Touring California’s Lost Coast, Part I

California’s coastline can be one of the most idyllic locations for a bike tour imaginable. If done from north to south, you benefit from stunning cliff-side views and tailwinds most of the way. The segment I did last summer from San Francisco to Santa Barbara certainly fell into this category.

For this summer’s trip, however, I wanted to do something a bit more adventurous involving as many dirt and back roads as possible. So I charted a route down the northern half of California, dipping into the rugged and isolated “lost coast.”

Things started with a flight up to Crescent City, CA on the border with Oregon. The planes they use for flights into Crescent City are too small to hold bicycles, so we had to ship them to a hotel via UPS. Luckily, I discovered this fact before arriving at the airport for departure with bike in hand!

Even after five years in West Africa, this was the tiniest airport I have seen, with ticketing, baggage claim, and security all located in a room smaller than the guest bedroom in my house.

I had been a bit paranoid about my bike being damaged in transit since its size meant I had to remove both wheels in order to make it fit in a UPS regulation box. Luckily, the bikes arrived unscathed, and after a bit of fiddling, our bikes were set up and ready to roll in the morning.

As you can see from the bikes, the idea was to go relatively light for an 8 day tour as compared to some setups, but not entirely spartan either. We had changes of clothing and plenty of bike repair and camping gear, but didn’t bring stoves and cooking gear, so most eating was done at restaurants. The resulting lower bike weight was much appreciated during some of the bigger and longer climbs on the route.

(The sign in Crescent City says 347 miles to San Francisco, though we actually rode 467 miles with all of the detours and backroads that we took.)

Day one from Crescent City to Trinidad was supposed to be one of the easier days on the trip. A nice warm-up. I was trying to learn a lesson from last summer in not going too hard the first couple of days only to wonk out my dodgy knee early in the tour.  In reality, it ended up being pretty tough, mostly due to 11 miles of singletrack that we did that involved no small amount of hike-a-bike.

At the same time, these detours were the highlight, the main point of the trip really.  I wanted to plan a coastal route that did not feel like I was driving towards a goal or destination, but really exploring each and every day.

From the outset, I found northern California to be so beautiful as to be almost overwhelming. It felt a little like going to the Louvre in Paris where the art is so intense that you can only absorb it for half a day or so before needing some time to re-charge before coming back for more.

We finished day one with 66 miles and over 5600 feet in climbing. Except for the night of our arrival in Crescent City, we camped every other night of the trip.

Day two took us into Humboldt County, where the main industries seem to be lumber, dairy, and “herbal legend” (the name of one of the medical marijuana dispensaries we passed). Some of the small towns we passed through, like Rio Dell, seemed quite economically depressed. Yet one of the biggest and busiest shops in town appeared to be the hydroponics store. Must be all those hydroponic tomatoes they grow.

Grass Fed!

Luckily, we found a few dirt and abandoned forest roads to ride, though the amount of bear poop on them was a little disconcerting:

After a long but beautiful day, we made it to the avenue of the giants.

I had planned to overnight at a small campground in RedCrest, a town consisting of perhaps 10 houses and buildings. It seemed like a good jumping off point for our trip the next morning into Humboldt Redwoods State Park and the lost coast.  Unfortunately, the general store that appeared on Google maps had closed down a few years back, and the only restaurant in town was about to close. While we made it in a few minutes before closing time, gluten free options were non-existent. The hamburger I ate tasted OK, but it gave me the bloated and crampy stomach feeling I get from eating gluten. Had I known, I would have stocked up in hippie nirvana earlier that morning:

Luckily, the camp had a hot tub, and I hadn’t forgotten to pack my flask full of whiskey, so all was not lost.

We ended the day with almost 78 miles and 3200 feet of climbing. We knew that days three and four of the tour–when we would explore the lost coast proper–were going to be the hardest of the entire tour by far. The manager of the camp in Redcrest warned us not to deviate from established roads in the lost coast lest we be killed and disappeared by the region’s many marijuana growers. We weren’t sure how real such a threat was, but since we had no intentions of straying from the main paved and dirt roads, it seemed the biggest thing we would have to fear would be the seemingly endless hills of the lost coast.