The Lost Coast Trail
Total distance: 25 mi
As part of our Northern California roadtrip, Tyler and I did a 3-day/2-night backpacking trip along the Lost Coast Trail.
This is a unique point-to-point trail along the Northern California coast – very literally along the coast, as you are walking on the beach right next to the ocean for much of the trail. We did the trail from north to south.
We started by driving to the end trailhead, Black Sands Beach, to park the car for when we finished the hike. Then, along with several other hikers, we got on a shuttle that would take us to the start of the hike at Mattole Beach. We started the shuttle ride around 12:45pm and arrived at Mattole Beach around 3pm.
Day 1 - Mattole Beach to Sea Lion Gulch
Distance: 4.5 mi
After arriving at the trailhead, we took a short rest to have a snack, apply sunscreen, and get our packs and hiking poles ready to begin the hike. We started hiking around 3:15pm. On the first day, we only had a relatively short distance, 4.5 mi, to cover before reaching our first campsite.
The hike started along the beach, right on the sand. We saw some interesting shells on the beach, as well as a very large amount of birds on the rocks!
After about an hour and a half, we came to the Punta Gorda Lighthouse, an abandoned historical lighthouse from the early 1900s. We were able to go inside and up the tower to have a look around at the coastal views.
We continued on and reached camp at Sea Lion Gulch not too long afterwards. I was disappointed to find that there were no sea lions at this time of year. We had a bit of trouble finding a good campsite, because Sea Lion Gulch is a relatively small campsite and we were some of the last hikers to arrive at the campsite for the day (many of them had taken an earlier shuttle and arrived hours before us). We ended up with a pretty slanted and cramped campsite, but we managed ok.
Day 2 - Sea Lion Gulch to Big Flat
Distance: 12 mi
On the second day, we had to get an early start, since we needed to hike through the first major “impassable zone.” The impassable zones are sections of the trail which are underwater or unsafe to pass through at high tide. We had a 4 mile section of trail to hike before 10am when the tide would rise too high. We quickly made some coffee and oatmeal and started hiking by 7am.
We successfully reached the end of the impassable zone around 9:15am, in plenty of time before the tide came in. We took a rest at Randall Creek, with some relief that we could now take our time for the rest of the day.
We continued onwards, and by noon, we had already covered 8 of the 12.5 miles for the day. Since it was so early, we took a nice lunch break on a log on the beach, watched the waves, and read our books for a while. It was still a bit foggy, but it had lifted somewhat.
We started hiking again around 1pm and soon came across some bear tracks in the sand!
By 2pm, we were started to slow down a bit and my feet were starting to hurt some after 10+ miles of hiking. We trudged into Big Flat camp around 3:30pm, having completed around 2/3 of the entire trail by this point.
We then set up camp in a nice, soft, shaded, flat campsite (in contrast to the previous day). We spent the rest of the afternoon/evening reading in our camp chairs and chatting with other hikers.
Day 3 - Big Flat to Black Sands Beach
Distance: 8.5 mi
Day 3 started with a similarly early start to the previous day through the second major impassable zone. This time, we had around 5 miles to cover before 10:30am. We started hiking around 7am again.
I had fun looking in some of the tide pools, since it was low tide.
This impassable zone contained the hardest sections of hiking of the trail, in my opinion, since much of it was on medium to large sized rocks. The difficult terrain caused us to move a bit slower on those sections, around 1-1.5 mph compared to the usual 2 mph. However, we still reached the end of the impassable zone at Gitchell Creek in time.
Today, we had decided to put off coffee and oatmeal until reaching the end of the impassable zone after seeing some others do that on the previous day. I pulled out the bear can and cooking supplies, and Tyler brewed some pourover coffee.
We got back to hiking along the foggy beach and bluffs. At this point, we were only < 4mi from the end of the trail.
As we were hiking, a coyote came out from behind some driftwood and onto the trail! We also saw many more sea birds, including this stately pelican.
We reached the end of the trail at Black Sands Beach at 1:45pm. Tyler was ready to keep hiking and didn’t notice that the trail was over until I called out that he was missing the turn off. We took a few last minutes to enjoy the beach scenery, and then exited the trail and went to go get some post-hike pizza.
Highlights
I enjoyed the remote nature of the trail, seeing the wildlife (starfish, deer, birds, a coyote, bear (tracks)), and relaxing by the ocean.
Challenges
The impassable zones were the trickiest part of the trail, since they required careful planning and timing, based on the tide predictions for the current day. To do this hike, we had to lookup the tide charts and plan the hiking and campsites around the tide. It was rather stressful having to wake up early and hike very quickly, or risk being stuck in the impassable zone.
