How to Get a Lost Coast Trail Permit — and Survive the Tides

The Lost Coast is the stretch of Northern California so rugged the highway engineers gave up and routed Highway 1 inland around it. What’s left is about 25 miles of wild black-sand beach where the King Range drops straight into the Pacific — no roads, no cell service, elephant seals hauled out on the sand, and the kind of solitude that’s almost extinct on the California coast. It is one of the great backpacking trips in the country — honestly one of the most beautiful I’ve ever done, and because you walk the coastline instead of climbing a range, it asks a lot less of your legs than the scenery suggests. The wildlife along the way is reason enough to go.

It’s also the one on this site where getting the planning wrong can get you killed — and I don’t mean that as marketing copy. The BLM says it plainly on the permit page: there have been “many accidents, close calls, and deaths due to poor planning,” and there is no search and rescue team. The two things that make this trip hard are the permit and the tides, and the tides are the part that’s genuinely dangerous. This guide covers both, in depth, because the Lost Coast is exactly the trip where scattered, half-right information gets people hurt.

Lost Coast Trail permit, in one breath

How the permit works

There’s no lottery and no single opening day here — it’s a 90-day rolling window. Each day at 7:00 a.m. Pacific, the date exactly 90 days out becomes reservable on Recreation.gov. So if you want to start on July 1, you (and everyone else) can book it starting at 7 a.m. on April 2. Popular summer dates that also happen to have good tides can go quickly right at 7 a.m.; quieter dates linger.

The quota varies by day — more permits on high-demand dates, fewer on quiet ones — and each permit covers your group (max group size 15; organized and commercial groups need a separate Special Recreation Permit). You can hold one active permit at a time.

Fees: a $6 reservation fee (never refundable) plus a $12-per-person Special Area Fee for the trip (no charge for kids under 16). If you cancel or shrink your group at least 7 days before your entry date, the Special Area Fee is refundable; inside that window it isn’t.

Walk-up permits exist as a backstop: up to 3 starts are handed out by a lottery at the King Range Visitor Center, Monday–Saturday at 8 a.m., with anything left going first-come. It’s a real option for the flexible, but don’t build a trip around it.

Two things that trip people up: your permit is valid only for the entry date printed on it (no showing up a day early or late), and — critically — the fact that a permit is for sale does not mean the dates are passable. These permits cover the whole King Range Wilderness, including upland trails. The tide is a completely separate check that’s on you.

The tides — read this before you book anything

This is the section that matters. On the coastal route there are three “impassable zones” where the trail is pinched between the surf and vertical bedrock cliffs, with narrow beach, big boulders, and nowhere to escape to if the water comes up. At high tide there is no high ground — the waves have the whole beach. People have been trapped, swept off their feet, and killed here. You cross these zones only when the tide is low enough, full stop.

The three impassable zones and their tide thresholds (straight from the BLM):

Now the single most important sentence in this whole guide, in the BLM’s own words: “Low tide does NOT equal passable.” Some days the tide never drops below the threshold at all. Other days the only low-enough tide falls in the middle of the night — and the BLM strongly advises against night hiking here (slick boulders, waves, wildlife). Either way, those are impassable dates, and trying to force them is how the accidents happen.

The BLM publishes an official list of impassable dates for each year, right on the Recreation.gov permit page. Before you book anything, go read it. Do not assume your dates work just because permits are on sale.

How to actually plan a passable crossing:

  1. Check the tides for your exact dates using the NOAA tide predictions for Shelter Cove (station and app links in Resources below). Set your threshold to the zone you’re worried about (3 ft is a good working number; 2.5 ft for Zone 2).
  2. Confirm the low-tide window is long enough to cross at 1 mph. Zone 2 is 4 miles — that’s roughly a four-hour crossing on foot over boulders. Your low-tide window has to actually contain that.
  3. Enter each zone on a receding (outgoing) tide, never a rising one, so the water is dropping while you’re in there, not climbing.
  4. Add margin for swell. A big ocean swell effectively raises the water and shortens your window; long-period swells bring sneaker waves. Check the marine forecast (Resources) the day before, not just the tide table.

Here’s the system that worked for me once I had firm dates: NOAA did the heavy lifting on the tide heights, and then I built the whole route in a GPS app (GaiaGPS), dropped a marker on each impassable zone, and wrote in the hard time we had to reach each one by — the “hit it by this time or we don’t go in” deadline based on that day’s receding tide. On the trail that turned a life-or-death judgment call into a simple checkpoint: are we standing here by X o’clock, yes or no? If your dates don’t give you a safe, daylight, receding-tide window through Zone 2, they’re the wrong dates. Move them. There is no version of “we’ll just get a little wet to get through” — the water is ~50°F with rip currents and undertow, survival is often 20 minutes without a wetsuit, and sneaker waves have swept people out to sea from what looked like dry sand.

The other hazards (none of these are optional reading)

The Lost Coast stacks up risks beyond the tides, and the BLM flags all of them:

Also required, and easy to forget: a hard-sided bear canister for every person (bear bags are not allowed and you can be fined), a CalFire campfire permit even to run a camp stove, and note that campfires are banned in the wilderness from about June 19 through September 30. Pack out all toilet paper and wet wipes — rangers are hauling out hundreds of them.

Logistics: direction, shuttle, water

Hike it north to south — Mattole down to Black Sands Beach — to keep the prevailing northwest wind at your back. It’s roughly 24.6 miles over 3–4 days, and it’s point-to-point, so you need a shuttle. When I did it, we left our car at the Black Sands Beach (Shelter Cove) finish and booked a shuttle service — Lost Coast Adventures — to run us around to the Mattole trailhead to start; it’s close to two hours each way on slow, rough roads. You can self-shuttle with two cars instead, but for a lot of groups the service is the easier call and worth the money. Either way, sort it before you go — it’s the logistics piece people underestimate. Water is generally available from coastal creeks and springs along the route; always treat it.

Didn’t get the dates you need? Here’s the play

Because it’s a rolling 90-day reservation with real quotas, the good summer dates that also have safe tides are the ones that get taken the moment they open at 7 a.m. If your window is already booked, you’re not out of options:

The catch is the same as always — a cancellation that reopens at some random hour gets grabbed fast, and you can’t sit on Recreation.gov all day. That’s the problem BigDirtyHikes is built to solve: tell us your tide-checked dates and we’ll watch Recreation.gov for an opening and alert you the moment one appears, so you can book it before it’s gone. You still reserve it yourself; we just make sure you’re the one who sees it. (It’s how I got onto this trail — I grabbed a permit off a cancellation about five weeks before the trip, for dates I’d already confirmed were passable.)

Want a heads-up when a Lost Coast permit opens? Give us your (tide-checked) entry dates and we’ll watch Recreation.gov for cancellations and alert you the moment one reopens. [Get free Lost Coast alerts →]

Tools & resources (bookmark these)

Everything you need to plan a safe, legal trip, from the official sources:

Why trust this guide

Permits are the thing we know cold — untangling how Recreation.gov releases, holds, and returns them is what we do every day. This is also one we’ve actually walked, on a permit grabbed off a cancellation, so the tide-planning here isn’t theory. If a date, fee, or threshold on this page is ever wrong, tell us and we’ll fix it fast — on this trail especially, accuracy isn’t a nicety.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a permit to hike the Lost Coast Trail? For any overnight trip in the King Range Wilderness, yes — a King Range Wilderness Permit from Recreation.gov, required year-round. Day hikes don’t need a permit.

When can I reserve a Lost Coast permit? On a 90-day rolling window: each date becomes reservable 90 days ahead, at 7:00 a.m. Pacific, on Recreation.gov. There’s no single opening day and it’s not a lottery.

How much does a Lost Coast permit cost? A $6 non-refundable reservation fee, plus a $12-per-person Special Area Fee (free for youth under 16).

What are the impassable zones on the Lost Coast Trail? Three coastal sections that are only safe below a certain tide: Punta Gorda (under ~6 ft), Sea Lion Gulch to Randall Creek (under 2.5 ft), and Miller Flat to Gitchell Creek (under 3 ft). “Low tide” alone doesn’t mean passable — check the tide height for your exact dates and cross on a receding tide.

How do I check if my dates are passable? Use the NOAA tide predictions for Shelter Cove and the BLM’s Tide Safety Guide, and check the BLM’s official annual list of impassable dates on the Recreation.gov permit page. If there’s no safe, daylight, receding-tide window through Zone 2, pick different dates.

Is a bear canister required on the Lost Coast? Yes — a hard-sided canister for every person, no exceptions. Bear bags aren’t allowed. Rentals are available at the King Range Visitor Center.

By BigDirt · BigDirtyHikes

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