Lost Coast Trail
King Range, Humboldt County · near Shelter Cove / Ferndale · North Coast
Hiking
At a glance
- Difficulty
- strenuous
- Route type
- point-to-point
- Distance
- 25 miles
- Elevation gain
- 2,000 ft
- Time needed
- multi-day
- Best season
- May–October (year-round, but wettest in winter)
Permits and booking
- Permit required
- Yes
- How the permit works
- BLM King Range permit via Recreation.gov on a 3-month rolling window — new permits release each day at 7am for the date 3 months out. Bear canister mandatory and provided. Critically: two sections are impassable at high tide — a tide chart is not optional.
- How hard the permit is to get
- 3 of 5
What is here
- Features
- Roadless wilderness coastline · Tidal timing required · Black-sand beaches & tide pools · Sea lions, elephant seals, whales
Worth knowing
- Dogs
- Allowed
- Good for a first timer
- No
Hiking detail
- Nights
- 3–4
- Resupply
- None — carry all food. Bear canister required (BLM issues at permit pickup).
- Intl tip
- Most people underestimate how exhausting walking on soft sand and cobble is — plan for a pace closer to 1.5 mph than 3. Download or print a tide table for your exact dates and mark the two impassable zones (the Punta Gorda–Randall Creek stretch and the Miller Flat–Gitchell Creek stretch) before you go. There's no cell signal to check tides on the trail.
The guide
The Lost Coast exists because the mountains here are simply too steep and unstable for a highway — engineers routed Highway 1 i…
In the Guidebook
Everything above is yours for free. The written guide to Lost Coast Trail — what it is actually like, and what we would tell a friend before they went — comes with the Guidebook.
Getting there
- Coordinates
- 40.1556, -124.118