Follow the instructions given for the hike of December 23, 1996. Instead of turning into the Woodside Campground, keep on for a couple of miles more along highway 1 to the north. Watch for the turnout into the Stump Beach parking lot, to your left.
When you turn into the Stump Beach parking lot, you'll park your car facing west against a row of wooden posts. This is the direction in which you'll travel.
Set off down the obvious trail toward the beach, past three picnic tables to your right. Shortly, you emerge from the pine wood surrounding the parking lot -- notice the wind-created upward slant to the trees to your left. The trail is paved, off and on, as it drops toward the beach, switchbacking just once, with steps.
The beach itself is sand, but has large stony areas, full of hand-size sea-rounded rocks on which you can easily turn you ankle. Stop for a moment and look at the cove, a quarter-mile-long cleft between 50-foot sea-eroded bluffs.
Turning left, you'll see a moderately steep open cleft through bushy terrain leading up to the top of the southern tier of bluffs. This is the way you want to go. To get there, you'll have to make your way over the stream coming down from Miller Gulch. If you don't mind taking off your shoes and getting your feet wet, just wade across the wide, shallow mouth through the sand. Otherwise, go upstream a ways and look for a jam of old bleached logs on which you can clamber across. Careful -- if you slip on a wet log (and they are slippery!) you'll get your feet wet anyway... Once across (and after you've wrung out your socks, if necessary), follow up the above-mentioned cleft to the top of the bluffs.
At this point the guidebook advises to "follow the main track veering left toward Gerstle Cove", but I couldn't find any particular main track in any direction, so we set off across country toward the southwest, aiming for an obvious small standing rock with a tree at its left tilting to the left. Pass this formation and continue to the top of a (very) small ridge a hundred yards or so beyond it. From this ridge, looking toward the ocean, you can see a twin-rutted greenway paralleling the coastline; you probably would find the terminus of the same route if you were to follow the bluffs above the cove at Stump Beach all the way out to where they end.
Again, descend and make your way across country toward the greenway until you reach it; then turn left and follow it. In wet weather, large sections of the ruts may be full of water, but usually the center of the track will be a bit drier.
While watching the ocean (and spuming waves) to your right, also keep your other eye on the highway to your right. Soon you'll see a car or two parked alongside the road. This is the point at which the path from the pygmy forest crosses Highway 1 and comes down to the sea, and you join the earlier hike. To get to your car -- unless you have a shuttle -- simply return the way you came, or ascend to the highway and walk back north along it.
Don Harlow
| Map will be added later | Map will be added later |
Don Harlow <don@donh.vip.best.com>