The coast route does not care how strong you are. It cares whether you read the tide table right. Forty two miles of black sand, boulder fields, and wind that leans on you like a bored sibling, with two stretches that flat out disappear under water twice a day.
I walked it in three days, alone, with the tide chart printed and taped inside my pack lid like an exam cheat sheet. Paper beats a dead phone. This is not negotiable out there.
DAY 1Day one is where the romance dies and the fun starts. Sand walking is honest work. Every mile costs about a mile and a half of effort, and the wind came out of the northwest at what I would guess was a steady twenty five. I put my head down, found the firm sand line, and made the first tide gate with forty minutes to spare. That felt professional right up until I watched the ocean erase the beach I had just walked.
Camp one was inside a driftwood corral somebody built years ago. I cooked lentils and rice in the nesting pot, weighted the tent stakes with beach rocks, and slept like the wind was a white noise app.
DAY 2The long day. Seventeen miles, one seal colony that barked me down the beach like security, and a creek coming off the bluffs every mile or so. Water was never the problem. Cold water was the reward, and the steel bottle kept the morning coffee hot until the ten o'clock break, which on a wind beaten beach is worth more than anything I could print in a spec table.
The pack is the piece this route was really auditioning. Salt spray all day, one wave that got ambitious around a point, two drops onto barnacle rock. Everything inside stayed dry, including the sleeping bag I had deliberately left out of a liner as a test I do not recommend copying.
Last morning I timed the second tide gate with a full hour of margin because the swell was up, and brave is not a navigation strategy. Around the final point a gray whale spouted maybe two hundred yards out. Twice. Then gone. I stood there with wet feet and a granola bar and could not think of one thing to complain about.
Tally for the route. Three days, forty two miles, one barking escort, one whale, zero dry shoes, and a pack that graduated with honors. My knees would like a word, but they always do.
