Dead Man's Drop

Point Reyes Lighthouse. Photo: NPS

By Keary Sorenson

It all starts innocuously enough.  I receive a phone call from Mo at the California Academy of Sciences, who received a call from Sarah, the lead biologist for the National Park Service in Point Reyes.  Sarah reported a dead Steller sea lion at the south end of South Beach, below the Point Reyes Lighthouse.  She suspects the animal has been shot.

Sarah tells us the best and quickest way there is a trail leading down from Sea Lion Overlook, just before the lighthouse.  This will negate a four mile (three hour) walk through soft sand had we started from the parking lot.  My wife, Sally, and I agree to check it out.

We are both hurting at the time—Sally has a badly bruised knee, and I have a torn rotator cuff from a fall during a specimen recovery three weeks earlier—so cutting several miles of soft sand out of our trek sounds good.

Because of a prescheduled tidepool class, Sally and I don’t get to the overlook until 2pm.  We have never set off from here, so we contact a park ranger who says, “The fastest way there is to go down the dune, two hundred yards away.  I can’t make it, but you two are in better condition than me.”  Carrying our heavy backpacks, we follow his instructions.

Oops.

The “trail” turns into a gorge that keeps getting steeper and more slippery with a fine red dust.  We end up sliding down the slope until it narrows to less than five feet wide with a rushing creek at the center.  There is no way we are climbing down it.

So we claw back up the ravine to a more stable area then cut back toward the beach.  After a while, we find a spot where we can descend, but it is so steep that when we reach the shore, my wife is still shaking from exertion and fear.

We continue our search.  As we look around for the dead sea lion, we find several carcasses of deer that have fallen off the cliff we just descended.  At the south end of the beach, all we see are live elephant seals.  No Steller carcass in sight—even with binoculars.  So we head north.

After an hour, I spot a large flock of ravens and vultures about a half mile away.  When we reach the animal, it is well past five o’clock.  We barely have three hours of day light, so we go to work.  We measure it, sex it, and examine it for human interaction—strap entanglement, propeller wounds, bullet holes.  The animal has been heavily scavenged, so all we have left is to collect the skull.

This goes well.  It takes just less than two hours to peel the skin back, remove the muscle, expose the skull and pop it free.  By now the sun is almost on the horizon, so I quickly detach the lower mandible, separate it, scoop out the brains and bag them up.  During this time, Sally cleans up the equipment.

Now for the hike back to the truck. 

There is no way we are going back up the way we came down, so we trudge along the beach to another gorge that has lower cliffs.  We climb up the steep ravine—remember, on top of my heavy backpack, I am carrying a 25 pound head in a bag leaking blood and brains through a hole punctured by a canine tooth—and finally reach the top.

The road is still two miles away, across thick brush interspersed with barbed wire fences.  It's getting dark, and thankfully, we find a cattle trail.  After an hour, we spot the road and come across the “A” Ranch.  Our adventure is almost over.  The road is right there, and then maybe ten minutes to the truck.

What we don’t take into account is the heard of moo cows who take offense to our invasion of their space.  They decide first to surround us, then chase us away, which brings about another huge detour.  So down we go into another gorge, and under another barbed wire fence, and up yet another steep hill.  Eventually, we reach the road.

Walking up the road, we think it will be ten minutes to the truck.  But ten minutes come and go, then 20, then 30, after 45 minutes in pitch darkness, we finally spot our truck.  I glance at my watch; it’s 11 o’clock.  Nine hours since we started hiking to avoid what would have been two hours of soft sand.  Some short cut. 

Two days later, I talk to a tile-cutter who lives in Point Reyes.  I ask him if he knows the area around the lighthouse, and he answers in the affirmative.  So I ask him if he has ever climbed down to the beach from there.  He says, “No way.  I climbed up once when I was young and would never do it again.  There is a reason they call it 'Dead Man’s Cliff'.”

Next time, we’ll take the sand.