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| Hiking | 15.01 Miles |
1,508 AEG |
| | Hiking | 15.01 Miles | 6 Hrs 54 Mns | | 2.70 mph |
| 1,508 ft AEG | 1 Hour 20 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | This was the long hike I'd been planning on doing up in the north redwoods. I wish I hadn't taken so long to make breakfast, gotten up earlier or both....
Hiking in any seemingly endless forest can get a little monotonous, but this one really had to try. I must've walked by a thousand trees that were at least 300' tall and/or 15' in diameter. The section along Gold Bluffs Beach was pretty cool, if a bit of a slog, and its 2 miles (I overshot the entrance to Fern Canyon and the James Irvine Trail, and had to backtrack) took a lot out of me. There were thousands of velella, or by-the-wind sailors, stranded on the beach. These are 4" long clear blue jellyfish-like creatures with vertical sailes (actually a colony of hydrozoans) that commonly strand themselves in large numbers.
The brisk wind and bright sun also took a lot of water out of me so I was a little faded by the time I had backtracked on the upper beach to where I was sure the entrance to the home stretch was. Of course a bull elk appeared to block my path, but he remained resting on the ground as I gave him a wide berth.
It was 5:50 PM when I got to the mouth of Fern Canyon, and I was back at my campsite after 5.5 more miles at 7:31. That was a bit of a butt-kicker, but I didn't want to miss the campfire program on Pacific banana slugs! I wish I could've spent more time on the James Irvine Trail, but it gets dark a little early in the redwoods. |
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Route Editor
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