Hike Coordinator: Richard O’Neill
Narration by Richard O’Neill
Even though the club hiked this one hike on one certain Saturday, the club outing on the Bullards Beach horse trails was really about three hikes.
The first hike was a Cascades Mountains hike, a relatively easy amble to Nip and Tuck Lakes, which was the original destination for the club. However, the Windigo Fire burst into flaming existence, thanks to a round of lightning storms hovering over dry forests. Since the Nip and Tuck hike began at like-named Windigo Pass, it stood to reason that we might not be hiking there. It became official when the Forest Service closed off large swaths of land, trails, and roads in the Windigo Pass area. Time for Plan B.
When the mountains are aflame, then the coast seems like a logical choice. So off I went several days before the actual hike, to test out a route on the Bullards Beach State Park horse trail system. Comprised of the Cut Creek, North Loop, Three Mares, and Pearl’s Trail(s), plus one other nameless trail that runs along the Bullards Beach Road between campground and beach. There’ll be a pop quiz in the morning, boys and girls.
There were two drawbacks to that 7-mile route: virtually all of the loop was on soft sand, and the last half was in shadeless sand dunes and dang, the warm sun baked my noodle as I trudged along. I needed to make some changes, otherwise my fellow hikers would hate me more than normal.
The first change was to hike in the opposite direction so as to get the dunes out of the way first when the day would be cooler. The second change was to replace the Cut Creek Trail segment with a walk on Bullards Beach itself, trading in three miles of soft sand for some hardpack on the beach.
Approximately 10 hikers (including two friends from the South Coast Striders) hit the trail, totally unaware of my travails in cobbling together the route. Soft sand was still soft sand, though, and leg muscles were soon aflame like the forest at Windigo Pass. But, at least it wasn’t as hot as it could get in the afternoon.
The cool part (literally!) was that after the trail crested and dropped through a series of grassy pastures, the fog rolled in and there’d be no threat of hot sun for the remainder of the day. There’d be little to no visibility either, as the thick fog limited our vision to about 15 feet or so. As we straggled down the beach, we all appeared to each other like spectral hikers from the underworld, ghostly in the thick fog.
Our egress off the beach was Exit 147 and it was an open question as to whether we would see the sign or not. But the exit signs are painted bright yellow and it was just enough color for us to notice as we trod along in our colorless world of gray. So, while our original hike had been nipped and tucked by the Windigo Fire, we did make do in fine fashion.
Read more about this hike on Richard O’Neil’s blog, Richard Hikes
More pictures on Richard O’Neill’s Flickr page
Pictures below by Richard O’Neill
