The Lost Coast Trail. Partners wanted.

Super busy that weekend. My partner and I could not find a spot to camp and split up and begged a corner of two kindly other groups. Had to hike 4 miles further than we would have liked. I know all the little hidden camps and they were all occupied. In contrast the ridge campgrounds were empty. I would go any other weekend but that one.

Ken

Thanks for the heads up. I was thinking that if I got on the trail by Thur that I'd be ahead of the crowd. Since it's so early in planning I think I'll take your advice and go the week after.

Don

I've set firm dates. Thur May 28-Mon June 1. Here's my schedule if anyone wants to join.

The crowd on the northern half approach from both ends. Tough to get ahead of them.

How do you plan to get from Shelter Cove to the other trailhead? It's a steep, nasty 3.5 mile road walk out of Shelter Cove to get to the Hidden Valley trailhead. You'll have to carry that bear canister through the BLM section before the Sinkyone section, where you are not required to have one.

There are plenty of reasons why most hikers only do the northern section.

What time do you expect to get to Usal? Neither shuttle will drive in the dark. The trip from Usal to Mattole will take more than 3 hours.

It's an hour forty five from Shelter Cove to Mattole.

I think your schedule is incredibly optimistic.
Once you leave 101 the driving slows way down. I live 48 miles from Mattole. Takes me an hour and a half at least in good weather.

Ken,

I think you're absolutely right. I was just thinking about the tight schedule getting up there, parking and shuttling up to Mattole on the first day. I've modified my plans a little. I'm going to leave Wed night after work and drive about 4-6 hrs depending on how I feel. Either car camp, sleep in my truck or stay at a friend's in the Bay Area. Be on the road by 7am on Thur to make to Usal around 2pm. I'll leave the Bay Area by 5am if I need to make it to Usal in time for a shuttle.

Don

Ken,

I was planning on just walking to reach the 3.5 miles. :-( I'm not looking forward to it but had planned on it. I planned on carrying my canister the entire time.

Do you think it's safe to hitchike this section if a driver comes by? Not sure if there's much traffic through that area.

Hitching is pretty common. I once picked up th ranger for the Sinkyone. He said he got from Garberville to the park in three rides and that he never waited more than 10 minutes for a ride. YMMV.

Hi All,

I have a shuttle reserved to do Lost Coast- southern trail on Friday, June 17th, 2016, 9 am. Pick up will be Usal Beach Campground and drop off will be Needle Rock. Full cost $475. Have 2 folks now, can do up to 9 so anyone interested let me know and we will divide evenly.

Thanks,

D

My boyfriend and I are doing the northern section of the Lost Coast Trail (SOBO) this Thursday (9/15) through Sunday (9/18). Anyone else planning on something similar? We were contemplating using a shuttle service, but they’re a bit too pricey for just 2 people. We’d love to split the cost with others! :)

Good luck Bri! Well, I guess you’re back by now. What did you end up doing for a shuttle? Some friends hiked the beach section in July and said that they had trouble booking with Sherry of Lost Coast Shuttles. They said the communication was sparse but it sounded like there was a loss in the family and she wasn’t really doing business currently. I had a great experience with her so I hope she’s doing better now.

Hey! Well…I got off work at 3am, we drove separate cars 5 hours south, parked my car at the terminus and drove his car 2 hours to the beginning. The trail was amazing and eerie and warm. It never rained. We only got lost once when we tried to pass the “always impassible zone” in the dark at 5am (our crappy map from REI didn’t have an “always impassible zone” label, so we were caught off guard and got a bit wet). The sunsets and sunrises were incredible. Taking mid-day naps while waiting for the tides to change was great for me, being a chronically tired nightshifter. But on our last morning we were 2 miles from my car and my boyfriend said, “You’ve got your car key?” At that moment I realized I’d left it in his car at the beginning. Yep… I’d been so sleep deprived, I made THAT mistake. We were stranded in Shelter Cove for 9 hours before I finally had to suck it up and pay $510 for a shuttle to take us to his car. We went with the only shuttle company that would answer their phones, but I can’t remember the name at the time. Blue owns Lost Coast Shuttle Adventures (I think that’s the name), and charges half that, but we’d actually met him out on the trail, so we knew he wasn’t available. Our driver was very nice and had a lot of fun stories about the history of the marijuana industry in that area.

Unfortunately, we’d encountered some sketchy drugged out drunk people at Black Sands Beach (we found out later the police were looking for them), and some of our encounters with a few locals just felt off. Despite having sat around the coffee shop in town for hours talking to these locals about our situation, it was only after we’d paid the $510 that people said they would’ve taken us for half that amount. I’m still having nightmares about that town. It felt sketchy, despite consisting of multimillion dollar homes. It was a “protect your own” kind of town. Plus, I did not want to be get stranded near these big illegal marijuana farms out in the boonies. I don’t think I’ll do that trail again, simply because the locals weirded me out (a few of them were awesome and did everything they could to help us, but the weird ones are painted the picture of the town for me).

Having said that, my boyfriend wants to do it again and, despite my mistake, he had a great time.

Also, the wind was cold at night, so I’m very glad we brought the HMG Ultamid 4  the sand stakes worked fine, mostly. We actually got a tighter pitch using rocks, which are plentiful there. I attachded my favorite pic of the trip.

I hope your trip (or shuttle adventure) goes more smoothly. If you’re looking for a hiking partner, PM me and I can send you my boyfriend’s email.

I hadn’t heard about the “weird” people there.

Maybe do an out and back from the north end?

Some day I’m going to do this, but it’s a long drive from Portland.  Maybe some day the weather will be good there, but rainy further north where it’s closer.

Jerry, maybe we just caught the town on an off day.

We drove down from Medford area, and I got a bit nervous because it had rained on us in Crescent City and again near Eureka.  But we lucked out. No rain.

We met some people who had yo-yoed it, but I don’t think I’d want to do that because of the wind; it was always in our favor going northbound.

I thought the Marijuana growing was inland from, like, Eureka, towards Weaverville

According to our shuttle driver, it’s all over in that are. To get to the trailhead you have drive inland from an area past eureka through these woods and farmlands. You’ll see super tall fences, a few of them were nearly a mile long and who knows how deep. You can get big wifs of it driving down to the trailhead. It was very weird, coming from a place where people grow their marijuana out in the open (Definitely not to this scale, though).

@bwrightback

Bri,

Your assessment of some of the locals is dead on. Definitely that’s an aspect of that area of Northern CA but there are also a lot of great people too. Oh no, what an amazing experience. Funny thing is my friends that hiked it this past July had a similar experience of spending about 12 hours in town. They had planned on thru hiking but decided to bail out in town but their vehicle was at Usal. They had to wait until 2am until the shuttle driver could get to them in town.

I would definitely consider doing the southern section sometime. I enjoyed it more than the beach section.