McClures Beach is supposed to have the roughest surf of any beach on the Point Reyes National Seashore, if you believe the warnings in the maps and all the signs along the road. I launched here once before with great trepidation, and later paddled up to it without landing a second time. The first time, I had a camera with me, but it was a very foggy day and I couldn't see a thing. The second time, I saw how much Elephant Rock really did look like an elephant, and wished that I had a camera with me to record it. So I have been waiting for good weather conditions to return to McClures beach and take some pictures. This day had clear skies, reasonable swells, 5 to 7 feet, and I was on my way to work and would be driving nearby. I decided to go ahead and do the photographic expedition.
I could have gone to Kehoe Beach and paddled 5 kilometers north to Elephant Rock, but I didn't have the time to spend on that trip. Instead, I chose to carry the kayak down, and back up, the trail from the McClures Beach trail head. This trail drops down about 200 meters to the beach in about 700 meters horizontally, and I knew it would be a workout to carry the equipment back up.
The parking lot was empty when I arrived, but two other cars came while I was getting ready, so there were 3 people on the beach when I got down to it. I sat on my kayak for a few minutes watching the waves. Like the last time I launched here, the waves looked bad but they did calm down periodically, convincing me I could get through them. The trail down to the beach was originally carved through the cliffs by a small creek, and I thought I saw a calmer spot in the waves where the creek had carved a deeper channel in the sand under the water. The waves broke on either side of this channel a little farther from shore. When I was ready, I dragged the kayak down to this spot.
Just as I got there, the water looked very calm for a launch, so I headed into the water after one last medium sized wave. A few larger waves came by and threatened to break over me, but my timing was apparently very good. I got all the way out to sea without getting my face wet! I turned to look back at the beach, and everyone was leaving (all three of them). Had I ruined their pristine beach view by inserting my kayak into it? Had I ruined the mystique of the rugged unassailable surf by challenging it and overcoming it? (On the first try!) For whatever reason, they all decided to leave, and I had the beach as well as the ocean to myself.
The water was a dirty brown color, perhaps due to the recent forest fire south of here in the park. I paddled south around McClures Point, which has several big rocks just offshore. In slightly calmer seas, or in a less remote location, I would have paddled between the rocks and the point, but it looked a little too rough today. On the other side of the point, there is a little cove with a sandy beach with reasonably calm waves. I had noticed this on my last trip by here. This trip, I had considered dragging the kayak all the way down McClures beach, over the low narrow part of the point, and launching from here to take the photographs. But the beach was long, and I had apparently made the right decision to brave the surf in front of the creek.
From the north, the only view landlubbers get, Elephant Rock just looks like a big rounded rock sticking out of the water. I paddled around the seaward side of it, taking pictures every so often. There is a group of arches and caves on the south end of the rock. At the right angles these arches and caves create an incredible likeness of the front leg and head of an elephant. Between the rock and the shore, there is a string of submerged rocks that the waves break over, so I could not completely circumnavigate Elephant Rock. My mission accomplished, I went back around the rock and headed north to the beach. South of Elephant rock is a fairly uninteresting stretch of coast 5 kilometers to Kehoe Beach, and there wasn't anything there that I wanted to photograph. North of McClures Beach had a few rocks offshore, but the only one I could see was Bird Rock. This was a large rock, and it might be nice to document it on film, but it was at least 4 kilometers away and I didn't have the time. So I declared this a short special purpose trip, and headed back to shore.
I paddled north until I found the relatively calm spot where the waves broke later than on either side. I waited for 3 large waves to go by, then stopped looking behind me and started paddling for shore. 50 meters from shore, a large wave rose up behind me and started to break. I surfed down the face of the wave, and managed to stay just in the front edge of the breaking water. I ended up turned 45 degrees to the right, with my right paddle braced behind me into the surf. The breaking water shoved me forward so fast, that I slipped out in front of it twice on the way to shore. The kayak slowed down almost immediately when this happened, and I worried about being slammed under when the breaker caught up with me again. But both times, I leaned farther back on my paddle, braced into the surf, and stayed upright for the rest of the trip. I scrunched up on the sand 30 meters farther south on the beach than where I had been pointing probably only a few seconds ago.
I twisted my leg jumping out before the next wave could arrive and roll me over. I got a cramp in the thigh that gave me some trouble climbing back up to the parking lot. Trying to keep dry turned out to be a wasted effort: Just from the last few seconds of surfing, I was totally drenched from head to toe. Even my hat was soaking wet and dripping, except for a little area on the top in the back. I had worn the complete wetsuit with jacket for the entire trip, in fear of rough surf, even though it was actually a little warm. Now I took off the jacket, rolled down the farmer john to my waist, and put back on the cold wet flotation vest. This helped keep me cool for the 200 meter climb back up to the car. I discovered that I was reasonably comfortable, since I was in the shadow of my kayak for the entire trip. Even when I rested (only twice) I could stand the kayak up, lean on it, and hide in it's shadow from the bright noon sun.
