Adventure on the Lost Coast
We headed up to the Lost Coast over the spring break. The Lost Coast is an 80 mile stretch of deserted beaches, creeks, and coves north of San Francisco and south of Eureka. While we the intent was to have an epic backpacking trip, poor planning got in the way of making the trip a total success. Regardless, we had a good time and learned a lot for future reference.
(Picture obtained from National Geographic)
We learned three major lessons. Some specifically about the Lost Coast and others generally about backpacking.
Lesson #1: Never rely on locals for information. Do your research ahead of time, or ask the local rangers.
Usually towns near backpacking/camping areas have a wealth of knowledge about the surrounding area and conditions, however, this was not the case for the town of Shelter Cove. Shelter Cove is located 2 hours from basically anywhere, and has the feeling of a strange ghost town, especially at night (ghost story will be saved for a future post).
The residents seem less than happy to help in any way. We stopped in several places to ask about the conditions, permits, and general information about the area. Each time the people seemed reluctant to give us any information, either because they did not know, or they did not want to share their information. The fact that the Lost Coast trail intersects through this town seemed more of a hinderance than a blessing. We may have just hit the town on a bad day, or totally went into the wrong places making our impression of the place skewed. Since it took so long to find the information that we needed to get going on our trip, it took away time that we could have used on the trail (see Lesson #2).
However, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) ranger was incredibly helpful when we got to the parking lot of the trailhead. My suggestion would be to stop at BLM headquarters on the way into Shelter Cove. The BLM headquarters are 40 minutes away from one of the main trailheads, so plan ahead.
The town during the day was gorgeous, although I do not recommend staying at that specific campground in the town. I would instead suggest hiking down to Black Sand Beach and camping there for the night. Here are some pictures of the town near the campground where we stayed.
(The lighthouse near the bluff. Originally this was in another town, but was moved to Shelter Cove)
(Anger...seemed fitting for the town)
Lesson #2: Allow enough time to do the entire route that you intended to do.
Allowing enough time really relies heavily on the planning you do beforehand. As you can probably guess from Lesson #1, we just sort of went for this trip as opposed to planning it out well. Both of us assumed the other person planned out the trip and knew what they were doing. When we got there, we realized our faux pas.
Originally we planned 3 days, 2 nights, and a 30 mile loop along the coast and up King's Peak. This plan totally would have worked if a couple things hadn't occurred. First, Sean's professor assigned a paper right before spring break that was due the Monday after spring break. Instead of getting back on Sunday, we needed to be back to San Francisco by Saturday. Second, we took our sweet time getting up to there and stopped several times (Russian River is Sean's kryptonite). We didn't get to the trailhead until Friday at 1 pm. This left us less than 24 hours.
After debating whether or not to go, we decided to go out on the trail anyways. The BLM ranger advised that we stay at Buck Creek around 5.2 miles away. This ended up being a beautiful campsite and totally worth it. We camped 100 yards from the ocean and 50 yards away from the creek with a fire ring to boot. I think its one of my favorite campsites ever.
(The creek right next to our campsite)
(Tent hidden away in the bushes)
(Camping shameless selfies)
Lesson #3: Never hike the impassable tide zones during high tide. In general, try to do your major mileage during low tide.
This lesson is based on the stupidest mistake we made. There are several stretches of the Lost Coast that are labeled "impassable during high tide". We both knew about these impassable zones before taking off. For whatever reason, neither of us grabbed a tide book though. We both assumed that people in the town would have them around (see Lesson #1).
Instead I snapped this photo of the tide chart at the park gate. What we both failed to realize is the subtext on the bottom which says "subtract 40 minutes"
Additionally, the we both couldn't figure out if the BLM ranger said that it would be fine if we got there by 3 pm, or if he said wait a bit at 3 pm before crossing this 2-3 mile zone. I looked at my photo and noticed that high tide was supposed to be at around 4:20 (I did not subtract the 40 minutes). Instead of being cautious, we just decided to go for it when we got there at 3:20 pm, especially because Buck Creek was only about a 1.5 miles into the zone. As it turns out, we hit the area right at high tide. Luckily for us, it was the low-high tide and we were able to find a high spot to wait it out before making it to Buck Creek.
(Waiting for high-tide to pass)
The next morning, we specifically hiked back at low-tide. Man, what a difference! The day before it was extremely difficult to hike over all the boulders and the soft sand. During low-tide, we were able to hike on the packed hard sand easily. We probably made it back to the car 40 minutes faster. Also, there was so much more to see at low-tide because so much of the beach was exposed.
(Sean next to a large, dead tree right on the beach)
(Hiking through the tide pools during low-tide)
(Surfers backpacking 7+ miles to Miller Creek, a great surf spot)
(We think it was some kind of boat engine part. There are lots of boat wrecks off the coast here)
Despite all the setbacks and lack of planning, it was an awesome trip. Definitely want to do the entire 80 miles someday soon and highly recommend going to this place.
