California Coastal Trail Klamath Section

Redwood National Park

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Out for another trail section of the Coastal Trail, I headed to Lagoon Pond, the north end of the segment. The south end is closer to me, but the parking at Klamath River Overlook is closed for now. The picnic area is functionally a road side rest area, but offers a small loop trail that connects with the Coastal Trail in a few feet. There, signs point north and beach access or south and a few destinations. I turned south.

The trailhead is at the north end of the parking beside the pond on Lagoon Creek.

There's no water coming out of Lagoon Pond and under the bridge. The pond isn't visible from the trail either.

The beach has a bit like a lagoon among the scattered driftwood logs.

The trail splits again, pointing left for the loop and right for the Coastal Trail. I went right. The trail is a well cared for tunnel through the green. The sides look mowed and the cut shows off some of the shaping the salt winds have done to the spruce that climb the hill side.

A little bit of the manicured trail.

The rest of the beach. The highway is quite visible too, but the waves generally drown out any traffic sounds.

The nearby stacks are occupied by cormorants.

More little stacks down the coast.

A couple spruce that don't look particularly shaped by the salt wind.

There's the second junction for the Yurok Loop Trail, also signed, and I keep right again. Not signed is a junction with something that looks like it was a road that drops down to Hidden Beach. I decided to have a look at it. It is only a very short extra bit.

Of course, I quite like the stack with a tree on it just off Hidden Beach.

The trail down to the beach requires a little bit of climbing over logs that have washed up in storms.

The beach is one of the destinations that was on the sign and marked as only a mile. It has had a lot of visitors and many of them have built huts and lean tos with the drift wood. It is so well visited that although I had it to myself for a few minutes, there quickly came another couple groups. The beach had little wildlife at that moment, but the bones an a little more of a former seal could be found.

Not so well hidden Hidden Beach.

I think it's a seal anyway. I don't actually know how to tell it from a sea lion or a few other things when in this state.

Shortly after that junction is another for a trail that goes to the highway. I'm not actually sure where it reaches the highway, but I think it is around the Trees of Mystery. I didn't need to see the Babe the blue ox or Paul Bunyan (in a mask, or he was the last time I noticed him), so I kept on going. The trail gets up higher on cliffs as it goes.

A lot of vines growing on a tree, but none of them is invasive ivy. One is some of the only poison oak I saw during the day.

Just a little bit of climbing so far, giving a look down on the rocks that end Hidden Beach to the south.

A look up the coast through the trees.

Some ferns like this deer fern show reproductive dimorphism in their leaves. The narrow leaves produce spores while the wider leaves only photosynthesis.

The mowing stopped when the trail took a short, steep downward tilt that suddenly lost about ten feet. Mostly it is flat, but not totally. Afterwards, the tall stuff closed in and very soon, the obstacles started. There are a few downed trees on the trail, half of them still living. It still obviously follows old road bed and has plenty of room.

A short crawl to get under this fallen tree.

The ferns come in close, but the blackberries aren't given much chance.

There's not many places with a view of the ocean, but I find I like this trail. Something about the way it all grows and how it is carved out of that growth is pleasing. There are some nice spots on the Mad River Bluffs that were pleasing like this too. I was having a very pleasant walk when I heard all sorts of barking below me. There was no way to see how many, but harbor seals, elephant seals, or sea lions were populating a beach below me. This is one marked as "Hidden Beach" on OpenStreetMap, either through sloppiness or knowing better. Hey, they could sign the other one as Hidden Beach to keep people from visiting this one. Considering the way this trail is drawn on the map, I suspect it is sloppiness. I tried, but I found no place to see the seals below.

I decided to record their sounds to mark the presence. Listen closely and you can hear a much lower male among them. I got the nearby birds and waves as well although high quality it is not.

Got a glimpse of the shore away from the barking and there are no seals here, I think.

I noted on spot seemed particularly moist and followed an animal trail inland a short way to find a murky pond. The old road bed looks like it is on built up dirt in that area, so it might not have been swamp area before. It certainly is now.

Taking a higher path between the dense green depression inland and the drop off to the sea. This is the dense green depression and the dark behind the branches at the left is water.

There's even an old lookout point with wooden railing. It's still hard to see much actual coast from it, but it is a nice view.

There's barking on the beach between here and the point.

The Klamath River is almost visible. Flint Ridge is on the far side.

Down on the stacks where I expected more cormorants there were actually pelicans.

I got to a nice, fairly new bridge over a fast running stream and suspected I had left the no maintenance area behind even if it wasn't mowed like the other end. Unfortunately, I was seeing more invasive species including ivy. One more signed junction and I took the right to head down to the Klamath River Overlook. This is another fenced in lookout point that is down on one of the headlands that might one day become a stack. It hasn't yet, but it is still a long way down.

To the north, the pelican occupied rocks from the other side and a rocky beach devoid of any seals.

To the south, the Klamath River (or estuary here) almost closed off by a sand spit. The actual overlook.

I hiked back up and the last little bit to the end of the trail section to find that the closed parking was doing quite extensive business. Someone had chucked the barriers to the side, but the bathrooms were still locked. There wasn't a lot of paying attention to the regulations that were still clearly marked, either, since I found myself sharing trail with off leash dogs. Pets are only allowed in campgrounds and parking lots in the National Parks. The State Parks take a very dim view of dogs on their trails, too, so it doesn't really matter that they somewhat obscure exactly which park you are currently in up here.

The south end signed trailhead. The blue swirl on the left sign is the marker for the California Coastal Trail.

And so I headed back finding a few others hiking from the other end to the overlook. It was a bit more crowded than I expected. I wouldn't have gone for it on a Sunday had I known.

Never very far from a banana slug.

One spot stretching to see a bit of view.

Back to Hidden Beach. The fog is settling down, but there's a couple out playing in the waves.

At the loop trail, I went right again expecting to wander beside Lagoon Pond. That expectation was met, but the expectation that I could therefore see the pond was not. The trail may be about twenty feet from the water edge, but the vegetation is so thick it is hard to see water anywhere.

The trail is a fairly dark tunnel of vegetation.

The water can best be seen on a little spur behind a bench or from the parking area.

It was still the middle of the afternoon, so I followed the signs for the north route. Here, the trail just goes along the beach or the road. A single post marks it on the beach then nothing until a sign on the far side of the road across from the parking lot at the north end of the beach that just indicates trail follows the road north and south. Somewhere not too far, it is supposed to head off above the road. I had dismissed it after seeing it on the map, but it seems to have better reviews than I expected. That section is a bit too long for an afternoon. I got as far as a rock dump that helps keep the road from eroding and stopped because the ocean was washing up onto them a little. I didn't feel like going up to the road or navigating the boulders to get past.

A marker that is easy to miss while it attempts to direct folks onto the south going trail.

The cormorants are an inky black. The ones here were not too worried about people.

There's some large barnacles (thatched barnacle, likely) and rather small muscles. I could also find a lot of gooseneck barnacles, a selection of limpets, and someone said they found a starfish.

There's not a lot left to go north of the rocks.

The high tide line is a thick collection of little crab shells.

I headed back and finally had a moment to look at Lagoon Pond. On the parking lot side, there are cuts through the surrounding growth to allow folks to meditate upon the water.

Cattails and lilies, neither in bloom or seed, on Lagoon Pond.

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In the unlikely event that anyone needs more seal audio recordings, I tried recording them from a couple other locations, too. The first recording has more bird song, but the seals were quieter. During the third one, I noticed there was a spot of beach I could see and zoomed, which was a mistake because that adds a sound. The seals are louder, but there is little bird song.




©2020 Valerie Norton
Written 30 Aug 2020