Day 18 & 19 - Eureka to Myers Flat (Lost Coast)

Wow. Glad I did it, and glad it’s over! The 70 mile loop around the Lost Coast is insanely brutal. Saturday morning I grabbed an Uber from the motel to go pickup my bike from the shop before riding back to the motel, grabbing the gear, and setting off down the 101. Ferndale, CA is the gateway to the northern entrance to Mattole Road (the Lost Coast road).  It’s about 20 miles from Eureka to Ferndale, with the last 10 miles being backroads. When I was five miles out from Mattole I began seeing detour signs and notice of a road closure ahead. I checked the map on my phone and saw the alternate route would have been a long backtrack to catch the 101. I’m not a huge fan of undoing miles so I rode past the signs until I ran into the barricade that was blocking off a massive sinkhole. I unloaded the bike and moved things over on foot until I was on the other side loaded back up and ready to pedal on. Looking back on it this was an omen of what the rest of that day, and the next, had in store. 

Upon reaching Mattole Rd in Ferndale the first thing I saw was a cyclist flying down the steep decline out and into town. As luck would have it, I just happened to be hitting this part of my route the same day the annual “Tour of the Unknown Coast” was taking place. This event is a hundred mile cycling race that starts and ends in Ferndale by having you go 30 miles inland to catch the southern entrance to Mattole before riding the 70 mile loop back into Ferndale. It is regarded as the toughest century race in California, and I will vouch for that any day. So, I ended up being the one guy headed south waving and nodding to the many headed north. It was fun to shout words of encouragement to cyclists on their 90th mile! They typically replied jokingly that I was going the wrong way, or were wishing me good luck on account of the loaded bike. I then hit an aid station for the race around mile 23 and they hooked me up nicely, which was needed as Mattole has caused me to update my definition of a difficult climb. 

I spent the night at a campground 36 miles into the loop. I barely had enough energy to setup camp and cook dinner. After a few minutes of some movie I had downloaded I was out and slept incredibly well. The next morning I wasn’t in a huge rush to set out knowing what I was going to have to do to climb out of this crater. When I did get to it I had a ten mile warmup to the blip on the map of Honeydew. There was a general store in town that didn’t open for another hour. The only water I had was from the campground and it tasted like ass, but thankfully the shopkeeper responded to my knocking and sold me a gallon of water. I was glad to have it as the next 5 miles went straight upwards, violently. I finally reached a false summit for a mile and then went right back to climbing. When the terrain finally shifted to a downward trend it didn’t take long for me to realize how stupidly dangerous a fast descent is on this road. From what I’ve heard, this road hasn’t been properly maintained in close to twenty years. Locals spray paint messages near really bad areas, but it seems to fall on deaf ears at Humboldt County. On my descents I was always playing a rigorous game of dodge-the-pothole/gravel/landslide. On a road like this where when you release the brakes for a couple of seconds you’re suddenly at 35mph this was not easy. 

After carefully cruising back down I had a scenic ride through the Humboldt Redwoods when suddenly the rear tire went flat. I patched it and continued riding only to have it happen again a few miles later. I inspected the tire at this point seeing a huge tear in the sidewall. Not repairable. After another patch I pumped it back up for ten minutes then my shitty pump took the valve stem with it when I detached it releasing all of the air I’d worked to put in. Thankfully someone pulled over and lent me their pump which worked significantly better. One mile later it was flat again and I was officially broken down in the town of Myers Flat. There aren’t too many options for me here in this quaint town. It was either a boutique hotel or an overpriced RV Park. I had to go RV Park, and order new tires overnight from Amazon as I asked around in town and there aren’t any bike tires for sale near here. Sadly it’s Sunday so overnight means Tuesday and that equates to an unwanted zero day tomorrow. I’m bummed out being forced off a day in a town that I was supposed to fly by, but what can I do? I’ll make the best of it tomorrow and try to make up the miles another day. I’m just thankful this didn’t happen while on the Lost Coast.