Saturday, January 10 was a spectacular day in the Bay Area.  It was at least 60 degrees, if not warmer and not a cloud in the sky.  We took serious advantage of this uncharacteristic day to really test ourselves (and our packs).  Since one of our days in Patagonia is about 15 miles worth of hiking, we thought we should do something comparable.  We headed to the Coast Trail.

The Coast Trail is one of my all-time favorite hikes in the Bay Area -- especially in the winter. Generally it has rained enough that the hillsides are a gorgeous green and everything is coming to life.  This year we haven't quite had enough rain to make EVERYTHING - but it's more green than brown.  Anyways.. we were lucky enough that our friends Jon and Cami wanted to join us on our killer long day hike.  We left Menlo Park pretty early and headed up to Point Reyes National Seashore.  The trail is 16.1 miles one-way and requires a shuttle partner.  We left Jon and Cami's car at the end of the trail (Palomarin trailhead) and then we headed up to the Point Reyes Hostal just outside of Olema.  We actually didn't start hiking til nearly 10:45am.

The first seven miles of the hike are flat and run alongside the ocean.  Even with 43 - 53 pound packs, those miles were enjoyable.  We stopped for lunch on Arch Rock - admired the views and hoped to see a few whale spouts in the distance.  We were blown away by the weather.  There have been very few times that I have seen the ocean so still... it was almost like a lake.  The sun reflected and glistened off the top and you could clearly see the Farallon Islands in the distance.  It was absolutely amazing.

From lunch at Arch Rock, the trail heads straight up for a mile or two until you then wind your way back down to the coast and Wild Cat camp.  Wild Cat camp gives you direct beach access and is a really great place to camp. We had everything you needed to make it an over-nighter -- but we passed right on through and elected to take the beach route to Alamere Falls instead of the trail on higher ground.   It's probably about a mile along the beach until you reach Alamere Falls -- a 70 foot waterfall that drops from the ledge above directly onto the beach.  I always love this place -- and in the winter there actually is water.  There wasn't much yet this winter, but there was still something there.  We dropped our packs (that were doing us in at this point... never had 11.5 miles seem so long) and tried to recessitate our feet.  We went barefoot in the chilling water of the ocean and the little stream.  We played in the tide pools and rejuvinated ourselves.  The tide pools were awesome.  There were SO many starfish.  We even picked a couple up (that was fun and a bit trippy to have their tentacle things moving all over trying to attach their legs to our hands).  The coolest thing though was the nearly translucent octopus we saw in the pool.  It was small, but definitely an octopus.  Very cool.  Our later trail start and the fun at Alamere Falls resulted in us being at the Falls at sunset (5:15pm).  Without any clouds in the sky, the sunset wasn't super colorful, but it was still really pretty.  We then high-tailed it on out of there hoping we could make headway on our last 4 miles before it got too dark. Lucky for us, there was a full moon last night.  It rose by 6:15pm and lit everything up, even the calm ocean.  It was such a gorgeous evening -- and it even stayed relatively warm.

We were thrilled to finally reach the trailhead after nearly 16.5 miles of hiking.   Lee and I were pretty much destroyed by the time we reached the end.  We both were trying to figure out what we could discard from our packs to lighten the load.  Unfortunately, there is very little we can part with -- that's the difficulty of being out for 8 days and subject to tempartures and weather that could range from 30 - 70 degrees, and from 30 - 60mph wind gusts, rain and potential snow.....  This morning our muscles have been tight but manageable... the real pain and fear is from the bruised hip and collar bones.  Can we really survive?  Our second day on the trail is 16 miles, followed by a 12 mile day.  The way I feel today.. I don't know that I could do 12 miles.  What have we gotten ourselves into?  This is definitely going to be an adventure... But as sore as we are today -- yesterday was SPECTACULAR!! I'm so glad we went.  Thanks Jon and Cami for coming with us!

Lots of pictures HERE!

And Cami and Jon's blog about it all is HERE!