Bruno’s to Armchair Beach, November 15th 2007.


I often cannot join John Boeschen’s Thurseve paddles but the upcoming holidays moved my Thursday meetings in the south bay to Friday. I also had a surf session and party to go to in Half Moon Bay on Saturday. I hit on the scheme of going to the Thurseve paddle, ninja camping on a beach, continuing south Friday morning to work, reserving a bunk bed at the Montara Lighthouse Youth Hostel, going surfing at Pillar Point Saturday morning and making it to the party that afternoon. Sunday I could sleep in late at the hostel, drive home and spend half the day cleaning up all my gear!

I showed up at Bruno’s, the announced put-in, and told John my secret plan to camp out. He decided to go to Armchair Beach, which is right next to China Camp State Park. Armchair doesn’t have much room above the high tide line but China Camp has a gravel berm that extends far out of site of the rangers. So we paddled to Armchair and had our pot-luck dinner around the campfire. Jonathan Percel was the only other paddler to join us this evening but somehow we put together a filling meal from the scraps we all brought.

After dinner and wine and conversation around the presto-log-fire, we packed up to leave. John and Jonathan went east while I went west around one small point. Perhaps I had too much wine and forgot to notice the low tide. Or perhaps I had suppressed the memory of how miserable it can be to land at China Camp at low tide. Around the point I ran into a mud flat. I polled my kayak as far into it as I could and then got out to drag it up out of the mud. I was wearing my over-the-calf mukluk boots and this kept me out of the mud at first. But there was no way to get the muck off the mukluk and it migrated all over the place in the dark. A bit of it even found its way inside my dry-suit! If I had been smart, I could have walked around the point to China Camp and avoided the mess. Carrying the kayak would have been preferable.

But I settled down reasonably comfortably in my black bivy-tent in the black of the night and slept until 6:00 in the morning. I took my tent down and paddled away before the rangers caught me in a day-use-only area.


All text and images Copyright © 2007 by Mike Higgins / contact