After dropping Shawn off back at Burney Falls and spending one more night there, I returned to the coast to look around the town of Arcata a bit and prepare for a one night backpacking trip in the King Range National Conservation Area, also known as the lost coast. It's the one stretch of the California coastline that doesn't have a road running anywhere close to it, probably because the King range mountains practically shoot out of the sea - the range reaches 4,000' elevation just a few miles from the beach. Unfortunately this didn't provide the epic views of the ocean that I had hoped for because of the fog that blankets it, as can be seen in the background of the ridgeline trail photo above. After securing a waterproof topographic map and renting a bear canister (a container for your food that bears can't get into), I drove into the mountains on access roads to a trailhead. I did a ~25 mi loop that started and finished up in the hills, breaking it up by camping on a bluff at the mouth of stream flowing into the ocean. The going was tough - often either walking on sand or up and down steep switchbacks, but it was rewarding; I saw a whopping 5 other people in 2 days and 25 mi of hiking.
A beach surrounded by pretty legitimate wilderness.
I was walking down this road in a broad flat plain between the mountains and ocean, wondering why it had three tire tracks to it. Then I saw the windsock and realized that it was a runway for bush planes providing transport to the isolated beach house to the left of this photo. Good thing no one was trying to land. Also, can you imagine having a beach house so remote it's accessible only by foot or airplane?
Whale rib on the beach. There was all kinds of interesting stuff washed up on the shore.
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