Natural beauty? This place has plenty in reserve

Visitors to Point Lobos State Reserve experience a strange metamorphosis when venturing onto the low-lying headland at Sea Lion Point.

They seem dazed, as if trying to find their bearings after having been transported to another planet.

Wind, over millions of years, has sculpted the jutting conglomerate of rock into a barren moonscape.

Gargantuan waves pound it relentlessly, forcing white cascades high overhead and turning the water around it into a swooshing froth.

Brooke Snedeker, 5, visiting with her brother and parents, observed that it looked like “a giant bubble bath.”

Frolicking beyond the wash cycle, but not always seen, are sea otters and harbor seals. The muffled barks of sea lions, from offshore rocks shrouded in mist, waft along the salty air.

“For us it’s beautiful, but also the kids get a great opportunity to experience nature,” said Ed Snedeker, a pastor from Santa Cruz, here with wife Karen, daughter Brooke and son Blake.

Caretakers of the reserve, located just south of Carmel, proclaim it to be “the crown jewel of California’s state parks system.”

Landscape artist Francis McComas once referred to it as “the greatest meeting of land and water in the world.”

Whatever the interpretation, there’s no denying that this is one magnificent piece of beachfront property.

“I enjoy it because of the exposure you get to many of the same animals and wildlife that you see at the Monterey Bay Aquarium,” said Sally Hewitt, a tourist from Virginia who had just come from the neighboring city’s popular attraction. “I’ve always been drawn to things related to the ocean and this coastline.”

Meandering through the reserve are 11 miles of immaculate hiking trails, bordered by dense thickets of poison oak, which prevent hikers from trampling native plants.

All are easy to navigate and most are short. Cypress Grove Trail, for example, is a mile-long loop that weaves through one of the planet’s two remaining naturally growing stands of Monterey Cypress trees. (The other is across Carmel Bay at Cypress Point.)

As the rocky headlands are carved by the elements, so seems the case with the majestic trees, whose gnarled trunks and branches appear almost fossilized. Many are covered with green algae, which is actually bright orange because of a pigment called carotene.

From the promontory atop this loop, hikers can watch squadrons of pelicans riding updrafts. They might glimpse the spout of a passing whale or, during the spring, a gray whale mother and calf hugging the shoreline.

Gray whale mothers do this during the northbound migration to avoid detection by killer whales, which lay in ambush just to the north on the edges of submerged Monterey Canyon.

Inland, coyotes, bobcats, deer and mountain lions have been spotted within reserve boundaries, though the predators typically emerge after dusk.

“This is mountain lion country,” ranger Stuart Organo said. “There haven’t been any sightings here in a long time, but there have been some kills found on the trails, where deer have been killed by mountain lions.”

Organo was patrolling Bird Island Trail, which begins a few paces from the southern parking lot and leads through fields of wildflowers to a scenic overlook called Pelican Point.

The view of Bird Island is otherworldly. Cormorants and gulls dot the island by the thousands, cleaning themselves, soaking up warmth, standing around as if at some avian cocktail party.

This looping trail also offers a view of China Cove, emerald in color, framed by weatherworn cliffs and surreal archways formed by tidal surges.

Inland routes are quieter and afford better opportunities to hear birds singing or to spot animals.

“The deer here are accustomed to people,” Organo said.

Pine Ridge Trail, nearly a mile long, bisects woodlands that include Monterey pines and live oaks, which provide shade and shelter for black-tailed deer.

These animals are not unlike the marine creatures that seek refuge in the kelp. A 750-acre portion of Point Lobos, beyond Whalers Cove, was protected in 1960, becoming the state’s first marine reserve.

Scuba divers with park permits navigate amber kelp forests and encounter enormous rockfish and sometimes otters, seals and sea lions. On rare occasions they’ve seen gray whales, and even killer whales.

On this day, though, there are no divers and only a few dozen wide-eyed wanderers scattered throughout the reserve.

Nine-year-old Blake Snedeker’s assessment of the park seemed as appropriate as any of those made by previous visitors.

“I just like walking around and seeing all the ocean,” he said.

pete.thomas@latimes.com