A Big Sur Loop

November 2025

You can read Anthony's full California Condor Trail trip report here. As usual, the photos below were taken by Anthony.

Anthony and I had originally pencilled in this weekend to climb the Nose, Homer’s Nose, that is. Unfortunately, winter storms rolled in early and even peaks as low and westerly as Homer’s Nose, North Maggie, and Moses Mountain were completely covered in snow. So we turned our eyes to Big Sur. Anthony had been wanting to finish the Condor Trail for some time now and the logistics seemed to work out well for us to do it this weekend. The plan was to start our hike together, and after about twenty or so miles, we’d split up—me looping around to finish my hike where we started, and Anthony continuing south to complete the route he started six years ago.

The only snag in our plan was that five years ago I had attempted this very same loop and had a downright horrid experience. The trail was technically closed at the time and it was so overgrown that the entire route was basically an off-trail, cliffed-out, densely scrub-laden hellscape. On top of this, the poison oak was growing prolifically. If this wasn’t enough there seemed to be hundreds of ticks on every bush I encountered, and (I am not exaggerating) I probably removed close to five-hundred ticks from my body over the course of the day. At some point I started running since the impact from my foot strikes was enough to knock many of the ticks off that hadn’t really sunk into my skin yet. I had to abandon the route about halfway through and turn back. The whole day was an experience that made some of the circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno look like cakewalks.

Somehow, despite all this, Anthony convinced me to join him. He said that he had checked the trail conditions on some website and almost all of our route was a “wilderness freeway” of sorts. And so on Saturday morning, after a hearty breakfast and some good conversation, we were driving south. We started hiking around noon and notched off mile after mile. The terrain in Big Sur is insanely rugged. A hiker finds himself either climbing steeply, descending steeply, or contouring precipitously along a cliff’s edge, but the trail was, indeed, a wilderness freeway. I was extremely impressed at how radically transformed the trail was from my last visit.

A ranger told us there were twenty-seven or so hikers ahead of us. Most of them, we presumed, were just going out-and-back to the quite popular Sykes hot springs. Eventually, we had overtaken just about all of them, and once we were past the Sykes area we had practically the whole wilderness to ourselves. We crossed the incredible Big Sur River a couple times in the Sykes area and then made our way to Rainbow Creek where we’d camp for the night.

Day gave way to dusk and it was nearly dark by the time we made it to the creek despite it only being around 5 p.m. So we broke camp near the creek, nestled among the towering redwoods. We could see a sky absolutely brimming with stars through the small gaps in the tree canopy as we ate and talked to pass the time. We made it a few hours before falling asleep. In what felt like no time at all, dawn’s early light awoke us.

By 6:30 a.m. we were hiking. The route was quite steep but my legs felt strong and we chewed through the miles. Checking the map at one point, we were both surprised to see that in less than a couple miles we’d be splitting up. So we took a long break at a nice stream to relax, eat and chat. We struck on and as we neared the crest of the range, we met some volunteers doing trail work. After a brief chat with them, we continued forth and made it to the North Coast Ridge fire road. Anthony and I exchanged a brief goodbye and we split up.

My return route was relatively uneventful. I was treated to stupendous ocean views along the ridge for an hour or so before cutting back east and dropping down towards Big Sur River once again. I enjoyed hour after hour of superbly peaceful hiking. It had been a while since I’d gone backpacking as a busy schedule, some severe injuries, and a whole slurry of other things had prevented me from doing so almost all summer. A nice jaunt in the woods always helps to still the mind. 
I made it back to the car around 3:30, organized, and drove to the Henry Miller Library to peruse their fine collection before heading back home. The next evening, Anthony made it back to our place. He filled Lexi and me in over dinner on the rest of his hike, his hitch to Salinas, and the bus ride back to Santa Cruz. For me, the weekend was just a nice two-day hike. For Anthony it was the completion of quite the accomplishment, a complete thru-hike of the obscure, difficult, and beautiful California Condor Trail. Not a bad weekend for the both of us.