The Lost Coast

Finding her muse waterfall by slogging a remote and rocky Humboldt County short

By EVE HIGHTOWER
ehightower@modbee.com

last updated: September 23, 2007 07:28:49 AM

Long before I owned a pair of hiking boots, I saw a photo in a travel magazine of water gushing out of a lush forest, cascading down a series of rounded boulders and out to sea.

I was about 12 years old, and the caption about a long hike and total seclusion seemed adventurous and dreamy, the sort of place my parents would never find me. I could run away and become a hermit.

The memory of that image has inspired every hike I've done. I thought maybe someday I'd find a similar hidden majestic waterfall, something

worth backpacking three days in sand and over slippery rocks to see. I have encountered spectacular scenes, but nothing like my muse waterfall.

My husband and I vacation with another couple every year. These aren't those lie-around-in-a-seaside-resort-and-meditate kind of vacations. These are tests of endurance.

This year, we set out to find that waterfall. Our search took us to the "Lost Coast" in Humboldt County. The Lost Coast is a remote stretch of Pacific seashore in the King Range National Conservation Area, just across the Mendocino County line. As the crow flies, the park is about 10 miles from Garberville on the busy

Highway 101 corridor that runs through the redwoods to Oregon.

Sources vary on the exact length of the trail. The global positioning system we used put it at 27 miles. The Lost Coast itself is about 80 miles of shoreline so rugged that crews building Highway 1 in the 1920s were forced to turn the road eastward and merge it with Highway 101.

The terrain is wildly varied along the Lost Coast. There are black beaches, white beaches, slippery rocks, dusty trails over hills covered with blond grasses, poppies and lupin. There are also trails that lead away from the beach into the cool, lush forest with brooks babbling over mossy rocks.

The Lost Coast is home to a diversity of animals: bears, deer, elk, otters, sea lions, seals and sea anemones and starfish that wash ashore, just to name a few that we saw.

We drove to Mendocino County on a Thursday night, stayed in a hotel and drove to the Lost Coast Trail in Humboldt County the next day. We left one of our vehicles at the trail's end (Black Sands Beach near the coastal village of Shelter Cove), then took the winding, mostly paved road to the mouth of the Mattole River.

It was late Friday afternoon by the time we loaded our packs on our backs and set out -- metal utensils jingling out of reach behind us. We hiked about four miles on sand, then trail, then sand again, and reached camp just as the sky began to darken.

We climbed into Punta Gorda Lighthouse and watched a spectacularly beautiful sunset, as though colored by a child using the big box of Crayola crayons with shades of laser lemon, outrageous orange and atomic tangerine exploding from a backdrop of cerulean and midnight blues.

We slept in tents inside a partially open-top shanty of smooth driftwood. The shanty shielded us from wind but would not have been strong enough to keep a bear or other animal out if it wanted in.

We left our bear-proof canisters full of food and toiletries and my backpack in a neighboring shelter. The water bottle I'd filled with wine was jostled open during the hike. The smell of fermented grapes coaxed a curious raccoon to search my pack that night. He shredded some of my clothes and half a roll of toilet paper. We'd already downed the wine.

The next morning, we skipped breakfast in order to make it past the beach before high tide. At about 11 a.m., the tide forced us to rest. In fog that refused to lift and kept us cold and damp, we had a brunch of energy bars and tea heated with a small camping stove.

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