Every Trail Tells a Story
Skunk Cabbage Creek
Discover the most enchanting stretch of the Coastal Trail, where rainforest meets the Pacific.
Marvel at the botanical oddity of skunk cabbage – giant, glowing, and unforgettable.
End your forest journey with a grand payoff: miles of wild, driftwood-strewn beach
Moss-draped Sitka spruce and a multitude of skunk cabbage massed on the muddy flats by Skunk Cabbage Creek make this a rainforest-like ramble to remember. The air feels heavy, wet, and full of life – the sort of place where you half-expect a dinosaur to lumber out of the ferns. After Skunk Cabbage Trail tours this lush jungle, it delivers a second delight: Gold Bluffs Beach, where miles of dark, driftwood-strewn sand offer a second coastal adventure.
Many hikers (this one included) will tell you the Skunk Cabbage section is the most enchanting length of the Coastal Trail in Redwood National and State Parks. It feels wonderfully remote, a place where forest, bog, and ocean braid together. Among the surprises in this luxuriant woodland are Roosevelt elk, often thought of as meadow grazers. Here they sometimes materialize like ghosts among the spruces, their antlers snagging strands of fog.
And then there’s the namesake plant itself. Skunk cabbage is the pituitary freak of the plant world: leaves broad as umbrellas, blooms that look like a science experiment gone awry. In the tall tree-filtered light, they glow a radiant green, as though plugged into some secret photosynthetic power source. Their smell, when bruised, is another matter entirely – less perfume, more gym socks. Still, there’s no denying their place in the trail’s drama, crowding the creek banks in fantastical profusion.
The Coastal Trail here reminds us that hiking is as much about rhythm as it is about distance. The path rises and dips, squeezes through alder thickets, and then opens into ferny glades where sunlight and fog duel for dominance. Each bend reveals something different: a trickle of creek, a throne-sized Sitka spruce, a sudden curtain of sword ferns. This isn’t the sort of trail you hurry – it’s a wander, a stroll, a page-by-page turning of a green storybook.
What makes this outing irresistible is the contrast. One moment you’re wrapped in primeval forest, and the next you’re standing at the lip of the continent, staring out at Gold Bluffs Beach. Here the forest simply stops, giving way to dark sand and driftwood as far as the eye can see. You can walk the beach endlessly, or, if you’ve been wise enough to arrange a shuttle, continue up-coast toward Davison Road and stitch forest and ocean into one unforgettable day’s journey.
From Highway 101, about 2 miles north of Orick (just north of the Bald Hills Road turnoff), turn left (west) on the signed park road for Skunk Cabbage/Coastal Trail. Drive 0.75 mile to the dirt road’s end at the parking area and trailhead.
From the trailhead, the alder-lined path quickly pulls you into a very green world. About 0.5 mile out, where the route hugs the creek, you’ll find dense colonies of skunk cabbage sprouting shoulder to shoulder from boggy ground. The trail repeatedly crosses and re-crosses Skunk Cabbage Creek, winding among Sitka spruce, ferns, and the occasional redwood that somehow dodged the loggers’ saw.
Two miles in, the path climbs sharply out of a fern-filled canyon to a forested ridge. At 2.4 miles you reach a junction above Gold Bluffs Beach. Though an old side trail once switchbacked steeply to the sand, it’s long closed; instead, continue on the main Skunk Cabbage Trail as it dips in and out of two lush canyons before finally reaching the beach at a signed access point. From here, walk the sand as far as your heart – or your arranged shuttle – takes you.