Kelham Beach hike holds a lesson in life and death
A few people in our household are runners, which includes training out and about on Marin trails. On a recent Sunday, to get in a full 10-plus miles for that day, one of our running enthusiasts and a friend took the Bear Valley Trail in Point Reyes out to Kelham Beach. They hadn’t anticipated that after making the trek down to the beach, which includes a drop-off thanks to washed-out steps at the bottom, they’d find abundant signs of death in the form of the remains of a gray whale.
According to the Marine Mammal Center’s whale strandings tracker, this whale was one of six so far this year, all gray whales, to have washed up on Bay Area beaches. Four of them were found on beaches in Marin County, and three of the six are known or suspected to have died from vessel strikes. The Kelham Beach whale was an adult female, and her cause of death was not established following a limited necropsy by experts from the California Academy of Sciences.
Her remains have been at the beach since June 18. During that time, some of the whale likely has washed out to sea, but much of the carcass still lies on the shore, as does a smattering of bones. When we retraced the steps of our runners, we found two vertebrae, an upper arm bone, baleen and some of the skull scattered around the beach. Some human visitors had scavenged two rib bones and set them up in the shape of a heart near the still-running waterfall cascading from the cliff to the sand.
We wondered what had happened to her, if she had met this fate like at least half of the other gray whales that have turned up dead on local beaches this year. She was not the first dead whale we’ve encountered locally, but in our other experiences, many other humans were about as we paid our respects. When we last visited the remains of a whale on a Marin County beach, the place was a circus. People were climbing on the animal, taking selfies and being generally boisterous. It was off-putting. On this foggy Saturday afternoon, we were quietly alone in life, paying respects to this whale in her death. A six-point buck watched us silently from the grassy cliff over our heads.
The odds are good that the whale’s fate had something to do with our species, although we can’t be certain. The beach itself got its name from the Kelham family, who once ran a cattle ranch on the land that would become the Bear Valley area. Although the park service regained the land and protects it, the later intrusions of post-industrial human activity still show themselves in indirect ways. The stairs that suddenly end just above the beach, necessitating a short climb up and down, were washed out during the storms of this past winter. Experts say that the extreme impacts of that weather may be related to climate change.
The beaching of gray whales this year in the Bay Area is not an isolated phenomenon. Increased rates of this species turning up on beaches from Alaska to Mexico since 2019 have led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to declare a formal “unusual mortality event.” Many of the animals are emaciated, and the agency is working to find out if the spike is linked to ecological disturbances. The last such declaration of an unusual mortality event related to the whales was in 2000.
Whether what we witnessed on that beach, biologically and structurally, has its roots in climate change cannot be confirmed with total certainty, of course. But it’s sad to contemplate that this trail and destination, which are so familiar to us and big favorites, will likely undergo further changes that implicate the avoidable behaviors of humans.
Getting there: From the Bear Valley Visitor Center, start at the Bear Valley Trailhead, heading toward Divide Meadow. Just over 4 miles in, take a right onto the Coast Trail. A mile down this trail, you will spot a large, lone eucalyptus tree on the left, where the Kelham’s ranch once was. There are steps leading down from here to the beach. Poison ivy encroaches almost completely over the steps at some points, and the steps themselves end abruptly just above the beach. The Park Service website currently says that the Kelham Beach Trail is “closed indefinitely due to storm damage,” but there was no signage indicating closure on a recent visit. Total distance there and back is about 10 miles, most of it quite flat. Vault toilets are available at Divide Meadow, about 1.6 miles from the trailhead.
Emily Willingham is a Marin science journalist, book author and biologist. You can find her on Bluesky @ejwillingham or Instagram at emily.willingham.phd.