I contacted them by email a couple weeks out and asked to be worked into another group since I was solo. I rode with Lost Coast Shuttle and give them a huge, glowing recommendation. I parked my rental car at the southern tail head (Black Sands Beach in Shelter Cove) and caught a shuttle up to the Mattole trail head. That specific one will be out of date when you are looking, so just Google for it. I like this one quite a bit because it offers a visual of the tide levels. Get a tide table from a BLM office or look it up online. I knew they existed and could even tell you why they happen ( you can’t explain that!), but had never given thought to them. The mountains are right up against the beach here and will indeed block your progress until low tide.īeing someone that has only lived in landlocked places, tides were a whole new thing for me. The other two marked stretches are 4 and 4.5 miles of beach hiking that will at times come to very narrow points along the beach. It might be the case that you can’t walk along the beach, but this area has a trail that heads up onto a flat that will allow you to pass.
The first one is right by the Punta Gorda Lighthouse and I don’t think its one you need to be concerned with. Maps of the area will mark three sections of the trail that are impassable at high tide. There are several sections of the trail that hug right against the ocean and become impassable at high tide. Day 3 was a half day hike of the remaining miles back to Shelter Cove.Įven though the route is only 25-ish miles long I couldn’t have done it a whole lot faster than the 3 days / 2 nights that I spent on the coast. Weather forecasts change quickly so bring some type of rain gear. This area gets almost 120 inches of rain a year so I don’t think that was too unusual a day, even in the summer. It was never hard, but it rained from 9am to 3pm steadily. I started late on day 1 and only put about 4 miles in before setting up camp in a very cool spot just South of the lighthouse. Bring your water treatment of choice, but water shouldn’t be a problem. Water: There are lots of streams that bring water out of the mountains on to the beach.Maps: There are some available from BLM, but I grabbed this one from Amazon so I could plan things out.However, since canisters have been enforced for a while now they aren’t aggressive. I didn’t see any bears, but was told that they are plentiful – even on the beach. Poke around the shelter for snakes before you settle in. There are a good number of driftwood “shelters” set up along the beach and up on the flats. It’s BLM wilderness land so the whole trail is open to camping.
#Matthew schwartz free#
A free permit is required – they are self service and available at either trail head.25-ish miles south bound from Mattole back to Shelter Cove.Even though there isn’t much in the way of trail markers its impossible to get lost: if you’re walking south keep the ocean on your right. The Lost Coast Trail is 2/3rds beach and gravel hiking along with a third of actual “trail” that occasionally heads up on flats overlooking the beach. In the last few days of June 2012 I flew from Austin to San Jose and headed north to give it a go. The “Lost Coast” is this remaining track of unspoiled wilderness area. The construction workers decided that the rest of the coast was impassable and gave up trying to forge a path through the mountains. A four-ish hour drive up the 101 from San Francisco followed by a 45 minute westward dive down winding mountain roads leads you to Shelter Cover, CA – the southern trailhead for this journey.Ĭalifornia’s Highway 1 snakes up the Pacific coast until it hits the King Mountain Range. The Lost Coast of California is 80 miles of the most remote ocean front coast in the United States.
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