Backpacking the Lost Coast Trail
11 May 2026We went to the Lost Coast Trail (LCT) to do some backpacking. This is a 25 mile hike along one of the roughest parts of California’s coast between Petrolia and Shelter Cove, all a bit south of Eureka.
The trail follows the headlands and beaches of the King Range Conservation Area, sometimes up on hillsides and sometimes on the beach in front of cliffs or steep, loose slopes. Traversing the beach sections requires planning around the tides as there are stretches where tides higher than two or three feet will trap hikers on the slope (if it is climbable) or wash them out to sea.
We have a new tent and some other gear we purchased for our upcoming Colorado Trail through-hike that we need to try out, and we also have to get in better backpacking shape. This trail is relatively close to home and guaranteed to be free of snow in May!
We left our camper at the trailhead at Mattole Beach and reserved a shuttle service to take us from Shelter Cove back to the start.
This popular trail requires a permit that limits access to 30 backpackers per day in non-summer months and 60 per day in the summer. We used Outdoor Status to get notified and got our permit when someone else canceled.
I was surprised by the number of people who asked about our plans but did not know where the Lost Coast was or why it is “lost.” As Wikipedia says:
The Lost Coast is a mostly natural and undeveloped area of California in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, which includes the King Range. It was named the “Lost Coast” after the area experienced depopulation in the 1930s. In addition, the steepness and related geotechnical challenges of the coastal mountains made this stretch of coastline too costly for state highway or county road builders to establish routes through the area, leaving it the most undeveloped and remote portion of the California coast. Without any major highways, communities in the Lost Coast region such as Petrolia, Shelter Cove, and Whitethorn are somewhat isolated from the rest of California.
While the King Range / Lost Coast area has not been developed, it was extensively logged, largely by the Pacific Lumber Company. This area of redwoods and other huge trees was logged for over a hundred years by Pacific. Some of the remains of PALCO (Pacific Lumber Company), which eventually went bankrupt after a hostile takeover, can be seen when driving through the former “company town” of Scotia, California on 101. The few paved roads that run through the Lost Coast are former logging roads that were turned over to Humboldt County.
As mentioned in the Wikipedia quote, geology is the main reason the area is undeveloped. Offshore of Cape Mendocino, California’s westernmost point, lies the Mendocino triple junction where the Gorda plate, the North American plate, and the Pacific plate meet. This area has frequent earthquakes, and the way the Gorda plate moves opens a ‘window’ to the earth’s mantle, which results in new rock being formed on the earth’s crust. The town of Petrolia, near the northern end of the LCT, was the site of California’s first oil wells.
May 11, 2026
We had driven our truck and camper to the Mattole Campground which is also the northern end of the LCT. The drive from Ferndale to Petrolia on Mattole Road was thirty five miles of narrow, curvy, poorly-paved road that made for slow going with the camper but it is very scenic.
We slept pretty well in our camper and got up around six. We had some oatmeal for breakfast and packed and organized the few things that were not already in the backpacks.
We moved the truck over to the trailhead parking lot and we were almost ready to go around nine when a shuttle van showed up with eight hikers. Apparently most people park at the Shelter Cove end of the trail and start their journey with a shuttle ride. We also saw six other hikers hit the trail from the few other groups at the campground and one couple that arrived in their truck.
We had read that a lot of the beach walking was going to be slow but we made better time than what we worried it might be. We ended up going about three miles beyond our originally planned camp site, hiking almost ten miles of our twenty five mile trip. The beach walking is difficult - the majority is either soft, large-grained sand or large cobbles. Some of the walking on the hillsides and old dunes is also challenging due to vigorous plant growth.
There is a short section of the trail north of the Punta Gorda lighthouse that cannot be passed if the tide is high but the relatively low high tide on this day presented no issue. Near the Punta Gorda lighthouse around a hundred Northern Elephant Seals were beached. This is molting season for the females and they stay warm by laying on the beach for days or weeks, only going into the water to feed. We found bits of fur and skin around.
A little way beyond the lighthouse is a tidal danger zone about four miles long where the trail is on the beach in front of cliffs and steep slopes, but Cooskie Creek is in the middle of it. There is a valley and some campsites at Cooskie Creek so there is an “escape” in the middle. Our original plan was to camp the first night at Cooskie, but we had plenty of energy so we continued on to Randall Creek, just beyond the tidal zone. Many of the other people who had started the trail with us were setting up camp here and we still felt fine so we walked a bit over a mile further to a spot where people had clearly camped before near a huge drift log. We were the only people camping within a mile either direction.
There are a lot of ticks in the grass, weeds, and bushes here. We pulled several off of our clothes and skin, but only one had started attaching itself to my toe. It seems that Lost Coast hikers either have to worry about ticks or tides depending whether the trail is up on hillsides or old dunes versus down on the beach.
It was only around four thirty when we set up camp. With a long evening, Julie tried out the portable watercolor painting kit our friend Denise gave her. We also looked at some tide pools and wandered a bit of the beach. Our dinner was pretty simple: a “just add boiling water” meal in a large bag that didn’t fit in our bear vault. That is, bear vaults are required on this trail but we could carry the first day’s food outside the vault, then store the empty food bag in the vault.
May 12, 2026
We slept fairly well and didn’t get up until about 6:30. The tent was very wet on the outside and a bit damp on the inside from all the dew.
It was foggy and not too windy. We made some hot drinks and ate a couple of Protein Pucks, a brand of energy bar new to us, for breakfast .
After taking care of “business” on the beach (BM management method recommended by BLM), we toweled off the tent and started packing things up. We ended up getting on the trail around 9:30.
In the first quarter mile of hiking we had to brush off dozens of ticks. There was long grass and an unbelievable number of ticks in the grass leaning into the narrow trail.
When we got to Spanish Creek, about 1 mile from camp, we decided not to follow the trail through the bushes and across the creek, but instead to go out to the beach. We needed to filter some water and we didn’t want to be spend time filtering in brush that was probably also full of ticks.
After refilling our water we crossed the creek out on the beach and started looking for a way back up to the trail. We found a couple of people camped in one of many campsites between drift logs smaller than the one that we had camped next to. We were wandering around trying to find a trail that would go back to the main trail after giving the couple’s camp site a wide berth when Julie almost stepped on a rattlesnake! Rather than continue to climb over logs where snakes might be hiding we decided to go back to the beach. We continued down the beach for a third of a mile or so until the main trail got closer to the beach.
We stopped for lunch at a cute little spot someone had cleared out under some trees near Kinsey Creek.
We hiked about seven miles and decided to camp about a quarter mile north of Big Flat Creek, once again near a large drift log. We were just south of a gravel runway associated with a nice-looking house. We were told later that this house is somehow cooperatively owned, and that people who maintain the trail can get flown to the house and stay there. That sounds really neat, but the same person also told us that the King Range area receives over two hundred inches of rain each year while Wikipedia says it gets sixty to one hundred so…
We met and crossed paths a few times with the people who had been camping near Spanish Creek. They had seen several rattlesnakes and also dealt with a lot of ticks. That area had been a popular camp spot in years past but between the snakes and the ticks it made sense that no-one else had camped there. They stopped when passing our newly-set-up camp and said there was a water spigot near the runway. We did some laundry using this inexplicably-placed spigot and the water was slightly warm.
We went to scout out the creek crossing at Big Flat Creek, where many other people were camped, and spotted a river otter who was crossing from the creek over a bank of cobblestones to the ocean.
We returned to our tent and spotted a coyote making its way down the trail. We didn’t move and it seemed like it didn’t notice us - we got some nice videos.
We made dinner and then the wind switched to coming from the north and picked up significantly. Some of our tent stakes came loose so we found bigger rocks to hold them down in the loose sand.
With the wind making it chilly we got into our sleeping bags early, around 8:45.
May 13, 2026
We slept fairly well again and got up at six. The wind was at its worst around sunset and fortunately slowed down so the tent was not flapping wildly by the time we were trying to sleep. It rained lightly around midnight but had cleared so I saw stars around two thirty.
It was chilly and breezy when we got up. We had a relaxing morning because the tides would keep us from hiking more than half a mile before noon. We had two cups of tea and coffee and then made a fruit pudding that Julie had learned about from a YouTuber by cooking crushed Nilla Wafers and water with dried fruit then sprinkling crushed nuts on top. It was tasty but we think it could be improved by adding a little cinnamon and using salted nuts.
We saw a coyote, maybe the same one as the evening before, walking north on the beach.
Julie washed her hair at the little spigot, but the water wasn’t warm like it had been the evening before.
Once the sun came out and the wind started in earnest again we got the tent and a lot of things dried off, including the laundry that was still damp from the afternoon before.
Unfortunately it appears that we left our titanium spoon here so we had to make do with a spork for the rest of the trip.
We finally hit the trail at 10:30 which was actually early because the next tidal section could not be crossed until close to noon. Sure enough, we crossed Big Flat Creek and went a quarter mile further and found several other hikers waiting for the tide to drop far enough to proceed.
For four miles the LCT is on the beach in front of cliffs or extremely steep slopes here, so we had to make sure we maintained a pace that would get us past the tidal danger zone before the tide returned. The excellent trip planning site at Outdoor Status says we had between noon and five thirty to cross it, but there were areas we had to pass between waves to get around downed trees or rocks. I guess the low tide that afternoon was not particularly low, but while the other tidally limited zones felt like something to be careful about, this felt like real danger if anything went wrong. And there were long sections of cobblestones between two and five inches that made for some difficult walking.
Many people stopped to camp at Gitchell Creek, just beyond the tidal zone, but with the help of the Far Out app we found a great little campsite tucked in the trees at about mile 23. We ate the lunch that we had been reluctant to stop for while in the danger zone and sat down to rest for a little while.
It is a really cute little site tucked in the trees but we barely managed to get our tent set up - I think ours is a little longer than many two-person tents and the vestibules on either side are fairly generous and there was only so much room between the logs.
We had to walk a quarter mile further to Horse Mountain Creek to filter and refill our water bottles but it was easier without the packs on. We were both tired. It was only a bit less than seven miles today but it was almost all on sand or cobbles, we were out in the sun and wind all day, and it was the third day of the trip which always seems to be the hardest.
With plenty of water we made a light dinner of some leftovers and snacks cleverly combined and celebrated with some hot chocolate.
May 14, 2026
It was a mild night - not much wind, not as cold as previous nights, and no rain or foggy morning. We slept until about six. Julie got up but I felt tired and laid in my sleeping bag a while longer. I was struggling with a cold and/or allergies.
We made coffee and tea and sat out on the beach to drink it, then had some oatmeal. The ridge just above our camp meant the sun slowly approached the beach with the waves.
We packed up and started our final trail segment of about two miles at nine. We arrived at the Black Sands trailhead in Shelter Cove a bit after ten. There were a lot of signs warning of the dangers of swimming or wading here.
From the overlook at the Shelter Cove trailhead we could look north-west up the coast all the way to Punta Gorda - we started a few miles “around the corner” from the point.
In the parking lot we found a couple with a dog that we had seen several times on the trail. They had arrived at their car and were relaxing with some beers. They offered us a couple beers and we reminisced about the trail and talked about backpacking and gear - a really pleasant way to celebrate.
The shuttle arrived just before noon and we were joined by a few other people who were parking their cars at this trailhead and then shuttling up to Mattole Beach to start their Lost Coast hike. The shuttle ride is over two hours on more roads like Mattole Road - curvy and rough - but our van driver was very familiar with the road. I think we scared some of the people starting their hike with our descriptions of how many ticks we had encountered.
We made some lunch once we were back at the camper and then started the drive back out to Highway 101. After talking with the shuttle driver we decided to go out via Honeydew and the Humboldt Redwoods. The slow-going portion of that road is a bit shorter than the way we came in, but it comes out almost thirty miles further south on 101 so overall our journey north was longer in both time and mileage. However, the last several miles before getting to 101 are through the Humboldt Redwoods so it was worth it.
We made a quick stop at the Costco in Eureka to fill the thirsty truck with gas and arrived at Sue-meg State Park a bit before seven. Despite looking forward to a shower I was too tired to do anything other than eat dinner and go to bed.