Lost Coast Trail
Short videos reel here! https://youtu.be/1bhy2wgScv4
The Lost Coast Trail is a ~25 mile coast-line hike in wayy northern California that is often included in lists like “top USA hikes” or “once in a lifetime backpacking trips”. Expectedly, permits — which are very cheap and available through BLM and released once a year — are very difficult to come by for good weekend dates in the summer. Luckily, one of my friends secured some spots and I got to join!
Unfortunately, this hike came with a lot of logistical planning requirements. Well deserving of its name, the closest major airport is 4–5 hours from either of the trailheads by car (though you do get to drive through some gorgeous redwood forests). Because it is far from some major roads, this is a point to point trail where the trailheads are 1.5+ hours apart by car. On top of all of this, the trail is on the coast. And I mean directly on the sand, which limits the times during which you can continue your hike. Close to half of the trail is supposedly impassable during high tide. It’s easy to start out and say, I want to hike x miles on this day! But it’s hard to predict what the trail conditions and your body conditions will be like, so you have to come up with a schedule that is both flexible and tide-friendly.
Many people hike north (Mattole River) to south (Black Sands beach, Shelter Cove). I think the wind is supposed to be better in your favor that way, maybe? Some people do what is called a yo-yo to avoid having to deal with the hassle of getting back to the other trailhead. ~50 round trip: Mattole to Black Sands back to Mattole or the other way around.
If you will not be driving up with two cars, you’ll have to utilize shuttles that cost $100 per person, not including tip. We used Lost Coast Shuttles, but there is also Bill’s Shuttle services and some other one I forget! During the popular seasons, the shuttles will be running constantly throughout the day as a shared van so 1–3 people groups should have no trouble finding a shuttle. During the less popular seasons though, these vans have a 4 person minimum for a new van booking. Depending on when you arrive and your shuttle time, you’ll either want to camp near Shelter Cove and head up in the morning or heading right up to Mattole and camping there on/by the beach.
Reading all the AllTrails reviews, we figured navigating around the impassable zones would be tricky and the ‘dinosaur egg sized’ rock fields a treacherous trek. We thought we could finish the hike in three days, but decided to play safe and plan for a four day hike.
Day 0: We left San Francisco at around 11AM and headed to Shelter Cove, where we were planning to leave the car prior to the start of the trip. There is a small grocery store that sells a lot of backpacking equipment (they know their audience) and food! A pretty small and cozy place, but it had just about anything I could think of minus actual big gear. There isn’t too much to do in Shelter Cove, so we dropped by the lighthouse and headed back early to our campsite. You aren’t allowed to camp at Black Sands beach even if you have the permit for the trail.
The closest campsite is Wailaki (~15 min drive) and is a BLM managed campground. Walk-in only, $8 cash payment. No potable water, yes fire rings, yes pit toilets, yes picnic benches. A huge yes to a lot of mosquitos too, though.
Day 1: We hopped on the 8AM shuttle after using the flush toilets at the trailhead. There weren’t any open parking spots in the parking lot so we headed back out and down the hill that we had just come down and found some street parking to the left. There were bear-proof trash cans at the parking lot, which made us worry about any scented/food items left in the car. To be safe we ended up dumping all the extra food that we had brought.The shuttle driver was cheery and talked through the whole trip, acting as our tour guide for the area — or so I am told. I slept for the whole ride, which I think is an impressive feat given the bumpy ride.
The same driver let our car know that there were a whole lot of seals playing by the Mattole River shores that heads half a mile in the opposite direction from the trail, so we headed on over. We saw nothing special. We did see lots of seals a few miles into the trail, though.
We realized that for parts of the way, there was a ‘higher’ path that went over more solid ground away from the sand. We opted to take those whenever we could, but the downside was the ridiculous poison oak that plagued the area.
The path was usually sand, sandy dirt, dirt, or melon sized rocks — I’d say a pretty equal distribution between all of them.
We covered a lot more ground than we thought because we got to Cooksie Creek in the early afternoon. The campsites here are probably the nicest you will find, but we decided to continue on to get past the impassable zones for tomorrow. We got to Randall Creek (8.8 mi) and still we could have gone on but decided to take it easy.
Streams are abundant the whole way through, so you really never have to be carrying a full liter of water at any given point. More of a problem than the poison oak, the dinosaur egg rocks, and the tides was the crazy wind that was blowing in our faces the whole time. Apparently this was more of a one-off event but without my sunglasses my eyeballs would have been pretty dry.
Randall Creek has a campsite on the sand by the beach, a campsite on a rather slanted part of the hill on the northern side, and two campsites up on the hill immediately south of the creek. We opted for the more scenic spot on the southern side hill. We were worried about not having enough protection from the winds and sea spray, but it ended up being totally fine for us! The biggest issue really was the lack of coverage and the resulting lack of bathroom options.
Day 2: We got up around 7AM — in no rush to get out of any impassable zones before high tide, since we had just gotten out of it the night before. This might have been Day 1 (they are all the same) but at some point we came across a fenced area with the LCT trail sign pointing down to the beach. The way down wasn’t an easy hop — so we had one person go down without their pack and pass down all our packs to climb down safely.
Later though, we did see some people who had ignored the sign and continued on the higher route, and they seem to have made it okay, so it seems like there was a path after all. Day 2 had a lot of the similar views as that of Day 1. We saw some deer (or deer like animals) by the beach, a rock maze courtesy of some bored hiker, and some different streams, but otherwise there wasn’t too much variation.
In fact, once you hit the halfway point of the trail, you can start seeing Shelter Cove in the distance. And for the remainder of the hike, you continue to see Shelter Cove in the distance. Thankfully though, the relentless wind from Day 1 was gone and replaced by blue skies.
We got to Gitchell Creek (20.4mi) in the early afternoon, but by then my grandma hips were in pain from the constant angle that I was walking at. Plus, we weren’t planning to drive back that day and we definitely didn’t want to camp at Wailaki with the mosquitos so we made camp here. There is a wide sandy area for camping, but there is also one spot past all the fallen logs and up the creek that is sheltered by trees and hills that is gorgeous. We took that one.
The black sands were so toasty and warm we hung out there and looked for circular rocks, which was surprisingly easy. The small pool that forms in the middle of the fallen logs was also supposed to be quite instagrammable but the weather wasn’t really our friend in the evening.
Day 3: We crushed the last four miles early in the morning with the exact same view that we had seen for most of Day 2.
LCT was a thoroughly enjoyable hike, but I thought it got kind of boring view-wise. It probably would have been more fun during a hotter day where the beach was of more use to us.
