Day Hike at the Big Basin Redwoods National Park

Due to my present state of unemployed-ness, I decided to try to get healthy. So I'm trying to work out two to three times a week. Then, I decided that it would be a good idea to go hiking. After some quick searches, I found that Big Basin Redwoods National Park is only about 30 miles away, and I can go for a Day Hike. So that's what I did - drove down the narrow route 236 and hiked the strenuous Sunset trail.

I started from my apartment at around noon, and reached the park entrance in about an hour.

http://www.bigbasin.org/ (This is the Big Basin Redwood national park's web site)


Here's a map of a small park of the trail. The park has camps and many trails - enough for multiple days of hikes, but since I was only going for a day hike, I decided to try the most strenuous hike - the Sunset-to-Berry-Creek-Falls trail. The round trip is about 10~11 miles, and there's a lot of hills to climb up and down. It was quite tiring.

The map shows a few things.

1. start from the Park HQ. Although access to the park is "free", the park has to raise revenue somehow, so they sell the trail maps for $3 each, and parking for the day is $7.
2. The Sunset trail - a lot of climbing up and down.
3. A series of waterfall at the Golden Cascades Falls and the Silver Falls.
4. The Berry Creek Falls
5. I returned via the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail. The Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail splits into a main Trail and an Alternate Trail here. I took the Alternate Trail - more on this later.
6. I took the short connector from the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail back to the Sunset Trail, and took the Sunset Trail back to the Park HQ.


This picture was taken near the start of the hike. Although, I had to turn back, since the first segment of the Sky-line-to-the-Sea Trail was closed due to storm damage.



Here's a picture nearing the start of the hike. Note that there's some slope here, but this is considered as moderate slope, there are steeper slopes to climb.



Other parts of the trail are relatively flat and not much harder than simple street-level strolls. Note that there's a stream running next to the trail.


This is just about the mid-way of the 11 mile round trip, at the Golden Falls. In the map above, I've labeled it as #3.



This is another part of the series of waterfalls. I think this is the Silver Falls.



This is the pay-off waterfall, the Berry Creek Waterfall. It's a nice little waterall with a pool at the bottom. This is labeled as #4 on the map above.

I decided to take the Skyline-to-the-Seas Trail, this is a trail sign where the trail splits into a main trail and an alternate trail. Due to sheer bravado, I decided to take the trail less taken and went on the alternate trail. This point is labeled as #5 on the map above. It was on the alternate trail that I ran out of energy and my body started to complain. My legs started to cramp and tighten up. I could have sworn that the "alternate" part of the trail was much longer than it shows on the map.



The last 2~3 miles of the hike was rather hellish, as I slowly waddled toward the finish line. I resorted to counting my footsteps to try to estimate how much longer I had to walk. I had to stop every couple of hundred yards to rest, although I could never rest too long, as mosquitoes would swarm when I'm not moving. I don't know if they bite, but I didn't want to stop for long and find out. All the bravado and energy had left me, as I had to fight to finish the hike. I saw a trail marker that was 1.3 miles from the HQ, but I was too tired to take the camera out of my bag and take a picture. When I came across this marker that was "only" 0.9 miles from the park HQ, I mustered some energy to take the camera out and take this picture.

Finally, when I emerged from the trail, I got on the gravel-covered parking lot and I could see my car was only a couple of hundred yards away - that didn't give me any more energy, just relief, as I shuffled the last couple of hundred yards and collapsed in my car. I sat in there for about 10 minutes, trying to recover, but I was just too tired to recover from. So I had to struggle to drive home. The first 30 minutes driving was quite adventurous, as I really had to concentrate to drive. However, after about 30 minutes, I realized that my body had indeed recovered enough to the point where I was merely tired instead of feeling so tired that I felt like throwing up.

Anyways, the 11 mile roundtrip hike was perhaps too much. I should have perhaps started with the less strenuous 5~6 mile hike. But now that the hike is done, I guess I'll have to do the 11 mile hike next time to see if my physical conditioning has improved. I brought 1.5 liters of water, although I had 500 mL of water left, since I also brought roughly a pound of grapes. Although, I started hitting the wall after I ate the grapes. So maybe I'll not do that next time.


Next time, I think I'll stay with the 1.5L of water, but bring trail mix and energy bars instead. I also brought extra clothing, since I wasn't sure what kind of weather I was going to run into. However, despite the fact that 90% of the trail was completely under the canopy of the forest, I was never too hot or too cold, so I didn't need the extra clothing. So I'll leave that behind the next time. I also didn't have a proper backpack or hiking boots, although that didn't seem to matter too much. I almost twisted my ankle a couple of times in my running shoes, but recovered each time. However, if I go and purchase a new pair of hiking boots the provide better support for my ankles, I will have to deal with the extra weight of the boots - I'll have to think about the trade-offs.