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Hiking | 4.87 Miles |
838 AEG |
| Hiking | 4.87 Miles | 2 Hrs 41 Mns | | 2.36 mph |
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838 ft AEG | 37 Mns Break | | |
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| no partners | | Pretty cool hike. I was feeling pretty low on energy because I didn't bring enough carbs on my 5-day trip to the Redwood National and State Parks. Next time: potatoes every night. Luckily the first half is mostly downhill. I only saw 2 other people on the beach, and they were a good 400+ yards away. I ran into a large bull elk on the way back, but he was luckily about 50 yards away on the other side of a small pond. Elk #1 was resting, and only looked at me, but it's still a little nerve-wracking to be close to a bull elk anytime near the fall rut.
I ran into another elk on the way back, and #2 was blocking the trail at a most inconvenient spot. I had refueled, and was eager to spend one more night camping in this wonderful park, but the trail here was surrounded by a steep slope covered in dense woody vegetation to the left and thorny blackberry bushes to the right. Of course a group of hikers came from the other direction so Mr. Elk was trapped between us. The largest mammal in the general vicinity just munched the trail side vegetation, and continued to ignore the apes for the most part. The other group had a dog which is not allowed, and looked pretty dense in general, so I decided to bushwhack around the elk through the blackberries. Luckily the lower 3-4' of the blackberry thicket was woody (and thorny) stalks that could be controlled by my shoes. I made it out right next to the other group of people, and the dang elk was right there! Luckily he was cool, and so was the dog because I seemed to have surprised them both. The people were aware of me before I decided to take one for the team so it wasn't like I was someone appearing out of nowhere.
The elk wasn't a big one for an adult male, but he was still at least 700 lbs. The gentleman with the dog reminded me that dogs aren't allowed, I wished them luck, then continued back up to the trail head. I don't know if they ever made it down to the beach. |
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