The longest segment of the summer is the one from El Capitan to Haskell's Beach. The tide was very low this day (second lowest of the summer -1.6). Ted and I set out from El Capitan early at 5:30am. Parking was the hardest part since the day use area wasn't open yet. We noticed a few cars parked across the freeway, but we opted for parking at one of the group sites closest to the stairs down to the beach. (These stairs don't actually fully go down to the beach anymore.) We saw some fisherman here but afterward. We didn't see anyone until we were close to Haskells Beach.
It was about half a mile to the place we stopped on our Refugio to El Capitan walk. The point here has a lot of large rocks to scramble up or maneuver around. Just past this there was a ton of seaweed to traipse through. Another notable feature in this first section is the seawall that protects the bluff from erosion (the road and train tracks are pretty close.)
The tide pools were best in the next section around 2 miles into our walk with sea anemones, muscles, snails and sand crabs. We even spotted some type of squid. Gato Canyon has lots of smaller rocks to navigate about 2.5 miles into the walk.
If it wasn't such a long walk, we might have explored this tunnel. (The land on the bluff above this is all very private with no official beach access, so probably not.)
There are several huts on the beach for residents. One is around the 4 mile mark with a lawn and palm trees (and a port-a-potty).
The only other tricky part was just over 4 miles in at the creek at Dos Pueblos Canyon. We had to wade here but found several beautiful abalone shells. (A co-worker of Ted's reports that there is an abalone farm here that pulls water into use and releases it back out to the ocean adding to the creek flow we waded through.)
We finally finally spotted some people near Naples Point around 5 miles into the walk. When we rounded the point, we could see Haskell's Pier in the distance.
Related Posts
El Capitan (this post needs an update now that it has reopened)
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