Mattole Beach to Punta Gorda Lighthouse

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Chris and I got up about 5:30am to start the long drive, picking up three of our friends along the way to driving to Black Sands Beach trailhead in Shelter Cove- a good five hour drive all by itself. We only stopped in Willits for a brief lunch at a Mexican restaurant before getting more gas and continuing our drive. The other four people not in our car were also making good time. We arrived at the trailhead just in time for our 1:30pm shuttle with Lost Coast Adventures. The plan was to leave our cars here at the Black Sands trailhead, shuttle north, and then backpack the 26mi towards our cars over the next four days. The shuttle ride itself was a long, windy 2 hours across mountain roads- many dirt and strewn with rubble. Definitely passed some interesting sites, like a wooden trailer house on a truck and an old truck literally suspended from the trees like it was floating.

We made it to our trailhead shortly before 4pm. Last chance to use a legit pit toilet for four days and made last minute readjustments to our gear. Half of us had backpacking experience and the other half had very minimal experience from years ago. So I was hoping everyone and everything would work together well- or well enough, at least. My main concern was the tide on this first day. It was supposed to be high tide at 5:30pm and we had one small "impassable section" to get past today at Punta Gorda. I didn't know how difficult it would be to get past so close to high tide or if there would be good campsites before it if we did get stuck. I even went so far as to email the BLM office the week before for advice. It was one of those weird situations where it could screw us over, I knew it was impassable sometimes but there were zero blog entries or trip reports from backpackers online about actually getting stuck there. So I was praying it would be a non-issue.

The first mile or so we trekked on dry sand and it was thigh and calf-burning awful. I think we all questioned our sanity. Then we moved over to the wet sand and it got much better. We easily did the first couple miles to the first impassable zone- and it was totally passable, even at an hour before high tide! I had worried the past couple weeks over nothing ofcourse. We walked on and past the lighthouse. We passed by a few groups of sea lions, one even creeping up on us as we watched- I creeped back in response.

Our goal had been to trek as far as Sea Lion Gulch, which is right before the next four mile impassable zone, but we were worried about running out of campable sites for such a large group. The nearby driftwood structures were already occupied- not that we had planned to sleep in them out of fear for rattlesnakes. We trekked by one beachside spot I thought would be level and big enough for us all to sprawl out in, and also near a small spring. Ultimately, that ended up being our chosen site since trekking further meant climbing up into the grasses again, and it looked less campable up there.

The nice thing was it was already high tide, so we didn't have to worry about accidentally camping too close to the water. We already knew how high it would get! So we set up tents, made our dinner and passed around a whiskey flask, watching the sunset.

The only crazy thing that happened this entire trip happened the first night. Sometime around 1am we woke up to one of the guys in our group shouting at his wife to wake up. It was the terror in his voice that startled us all out of our half sleep, unsure whether to leave our tents or not as we tried to assess the situation in the dark. After the third time he yelled, I called out from our tent- "Do you need help?" I was already sitting, ready to jump out of my tent towards theirs. Maybe she took a medication she shouldn't have? Maybe he's having a bad dream? There's no effing way should could have died, right?! But my mind was spinning in nurse mode as I started thinking about tides, running four miles down the trail in the dark and whether or not there was a phone at the Mattole trailhead. After a pause, he replied, "She woke up- it's ok." I was a little shaken up but I went back to the half sleep backpackers get. In the morning I asked what happened, and he said she had fainted- probably from it being too warm in the tent. But also, she had a history of fainting I hadn't known about. I told him next time to just yell at me to come over there, I don't mind. Besides, there's four nurses and a pharmacist on this trip, and two people in the military! He's got back up =)

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