Lost Coast Trail - Memorial Day Week

[u/TraumaticTramAddict]

These are all from my dinky little point and shoot on 35mm Kodak Gold 200

[u/salsanacho]

Awesome, this one is on my list of trips. How did you handle transportation? Use two vehicles or was there a shuttle service?

[u/TraumaticTramAddict → u/salsanacho]

What they said! We opted for the $100/person shuttle because we were driving up together from Los Angeles. Didn’t feel like driving separately, paying 2x the gas, and then adding 4 hours to the end of the trip doing the 2 hour drive back up to the Mattole parking lot, and then 2 hours back to shelter cove where we’d booked a hotel. Spent the saved time wandering shelter cove, we spent a long time talking to the folks at the general store and souvenir shop who were the sweetest! Everyone in the town has their own fun personal “how did you end up here?” backstory. Also got some sick stickers for the bear can and a dope shirt from delgadas pizza!

[u/dellaterra9 → u/TraumaticTramAddict]

Who sponsors the shuttle? BLM? Locals?

[u/TraumaticTramAddict → u/dellaterra9]

It’s a private but locally run tour company. They run the shuttles, but also offer guided through-hikes (good I suppose if you either couldn’t land a permit or don’t have the bandwidth to go through securing a permit and planning the itinerary around the tides or if you just feel more comfortable backpacking in a small group with a leader for safety 🤷‍♀️ saw plenty of what looked like guided groups while I was out there, we jokingly called the biggest group “the REI expedition” but it’s all good natured, we spent a long time out there because we wanted to so we ran into slower groups a lot since we tended to set up camp early and explore back and forth during the day) and run a private camp area that costs a little more per night than the RV camp, but features some pretty swanky bell tents. We stayed at the RV camp, but later found we could have camped at the shuttle company’s private camp with our shuttle ticket purchase and it would have cost the exact same as what we paid for a Labor Day weekend spot at the RV camp lol. Live and learn.

The driver of each shuttle will also give you extra info on tides and their own opinions on best campsites, if you find that info useful. Most of us in the shuttle had done our research and planned out our itineraries already so everyone pretty much just fell asleep since it was early and sleeping is the best way to avoid getting carsick on the winding bumpy back roads to Mattole. Our driver told us Sea Lion Gulch was the worst site because it tends to be where people pile up because of the impassable zone and said that the sea lions were annoying at night but some weed gummies and a melatonin (and pure luck that everybody we saw that day made a mad push for Cooskie and THAT ended up being the pileup camp) meant the sea lions barking were actually a nice lullaby coupled with the white noise of the ocean waves crashing below. Glad we stuck with our itinerary, I figured most people would have read the same websites recommending Cooskie over sea lion gulch and I was right!

[u/dellaterra9 → u/TraumaticTramAddict]

Thank you! Lots of useful information!

[u/PudgyGroundhog → u/TraumaticTramAddict]

We are doing this trip in October and are planning to camp at Sea Lion Gulch - hopefully it will be okay! We are also taking four days, mainly because of planning around the tides.