2 miles of hiking • 500' elevation gain •
I knew there was going to be a storm on the beach, and the winds gusts of 25-35mph I had seen looked tolerable, but it didn't turn out as expected! The winds turned out to be intolerable and down right hurricane strength. We turned around after only one mile after having to duck down to lower our center of gravity due to being pushed around and beat up! On the way back the sustained winds ratcheted up to the point of having trouble walking! This was without a doubt the most brutal hike we've ever been on....Period! Sand was in every crevice of our clothes. The wind noise from our hoods vibrating was deafening and I feel like my hearing was damaged. The only positive thing we got out of this was a good idea of what wind speeds are/aren't tolerable, and another good story. When we got on Hwy 101 I looked up the current wind speeds and found the sustained wind speed was 42mph and gusting at 62mph. We're now calibrated and armed for future windy condition forecasts! Oh, by the way, there were many cars driving on this beach and that wasn't exactly our idea of scenic. There was a woman that offered us a ride back, when seeing us having difficulty moving forward, but we declined since the access road was about 0.2 miles ahead. This was a mistake as the last 0.2 miles felt like 60mph sustained winds!
