My Foothill friend, Kristine, is finishing up her Masters in Marine Science while she's working toward her Vet Tech A.S. She is getting her degree through the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (via CSU Monterey Bay), which is where she met her current roommate, Sarah. Why am I blathering on about all this? Well, because Sarah works for the National Park Service at the Point Reyes National Seashore and part of her job every year is to go out and tag all the newly born elephant seals. Kristine mentioned in passing once that I might be able to accompany her and Sarah on just such an excursion and I excitedly replied that I'd totally be down with that. :o) The moment finally arrived and on Friday I woke up early, met up with Kristine and trekked up to Point Reyes to scope out all the ellies. I was super excited and the trip did not disappoint.
We visited a couple sites where the ellies haul out, though I think both were considered a part of Chimney Rock. (I am completely ignorant about the layout of the park so until I clear it up with Kristine, I'm sticking with my Chimney Rock story!) Anyhoo, the first stretch of beach we visited had only one male and a handful of ladies and babies. (Technically speaking, I guess I should refer to them as bulls, cows and weaners [yes, that really is what they're called, I swear!] but whatevs. You still know what I mean.) I planted myself as firmly as I could on the hillside and took lots and lots of photos. I'll only bore you with a few.
I was sitting for less than five minutes when the big bull decided he was in the mood and dragged himself over and on top of some poor, protesting female. I knew you'd all want to sneak a National Geographic-like peek so here you go!
Here's a cute li'l weaner who was closest to me. See the plastic bottle and tennis ball lying right next to him/her? This stretch of beach isn't accessible to the public. How nice of them to still dump their garbage in places the ellies will still be able to get it. Yay people. :c/ (To be fair, I know that garbage winds up in the ocean and then lands just about everywhere, whether it was dumped nearby or not. Still, it's annoying!)
A bunch of weaners hanging out. They're so cute!
I was left to my own devices while everyone else was out tagging so I experimented with angles and snapped a photo of myself and the seals.
Ahem. Okay. So! This is where I start to whine ever-so-slightly about how exactly we got to such primo locations. I know you all know
how much I just love nature but my desire to get in on such a once-in-a-lifetime experience made me quite delusional about just how much actual hiking would be involved in this little excursion. I had told Kristine that I am, shall we say, less than athletic and she was assured by Sarah that the hikes we'd be doing would be manageable. I don't think the athletic truly understand what kind of shape the unathletic are actually in! Because these were not trivial hikes. Oh no. My first tip-off that I may have been in over my head was when we piled out of the SUV and Sarah said it would be about a 20-minute hike to the first site. Say wha?! Only part of it was uphill, though, so, y'know, it shouldn't be so bad. HA! She made me laugh. We hiked for those twenty minutes and then we went off-trail and approached the edge of the hill. And then Sarah just started bopping on down the hillside. Uh... me no likey. Me no likey at all! I was already wheezy and sweaty; I didn't want to add maimed or dead to the list. But the rest of the group (we were with a volunteer and an intern, as well) started going down so I really had no choice. Luckily for me, Kristine was also extremely wary of tumbling down the hillside so at least
someone was on my side! It was scary and muscle-crippling but I made it. I failed to take a picture from the top of the hill but I did snap one from down below. And THIS is what I had to climb down, though the picture really doesn't do justice to the terrifyingness - or length - of the hike:
Going up really wasn't any more fun than going down, let me tell you. I did feel very Bear Grylls-esque as I searched for good footholds and grabbed onto surrounding flora to pull myself up. I felt decidedly less Bear-ish when I slid down on my ass, scraped up my arm and got a handful of prickers...
This was the view once we reached the top. Worth it? In retrospect, yes. :o)
We then Purell'd our hands and ate our lunches, giving me a much needed moment to let my jelly legs reconstitute themselves. Too quickly, however, we were off again to the other side of Drake's Beach to do some more tagging. On this stretch of sand there were several bulls (at least 6 or 7, I think) and hundreds of cows and weaners. (I believe the sign at the observation deck said there were 600+ elephant seals there total.) We met up with one of Sarah's coworkers who changed up our hiking route a bit which afforded me a much better view of the ellies. That's great. But it also meant another steep hike and my weak, shaky ass wasn't sure it could handle anymore! Seriously. You people know me. This was more exercise than I'd had in the last YEAR. I was
thisclose to telling everyone to go on without me while I hung out at the observation deck but ultimately told myself to suck it up and traipsed off after the group. But would you
look at this hike? It's INSANE!!!!!!!! See the teeny, tiny observation deck at the top? And see the loooooong, trail-less, step-less way down? Yeah.
DO YOU SEE IT, PEOPLE?!!!! Craziness!!
I have no idea how but I made it to the bottom in one piece. Yes, I fell into a puddle and completely soaked my shoes and had cold feet the rest of the day but I made it. I know I just said this but I seriously have no idea how I did that.
Moving on! This little guy is the first one we came across. He's a yearling - he was born and tagged at Point Reyes last year.
And here's a little weaner, up close and personal:
One of the big bulls:
These guys are H U G E. I mean, you can read about how big they are and you can see how big they look on television but when you are this close to them they are massive!!! And, though it may appear otherwise, they can move and groove on the sand much faster than you can run. So if they decide to charge you, run uphill - apparently, that's one direction these guys can't go. You're welcome.
While the other ladies were all off tagging, Kristine and I got to use their scopes to check out the ellies even more closely. It was
so interesting! I saw mating, fighting, nursing - there was a lot of activity on the beach that day. That was good for me. It was not so good for the taggers. Why? Well, the weather on Friday was rather warm; as such, the ellies were all a little too warm and so they were fairly awake and close to the water. Usually, the weaners sort of separate themselves off from the cows and hang out in a little group a ways away. As you can see, this was not the case on Friday. This meant that the weaners were a bit more alert than is conducive to tagging... but I got to see some awesome stuff.
Then I was rudely confronted with the prospect of having to climb back up the hill. By this point I was hot, sweaty, tired and just generally weak-feeling. I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to pull myself together enough to make the trip back up. And about halfway through I kept losing my footing on some mud and I got extremely frustrated
(<--- understatement). Had I been alone, I would've rolled up in a ball and just withered away on the hillside - I really didn't think I had anything left in me to make it any further. And while Kristine was very patient and helped me along, I knew I was going to have to buck up, grit my teeth and get the hell to the top so that's what I did. I was completely wobbly by the time I made it and looked like a drunk person stumbling to the car but by golly I did it! I know you're all thinking that I'm overexaggerating but I'm not. I really am that physically weak! I'm sure all of you could've done it all with your eyes closed but I was very proud of me. (And still am!)
My favorite part of the day, though, had to be when I pulled myself over the wooden fence separating the observers from the off-limits area and a woman asked me "How do you get on that tour?" I had no breath left in my body so Kristine fielded that question for me but it capped off my feeling of specialness. :o) It was awesome. The entire trip was actually
extremely cool and I'm SO, so excited that Kristine asked me to be a part of it all. If I'd remembered to take my Dramamine (the roads in and around the park are SO windy I'm extremely lucky I didn't share my meals with everyone in the car) and had a bit more muscle strength, it would've been a perfect outing. Still, I made it home tick- and poison oak-free so I still consider it a win. ;o)
