I Planned this trip months in advance, published in the BASK newsletter, and got almost twenty people to sign up to come along. The plan was to drive to Bear Harbor and camp out for two nights. Bear Harbor is a mild protected place to launch from, the normal weather patterns in October are very mild, so I advertised this trip as a good introduction to ocean kayaking on rugged shores. Some of us planned to paddle north from Usal Beach to save driving all the way to Bear Harbor. A week before the date the swell at sea rose up to 16 feet, then calmed down. Then as the date for the campout approached, a storm rose up and slowly traveled across the north Pacific. The Navy predicted it would hit North America on Thursday, but it slowed down and took its time. This storm did send us some large swell, and people started calling up and canceling. By Friday morning the swell was over 10 feet again and only three people remained on the list. I met one of them (Sami Iwata) Friday morning to carpool up the coast, and the third person never showed up. We drove through some wet weather on the way up and wondered if the last hearty soul was turned back by the rain.
Since we were not in a hurry, we drove down to Usal Beach on our way by to check out the water. Since we figured that the waves would be too rough, we didn't bother to stop and do any shopping. Then when we first saw the ocean from the cliffs, it looked almost calm enough to launch. We started inventorying all the food we each had brought along to see if we could do the trip from here after all. From down on the beach, however, the waves were very rough looking. We both decided we might be able to launch through that, but that it was not worth the trouble. We stopped for lunch and drove the long way around to Bear Harbor.
At the Sinkyone Wilderness Needle Rock Visitors Center, five kilometers short of Bear Harbor, the road was closed because of muddy conditions created by the rain. We set up camp in nearby Streamside Camp in drizzly conditions, then cooked dinner with two other groups of campers huddling out of the rain in an old barn. The rain got lighter and lighter, came back for a short time in the middle of the night, then went away for the rest of the weekend. My tent was reasonably dry by Sunday for packing out.
On Saturday morning we went for a walk north to the next campground (Jackson Beach). We hiked down to the beach and found bear prints in the sand! The prints were leading off the beach and up into the hills so we figured we would not meet the bear itself. We went for a short walk down the beach, but realized that neither of us had checked the tide tables. In fear that the rising tide would trap us there, we turned back after only a short distance.
I was still in trash-pickup mode from the last few weekends and started picking up things on the sand, including a corked wine bottle. The bottle had a message in it! Only part of the message was visible while still in the bottle, and it read: "SWF Living S. of Boston ... sailor ... Call Didi ... Must ... W2 ...". We decided Didi was sending personal adds by bottle and required applicants to send their W2 forms before they would be considered. The bottle had gooseneck barnacle sets starting on the cork so it has been in the water for a while. The glass was still clear, (not polished opaque by the sand), so it had not been on the beach for long. When we pulled the cork later, the rest of the message was readable. However, Didi had not mentioned the date or place that she launched the bottle. I gave her a call when I got home, and left a message on her answering machine. I figure that the bottle could not have been launched from Boston and made it all the way around to here. I figure she launched it recently while on a sailing trip in the Pacific and hasn't had time to make it back home yet. I'll wait a while for her to get the message and call me.
We hiked down to Bear Harbor to look at the waves. The beach was protected, but breakers wrapped all the way around the point to get to the beach. It would have been a good place to practice surf launch skills. However, hauling the boats on our backs five kilometers down the road from the visitors center was too far. Also, once you got your boat into the harbor, huge waves were braking across all possible exits to the open sea. Assuming you could get out there, the large waves would prevent you from going anyplace else close to shore. We gave up on doing any kayaking and went for a walk up the start of the Lost Coast Trail. A beautiful trail up a fern-lined creek valley. We turned back before getting to the next campground because we wanted to have time to cook dinner before the low tide this evening.
We originally planned to walk back out to Bear Harbor for the low tide. The camp host suggested that we do our tide pooling around Needle Rock that evening instead. We took him up on his suggestion and took the unmarked trail down from the visitors center to the beach. On our morning walk we had smelled something bad and seen a bunch of turkey vultures sitting on the edge of the cliff. The Camp host told us this was a bull elk that had fallen off the edge of the cliff and died down near the beach. On our evening tide-pool walk, we saw the body of this elk. With the rough waves, the tide pooling was not very good. We would run down to look into the water but before wegot a good look another wave would cover the pools with white foam. At low tide we walked from there to Jones Beach, up to the trail, and came back down the trail in the dark to our tents. The neighborhood around the Needle Rock Visitor Center was loaded with Roosevelt's Elk. These are very large animals and the males are very intimidating with huge racks. During the day we had to wait for some of these elk to get out of our way. At night they were even more intimidating and we carefully passed way around one large male.
Sunday morning we folded up our equipment and drove away. The road to Bear Harbor was going to open again, but the swell was still rising with a prediction as high as 16 feet today. Sami started to get paddle fever and asked me where would be a good place out of the waves. I suggested Jenner, where the ocean might be breaking into the river, seals would be basking on the sand, and lots of other wildlife could be seen. So we drove down early, picking up Sami's car on the way, to spend 4 hours in the river. We paddled against the wind up to the ocean and got out to look at the waves. Still too rough. Then we paddled around Penny Island and zoomed down wind to the Brookhaven Bridge. I stopped to get out of my boat on a rock in the middle of the river. We figured that paddling back would be difficult against the wind, but it died down a little. We had time to go half way around Penny Island again before landing at Jenner at 5:00 PM. My Dad was there closing the Jenner Visitors Center as we packed up all our gear and went our different ways. I did not have far to drive to get home!
