So several weeks ago my friend Ksenya had suggested that we go kayaking at Point Reyes. I was all for it but because we couldn’t secure a pair of kayaks for this weekend, we decided to just do a hike. But before you think “Oh, well that sounds rather mundane and vastly less challenging than kayaking,” consider this. Ksenya suggested that we do a really long hike, like 20 miles long….and I agreed to it!
Ok, ok, before you think “Wow, that’s insane! 20 miles, really!?” we didn’t end up doing a full 20. But we did make 16 and that’s pretty dang good. After looking through the different trail options we decided to do the longest loop we could do without exceeding the 20 mile marker which turned out to be the Woodward loop (13mi) which we extended to be able to do 16 miles.
The trail was really nice. We started at the Bear Valley Trailhead and took the Meadow Trail to the Sky Trail. Once on the Sky Trail, we continued north until we reached the Fire Trail and followed that to the coast. After we had passed Sky Camp which was occupied by a number of young kids and their parents, we stopped for our first set of pictures.
We then continued on to the Coast Trail and took that all the way back to the Bear Valley Trail with several detours to the beach along the way including the Sculptured Beach and Arch Rock trails.
At first we weren’t sure if we were going to head down to Sculptured Beach. It looked like such a long distance to hike and we just wanted to sit down and have some food. We’d already been hiking for about 2.5 hours. I decided to walk down part of the way just to see how the trail looked and then realized we were committed so we headed the rest of the way down. It was so worth it. The beach was beautiful and there were some nice rocks to sit on and have our apples, bread and water. Mmm, prison food. š
After getting some lunch and relaxing in the sun for awhile we took a couple of pictures and then packed up and hit the trail again. We still had nearly 3 hours of hiking to go. By the time we got to Arch Rock, we were feeling a bit tired but pretty good at the same time because we knew this 4mile section of trail really well so it felt like we were almost done.
Standing on Arch Rock I seriously don’t think we could have asked for a nicer day for this kind of hike. Check out how clear and blue the sky was. Check out how close were were to the edge of the cliff. Kinda cool eh? =)
Well that was our hike. Definitely an awesome way to spend a Saturday. =) If you’re interested in getting information on hiking at Point Reyes, check out the following links:
- http://www.nps.gov/pore/planyourvisit/hiking_guide.htm – Info on suggested hikes and mileage.
- http://www.nps.gov/pore/planyourvisit/maps.htm – Click on South District Trail Map to get map of trails including mileage markers for the most popular hiking location at Point Reyes.
Hopefully we’ll be able to do another hike soon…that is, after my legs and feet recover. š
