Every year for the past few years I have done a BASK trip to the Lost Coast, a beautiful section of the Mendocino Coastline. I usually do this trip in October, but this year I knew I would be out of the country most of October. I also wanted to do something different and do a trip I had suggested to Fred Cooper some time ago. Instead of going to Bear Harbor we would go to Rockport Bay.
Rockport Bay is a beautiful little cove on private lumber company land in northern Mendocino. When I first stumbled onto this cove it belonged to Louisiana Pacific (LP) and the company employee I talked to explained that they usually granted permission to use the land if you asked beforehand and didn't choose the same date of their company picnic. But LP sold the surrounding land to The Mendocino Lumber Company and when I tracked them down they said NO. They said they were reserving that beach as a perk for their employees. I decided to do a trip anyway but make some changes to the plan.
The first day of our paddle was the Saturday that we drove up, so it was a short day. Instead of paddling all the way to Rockport Bay (and being rejected), we paddled four miles north to the first campground on the Lost Coast Trail. This is called Little Jackass Creek. A south facing point looks like it might provide some protection for the beach from the northwest swell. We discovered that the protection was not all that good and we had to make pretty exciting landings on a dumpy beach.
Three of us, Lucy O'Brien, a friend of hers and I, launched again after unloading our camping gear. I attempted to do a seal launch off the steepest part of the beach. I did a poor job of timing a “window in the waves”, got hit with a steep wave and pushed back. Then I lost my brace and fell over. I managed to roll up and was informed later that I was only a foot from the shore at the time. Everyone was amazed that I found enough water to roll up in, so the sand must have sloped down very steeply under water.
Lucy and her friend joined me with less trouble launching and we paddled north to look for the Anderson Cliffs. There was a thick low overcast a few meters over our heads so we never got to see the cliffs. Lucy informs me that she has paddled past these cliffs three times now with me and has never seen them once! I paddled in close around the big offshore rock in front of the cliffs to play in the rough water close to shore. Then we headed back to camp.
It was a three day weekend for Labor Day and a bunch of campers had hiked out on the Lost Coast Trail. My party was nine kayakers strong and we more than doubled the population of the beach. After consulting the TideLog we set our tents up closer to the water than any of the hike-in-campers. Later in the evening another group of hikers arrived just before dark. They consulted US about the tides and we were able to reassure them that the high tide had just passed and the water was not going to get this high again for 24 hours. They set their tents up on the beach as well.
The next morning we got up early in preparation for a potentially long day. My plan was to paddle down to Rockport Bay looking for other places to camp as we went. If we didn't find a good place we would check out Rockport. If it was empty, fine. If there were people there we would ask them if we could camp there. If they refused we would paddle back to Usal Beach and camp on the beach there. Returning to Usal would make it a long day, 24 miles in all.
The camping options did not look good. The USGS topographic maps of the area showed the cliffs dropping right into the ocean. Things were not quite this bad and there was a strip of beach in most places. However this beach was usually short and steep. Ken Mannshardt landed on one of them and had a difficult time getting back off the beach and back out to join us. Just north of Rockport there was a small north-facing beach that was surpassingly calm. Storm Steiger landed there to check it out and reported that there was only enough room for 4 tents above the high tide line.
We turned around the point into Rockport Bay and some of us went between the rocks to enjoy the rough water on the way. Most people paddled around the rocks and in through the calm bay. A few people kept paddling and explored the start of the point on the other end of the bay, called Cape Vizcaino.
There were dozens of people from The Mendocino Lumber Company on the beach! Most of them were on the south end of the beach and a few others were camping in the valley away from the water. They were buzzing up and down the beach in four wheel motorcycles (called quads). We talked to one guy on a quad who said that he didn't mind if we used the beach. Later we talked to a guy in a camper in the valley. He turned out to be a company accountant who didn't mind if we used the beach. Both of these guys disavowed any responsibility for giving or denying us permission, they just personally had no objections. Nobody official ever talked to us so we just camped without permission.
The deserted south end of the beach had an array of old piers buried in the sand. Some of these were only a few feet tall and were perfect for mounting a stove on. Others were six feet tall and perfect for hanging wetsuits on to dry. These piers were arranged in rows so we assigned numbers to the spaces between the rows and set a tent up in each space. The first space between the rows was Number One Rockport Way. I ended up in Number Six Rockport way. (I am not a number! I am a free man!) Joe Petolino set up his tent BEFORE the first row and became Number Zero Rockport Way. Soon all the piers had gear drying or stored on them and we started joking about which ones belonged to whom!
We had a nice campground, a nice meal, a nice sunset and slept well. In the morning we all launched and headed out behind Cape Vizcaino. The people ho went there the afternoon before had not gone far enough to find the big cave I knew about so we all went through that. Then most of us went through a narrow crack behind the big offshore island that the cave goes through. When a big set came through, some of us had a really wild ride in there!
We had discussed the possibilities the evening before and decided to continue south instead of north back to Usal Beach. Lucy had arrived early and shuttled a car to Westport Union Landing State Park. We did this as an emergency bailout plan. In case the wind or waves came up and we had difficulties going back north to Usal we could go south (with the prevailing win and swell) to this car and shuttle ourselves back north. But with beautiful weather we still went south because this way we would see a different coastline than the one we saw the afternoon before.
What we saw was a little more interesting than I remember from my one trip past this area years before. We went closer to shore than I was comfortable with back then. So we got to do a lot of rock gardening and found a few little arches to go through. On my earlier trip I had passed by Westport as not being a good place to land. This time I found Westport interesting: Lots of submerged rocks with waves breaking over them. I was unable to catch a surfing ride on these and found the water close to shore calm. We could land anywhere. Most of the group landed at a sandy beach at the south end of the park. Joe Petolino wanted to land at the north end of the park under a flight of stairs so Storm and I came along. We found the stairs to be a difficult climb and from the reports we heard later the beach had easier access for kayakers.