King Range: tide pooling

King Range National Conservation Area (BLM)

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One single wave must have come up almost to the bottom of the short dirt cliff, not that I noticed. I slept far better than expected. I'm not seeing any of the light weather that was supposed to be coming in for Friday. Just clear skies and sunshine. Well, mountain shade. The sun will get here.

From my perch just barely above the beach. The sand is wet far up and the prints (bear, deer, mostly human) are more rounded now, but only those halfway down have had enough washing to smooth away.

I obviously should have camped a little further along to get the sun more quickly. Time to move.

Just a few short miles to get back to the trailhead, but I have plans for the day, spots I want to visit, so I don't want to take too long to finish it off. My speed is not helped by the tide going out. This was such a bland bit of beach as I came along it at the start. Now it's showing that everywhere it extended a little further, there is actually a cluster of rocks and among that cluster of rocks, there are pools.

Tide pools getting exposed at one minor point along the beach. The bright orange starfish has attracted my attention.

As I've walked past the pools, giving them a quick once over glance, I've not seen much life. A bright orange starfish has made it obvious that this one does have life. I expect to see more than that. As I stand and look more closely about, there are more than that. A lot more.

Above the pool behind the orange starfish is another that more closely matches the rocks.

Another purple one is just a foot or two from the orange one.

There's even some that aren't starfish. A little actually looking shows a couple giant pacific chitons on the rocks. Admittedly, the smaller ones that show the eight plate armor are more interesting to look at.

There's even more orange starfish. (Keep looking, there's a couple purple ones too.)

Four more tucked away under the rock.

Standing about having a proper look at the tide pools isn't getting me on my way, but I'm having a good time. I move on, but there's more pools to check out. And maybe I should stop ignoring all the snails and limpets and barnacles and sea anemones and mussels and even kelp.

There's quite a variety of kelp on display.

If I pay a little attention to the snails, I might notice they're not all snails. Hello hermit crab.

There's a real snail, booking it downward. Little barnacles are everywhere, even on the snail shell.

Looks to be a different sort of anemone than most I've seen with the pink within and yellow without.

More kelp and another starfish.

Why are the starfish hanging out with the very largest of the sea anemone?

The sea tends to round off the rocks, so the holes are startling at first. Some boring creature made them. Clams are a good candidate.

This must not be a good spot for sea anemones, but the ones finding shelter in old holes have survived.

That's not even a tide pool creature.

I've been watching the water in and around the rocky outcrops. It seems paradoxical. The calmness of the water within is almost surreal while the waves wash away at the outside without coming in through the spaces between the rocks. Not only that, but even the outside of the rock cluster seems calmer. I watch them over and over apparently seem to thin out by the rocks and thicken for the beach, then wash inward from the sides with the amplitude dropping.

Maybe a picture will explain better... Here the waves can be seen coming from the sides, angled from the main waves (in back). The shore and bottom seem to conspire to bring the waves into these rocky spots from all sides but leave them much calmer than the rest.

I finally get to the junction with Horse Mountain Creek. Think of all the creatures I would have missed had I walked all the way here yesterday! I somehow didn't notice the couple of creeks that should have been shortly after my camp and before here. I guess I was looking the wrong way.

This could have been my camp if I came up to Horse Mountain Creek Trail. Water is a little bit of a walk.

The tide pools are not so common as I continue. I find myself not liking going south on the beach as much as north. There is the glare of the sun, which I was noticing when I looked back on the way out, but there is more than that. I'm supposed to watch for oversized waves, but that is harder to do in this direction. Waves break at an angle to the coast and as one looks north, the waves breaking are all the crests that will arrive at the current location later. Looking south, when I see waves breaking in the distance, those are waves that have already gotten to where I am. I feel like I'm looking into the future facing north and into the past facing south. Oh, and I'm pretty sure one has a longer tide window when going north. Apparently tides don't happen all at once along the coast, something I had never encountered while growing up four blocks from the ocean. It just was never that important when exactly the high tide was nor would I ever care about it in multiple locations. The high tide is 40 minutes earlier at Shelter Cove (south end of this bit) than at Mattole (north end). Think I'll give myself a pat on the back for doing the main portion of the beach hike north.

Misty hills and the sun glaring through it.

Now that I've finished the middle third, I sort of want to do the rest. I really liked the beach portions of the trip better than I expected. I'm adding stopping into the ranger station to ask about the road on the north end and why it says "unmarked/unmaintained" on some of the upland trails at the north end such things to my list of things to do this afternoon on the off chance I can manage to find an opening for the north section around the new moon or something. They should know a thing or two about plotting travel in the southern third, too.




©2020 Valerie Norton
Written 30 Mar 2020