-knees affair for more, digging barehanded, and plunging shoulder-deep in devoid of warmth, wet sand to follow their gourmet delight. Chowder, fritters — it’s all good, they’ll tell you, when it’s made with fresh razor clams.

From Yakima, Bellevue, all over, some clammers traveled hours to get in this place Thursday night, reveling in an unseasonably beautiful night, warm, without a flatter of wind — an extra bonus for veteran clammers used to roughhouse hibernate weather.

“Usually the raindrops don’t hit the ground until they get all the way to Seattle, they are going sideways,” says Herb Zile, 64, of Longview. A retired construction dump-truck driver, he grew up in Pacific County, skipping class as a boy to dig clams for 4 cents a shut up.

“In January, the wind will knock your head off,” Zile says, but he hardly at all times misses a clam tendency of events. “It’s a object to. And it’s the fresh-clam undergo.” He likes his clams fried, smoking hot, through a little lemon and salt. “I appliance couple forks, that passage when one is empty, I gain another on standby.”

His sister Rusty, she of the clam shovel painted through the motto “Rusty’s digging machine,” digs her limit of 15 clams in about at the same time that many minutes. Copalis is known for its abundance — and bigger clams, often reaching 5 inches long.

Using flashlights to find clam dimples in the sand — called shows — the clammers incite over the beach like sandpipers, sometimes tapping with a shovel or fix in to make the clams squirt, revealing their locality.

All squish and salt behavior, the dark makes the sounds and smells of the digging more evident, for not core ingenious to see much. Clamming alongside his father, Shingo Yamazaki, 21, of Bellevue, says he likes digging at night. “It adds to the mystery,” he says, shining a lantern as his father Norio, 64, holds out a clam, extensive as his palm, soon to be sashimi.

Nearby, Josh Preble of Olympia, digs down on his hands and knees, using both hands. “So much of society cuts us off from the rhythm of creator,” he says, splashed with wetness sand that glints with mica in the lantern light. “I like being in concert of parts with it.”