Leaving The Lost Coast

Day 4, Racing the waves out:

The final morning started early at about 6:30. I broke down my tent and packed everything up while boiling water for our final breakfast on the coast. We ate fairly quickly and headed out around 7:30, which was a good thing because we were surprised at how high the water had come already.



A combination of the high tide that was due at 10:00 and some quite large waves had the water line coming clear up to the cliffs at times. According to the maps we had 1.5 miles to cover to get out of the dangerous tidal zone. Let's just say that I was inspired to move quickly. At one point I was taking a little breather and a wave came rushing up and I jumped two and a half feet up onto a ledge where I held the rocks to keep my balance. It's amazing how fast one can move with a bit of adrenaline, even with the sorest of feet.

After clearing the first mile and a half to Gitchell Creek with barely a stop between, we decided to keep on moving another two miles up to Horse Mountain Creek which is only a mile and a half from the trail head.

This proved to be a good decision, as we still encountered many areas that the water was coming up quite high and we had to be ever vigilant to watch for large set waves coming in.

We made really great time the whole morning, and even after stopping to take our boots off and have a good snack at Horse Mountain Creek, we still got to the trail head by about 11:00 or so. Pretty fast to cover 5 miles in sand on blistered feet.



The long hike ended with Rob walking up the steep hill to get the truck, and a nice sponge bath in the parking lot bathroom before driving on home.