Greg and I spent the holiday weekend at the coast and man did we hit the weather jackpot! It was gorgeous and warm all weekend. I could not believe our luck. We drove over on Saturday morning and went straight to the south trailhead for Neahkahnie Mountain where we were the sixth car at 10:30am. Then we hit the trail for the 1.5 mile hike to the top. We saw this super cool fungus. I’ve never seen this one before:
Heading up through the trees:
This trail has a big problem with hikers cutting the switchbacks. There’s a sign…
But of course signs don’t work. Here is one of the numerous spots where someone (park staff?) has put down a bunch of branches over a big eroded area that was used to cut the switchback. We saw a lot of this.
This trail needs some work. It has become badly eroded with a lot of exposed roots:
Man, there was a lot of lichen here!
We scrambled the last bit up to the summit and for a few brief moments we had the place to ourselves.
Cool clouds to the west:
The summit benchmark is so battered that it’s almost unreadable now:
We had only been there for a couple minutes before people started showing up in droves, but we stayed on the summit for about 45 minutes enjoying the view, the sunshine, and the almost total lack of wind. On the way down we passed a whole bunch of people heading up and we were glad we got an early start. We also passed a hiker heading up who was barefoot. That did not look fun. As we drove out we counted 26 cars at the trailhead.
We had lunch at Left Coast Siesta (highly recommended) then checked into our hotel (the Inn at Manzanita) where sunshine was streaming into our room. Wonderful!
Then went for a walk on the beach, where we could see good ol’ Neahkahnie to the north.
Back at our room afterward we enjoyed sitting on our little deck with hot tea. Ahhhh, this is the life!
That evening we were treated to an amazing sunset:
Video: