[Bill Menke’s Journal; 2016 California Trip, December 11-20, 2016].

[December 17, 2016; Old Coast Trail, south] Dallas and I drove down from San Francisco last night, and checking into Riverside Campground and Cabins in Big Sur, California. The Campground’s bridge over the Big Sur (river) was flooded, owing to strong streamflow driven by Thursday’s heavy rain, and we had to enter through a neighbor’s. We checked in Cabin 9, a small cabin set between two enormous Coast Redwoods.

The Old Coast Road is a ten mile loop off of the Route 1, the main highway that parallels the Pacific coast. We arrived at the south end, at Milepost 10.3, at about 8:30AM on a partly sunny. The parking lot is opposite the entrance of Andrew Molera State Park. It is wide and decently maintained one land road that snakes up into the hilly country west of Route 1. Most of these hills are have only grass or scrubby vegetation, except for the valleys, which are wet enough to support trees, including Coast Redwood. One of these valleys is right at the trailhead. Its little stream supports a line of Coast Redwoods that ascent up the hill.

The road has right-of-way through El Sur ranch. The signage, rather too often, told us, “Private - Keep Out, Trespassing and Loitering Forbidden by Law, El Sur Ranch”. We take the road steeply uphill, until we can see the sea. We can see waves crashing on the beach. We have a good view of Point Sur, a sugarloaf of a hill that is almost an island, being connected to the mainland by a narrow spit. Its summit hosts a lighthouse and naval installation. We crossed into the burn scar of this summer’s Soberanes Fire, which devastated the vegetation on the hills to the west. The green-gray scrub was gone off of most of the hillsides and replaced with brown-back ask. However, the valleys seemed to have fared better; most of the Coast Redwood and other conifers still have their needles. Some of the burned areas were starting to return to green; all the recent rain seems to have had a restorative effect. The path of the flames was fickle. Some areas close to the burn escaped unscathed. The ground in some wooded areas was burned without the treetops having spread into the canopy.

We encountered many wildflowers on our walk. Many were very brightly colored and beautifully shaped. They tended to occur on solitary bushes, rather than in broad patches, so that we had look carefully so as not to miss them. My favorites were the purple cones of flowers that grew up from smallish, bun-shaped grey bushes.

We sighted a group of four mule deer, including a buck with a large rack. They were grazing at the side of the road and slipped away as soon as we approached. We also encountered two flocks of quail, each with about a dozen birds. They rushed across the road ahead of us. We say many birds, including blue jays, crows, gulls and a medium-sized bird of prey of prey that I did not recognize.

The road then descended into the valley of the Little Sur River, a small stream lines with massive Coast Redwoods. They created a deep shade that was damp and chilly compared to the sunlit hills we had just traversed. We crossed the river via a steel bridge and then ascended up the sparsely vegetated, very steep hill on the south side of the valley. As we climbed, we had an excellent view of the valley. Looking up it, we could see the line redwoods climbing up into the hills, and looking downhill, we could see pastures in the flood plain of the river. We continued uphill until we reached Milepost 5.3, which we declared out turn about point (for we were planning to walk the north half of the route on the following day). We rolled two boulders over to the uphill side of the road to use as seats and sat down for lunch.

I set up my MSR PocketRocket stove and heated water for tea. When that was done I fried eggs for a sandwich. Although the day was cool, the sunlight reflected off of the road cut, keeping us warm. We had a leisurely meal and then, coaxing stiff legs into action, headed back down the hill. We once again crossed the Little Sur and walked through the Coast Redwoods. Once past the top of the hill, the rest of the way was all downhill.

We saw nothing extraordinary on the way back, although the shifting sun brought out different feature of the hills, but we met a local resident in his pickup truck and chatted with him for a few minutes. He described the damage from the Soberanes, saying that he was impressed with how quickly the land was recovering from it. He saw it as a natural process that was part of the cycle of events in these mountains; such fires caused no damage in the long run. The round trip took about six hours.