Time to go hiking. Next up: California.

Cindy, my road trip partner from the April eclipse and Big Bend hike arrived in town this morning after a very early drive from Portland, and Lace, a friend and former work colleague, came from a few neighborhoods over. The three of us piled backpacks, car snacks, and selves into Cindy’s Corola, and we were off for a tide-driven walk along the northern California coast.

Have you heard of the Lost Coast Trail? Lost is accurate, for a large percentage of the hike is under water due to tides, and hikers must plan their walks along long stretches of narrow beach carefully. Very carefully. On this trip, we would have the added gauntlet of breeding elephant seals. Really! An alert had been sent out warning us of these massive creatures and their anger. Added to the normal challenges of deep sand walking, wet rock hopping, poison oak laden trails around pinch points, and those short tide windows, and we were looking at an exercise in scheduling for this 25-mile hike.

I know! 25 miles isn’t a lot! But it will take us almost three days to put the puzzle pieces of challenges together. Let’s go!

Not long after driving into California, we popped out at the coast in Crescent City. This was the Cresent City of the Bigfoot Trail, the western terminus that is. The Bigfoot Trail is one of my trail clients this year…their 360-mile trail through 7 wilderness areas in the rugged Klamath Mountains wanted some help, so I did a through analysis of their trail materials and surveyed many of their stakeholder groups to produce a 40-page report of findings and recommendations for how they can shore things up and meet their goals. Great fun! This is what I want to do for all trails! The next step will be helping them implement some of those suggestions if we can find funding…I’m figuring out the whole business of trails things. It’s exciting, and I’ve taken the attitude of learning-by-doing.

The learning-by-doing nature of the Loast Coast Trail will include short stretches of hiking and long stretches of hanging out, looking at the high tide, and snacking. It’s very hikertrash of me to be thinking about the snacks on this short hike, but hey… you can take the hiker off the trail, but you can’t take the hikertrash out of the hiker.

We arrived at Shelter Cove, where we would meet our shuttle driver in the morning, and set up our tents at the campground perched near the sea. Next, dinner. We made our way over to the nearby pub for beers and dinner. Shelter Cove is a bit of a misnomer. By looking at a map, it seemed neither sheltered nor a cove…at least where the campground was. In fact, a post dinner hike revealed many houses too close to the ocean that I feared for their future in rising seas. But today the cliffs held and we luxuriate in a glorious sunset….the first of the trip!

Bedtime to the roiling sound of the sea.

P.S. There is indeed a cove at Shelter Cove, south of the campground. The maps are right 😄