Thursday, September 12, 2013

The Lost Coast

From Prairie Creek I started making my way to The Lost Coast. The Lost Coast is a ~50 mile stretch of largely undeveloped coast line that begins about 20 miles south of Eureka. The story goes that when engineers were plotting the route of Highway 101, they decided that the region was too mountainous and therefore too expensive to build a road in. As a result the highway swings inland around this piece of coastline, and it is hidden from the bulk of tourist and commuter traffic. There are no resorts or hotels; not even a supermarket.

Before I reached the mountains, I stopped in Arcata for a few hours. I cruised by the Humboldt State campus, stopped at a food stand for a delicious Nigerian lunch, hung out in the library for an hour and a half, and stopped at a bike shop to get a new rear view mirror. I started the trip with two mirrors. One was a concave mirror I picked up way back in Fairbanks that can be mounted in the end of handlebars. I didn't like it. With drop handlebars like most road bikes have, it's difficult to position the mirror so that it's not blocked by the rider's left arm. Even once it was in position, I could only use it when my head was in the right place, and never when I stood up on the pedals. Furthermore, my paniers blocked part of the view in that mirror, making it impossible to see cars that hugged the fog line until they were close behind me.

I bought a second mirror in Haines that could be mounted on a visor or riding glasses. I liked this mirror better, but it still had some problems. I didn't have a visor on my helmet, so I attached the mirror to my riding glasses. With it mounted on my riding glasses the mirror was very close to my eye. When I positioned the mirror far enough to the left to see past my head, it was nearly in the same plane as my face, so I really had to strain my eyes to look into it. Furthermore, I switched between clear and shaded glasses, and occasionally rode with no glasses at all. As a result I was constantly having to switch the mirror between glasses or ride without it. Somewhere in Oregon I was riding with no glasses and the mirror fell out of my handlebar bag without me noticing, lost forever. By the time I reached Arcata I'd lost the handlebar mirror too: although it held up for quite awhile, eventually it got bumped too hard and a piece of the mount cracked. I noticed, but didn't care enough to fix it. At some point the mirror rattled loose and fell off without me noticing.

The mirror I got in Arcata met all my desires. It simply sticks onto a helmet with an adhesive pad, and is mounted on a flexible wire arm. It's easy to position properly, and gives a good rear-view. Somewhat to my surprise, the adhesive held up well too. Although many tourists ride without mirrors, relying on their hearing to alert them to approaching cars (and even identify the type of truck and weight of load they're hauling), I like to use the mirror to check if cars are crowding me or hauling an extra wide load.

From Arcata I made it to a campground just at the base of the climb to the lost coast and rolled out my sleeping bag under the stars. In the morning, I pedaled up the 1500 climb into a pass in the King Mountains. The road was narrow, but had almost no traffic (apart from a handful of log trucks coming down the hill). I had a grand time pedaling up it, and even turned off on a side road and pedaled along a ridge once I got to the top, enjoying the view of forests for miles all around.

From there I started the descent. Although not as harrowing as the decent into Pemberton, it was steep enough to keep my attention, and I rode the brakes the whole way down. The road was rough too, leading to one flat tire. I'd picked up a puncture proof tube a few days earlier, so I put that on and continued on my way. The tube ended up performing very well, putting an end to my flat tires on the rear wheel.

Once I got down the hill to the coast I was rewarded with something I didn't think existed in California: beaches and trees as far as I could see, without a house in sight. The only development around was an occasional fence containing a handful of livestock, apparently left largely unattended. There was no cell phone service in this area, not even in the one town I passed through. The coast truly was lost. Wonderful!

I made camp at the only campground on that stretch of road: a rather unattractive sand pit with a dozen parking spaces and flat tent sites. But hidden just on the other side of a sand dune was an absolutely magnificent sandy beach, almost devoid of people. I walked for three hours on that beach, enjoying the isolation.
The lost coast as the fog rolls in.


I stayed up for awhile that night, enjoying the hospitality of my camp neighbors who generously shared an enormous raw oyster with me, the went to bed. In the morning I got up early and headed on into the mountains guarding the way back to the highway. This hill was 2500 feet, and I loved it. It was still decently cool while I climbed it, and I felt good. The descent was fun too. The road was rough and I popped my front tube once when I failed to avoid a put hole, but otherwise the descent was graceful and enjoyable. As the road finally leveled out at the bottom, I found myself back in the redwoods.

The trees were even bigger here than in Prairie Creek State Park. The largest over 360 feet tall, the trees squeeze the small road to the lost coast, coming right to the edge of the pavement in many places. It appears that the road was built around the trees, as it weaves back and forth between them. At least I hope that's the case. This is the Avenue of the Giants, I realized, as I pedaled along slowly, awestruck. I'd been told that I had to see this place, and I am grateful that I did.

To be completely accurate, the road to the lost coast intersects with the Avenue of the Giants about ten miles from where it enters the redwoods, so I wasn't quite on it yet. But is surrounded by the same ancient forest that surrounds the Avenue of the Giants, and is, if anything, even more striking because the road the Avenue is a bit wider.

It was early when I reached the redwoods, but I was so struck by this place that I chose to spend the night there. Once I set up camp, I learned that there were back country camps that could be hiked into. I still had 250 miles to go, but five days to do it in...I decided to spend a day camping in the woods away from the road and then putting in a few big days to get to San Francisco. I went to sleep on top of my un-pitched tent, admiring the stars and looking forward to backpacking the next day.


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