Pt. Sal Cliff hike  (to hell & back)

The Point Sal Beach Park has an old abandoned road that you can take from the Park parking lot and hike the 6 miles to Point Sal beach.  There is also an old abandoned jeep trail that can be accessed that goes to the actual Point.  However, the jeep trail is over private land, is therefore trespassing, and prohibited.  Between the Point and the Beach there is no official path.  

This hike took the jeep trail to the Point and then created a path to the Beach, and then a return over the normal old road.  The jeep trail to the Point is 5.25 miles.  It is sandy toward the end, but it is not a hard hike.  The road back to the Park from the Pt. Sal beach is steep, but a good hiking road.  The path between the Point and the Beach does not exist, and is extremely difficult. 

From the Point, you have to make a path down to the beach.  It is 1 mile of clinging to the edge of the cliff as you make your way to the beach.    There is a sharp drop to the beach, and the cliff face is crumbling away as you walk along it.  Once at the beach forward process is either traversing over large rocks, or climbing the cliff of loose sand and traversing along it with the path you are making eroding away as you walk on it.   Between mile 6 and 7, you have to alternate between the cliff and the rocks because sometimes the rocks jut out into the sea.  At mile 7, it is only ¼ mile to the smooth sandy beach that leads to the beach road and home.  It is however, a very tough ¼ mile. 

At mile 7 there is a rock formation that goes out to sea.  The only way around it is to climb the cliff and transverse a long way around it to find a way back down.   Since we arrived here at low tide however, there was a chance there was a short cut, and we took it.  We found a path down to the beach that only involved a 5 or 6 foot jump into the surf.  Dave executed the jump perfectly with minimum water damage.   My jump was not so perfect, - but I survived. 

At the end of the beach, there is a very steep climb to the park road.  Someone had installed a rope to help during the first ½ of the climb.  That helped a lot.

I used by iPhone camera and a Go Pro camera to capture the hike.  The Go Pro video is 26 gb, so only a few short clips and a few screen shots are included with the photos, and they all can be accessed by CLICKING HERE.

© Jerry Pilson 2018