I first heard of Black’s Beach during my SoCal years, since my high school bestie attended UCSD and she was always an adventurous one. (Yes, same one I went to Havasupai with last year!) We would often hang out at La Jolla Shores when I visited her, but she would frequently tell me that Black’s Beach was her favorite beach in San Diego. For some reason we never had the time to visit Black’s. Fast forward 10 years since graduating college, and I finally got to see the hype two weekends ago!

Black’s Beach is named after the Black family which used to own a horse farm overlooking the cliffs. And it just so happens that it’s a black sand beach too! It is part of the Torrey Pines State Beach, about 3 miles long, and the northern part of the beach is actually a nudist beach! Yes, apparently they have these in California.. The waves here are pretty strong and lots of surfers like to surf here, while paragliders and hang gliders jump from the cliffs that tower above the beach. And side note, the Torrey Pine is an endangered pine that only grows in the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve in San Diego!

The black sand interlaced with some traces of golden sand makes for a beautiful beach, along with the peace that comes from being more secluded and sectioned off. The exclusivity is most likely due to the long or treacherous route to get here or maybe the nudists, too. I can see why it is my best friend’s favorite beach, nudists aside! And on top of it all (literally), the Razor House which served as Tony Stark’s house in Iron Man is a glistening, glass mansion that sits on top of the bluffs and overlooks the beach and the powerful Pacific Ocean.

I am going to warn you right now: it is HARD to get to the beach. Either it takes a long time or it’s quick but treacherous.

There are a few routes to get to Black’s Beach including waiting until low tide and walking from Torrey Pines States Beach (2 miles) or La Jolla Shores (3 miles), which might be fun on a lazy leisurely day and you have lots of time! Another option for a day trip can also be to enjoy day hiking in the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve and take the Beach trail down to the beach and walk to Black’s Beach as well.

The quickest way I’ve heard ended up being the trail we ended up taking (~3/4 mile). I’ll admit my purpose was not to see Black’s Beach per say, but I was told about the Ho Chi Minh Trail or it might also be known as the Saigon Trail on Google Maps. Why it is named that exactly, I’m not sure! But my coworker, Liz, who did her residency in San Diego told me about the trail a few days before our quick trip to San Diego and recommended it since we were staying in Carmel Valley and this was close by!

I was intrigued mainly because Liz told me there were cool rock formations that resembled a slot canyon! And having seen the slot canyons in Antelope Canyon 4 years ago, I was totally down to see something similar so much closer to me in California! Black’s Beach was just a cherry on top!

So I Googled and Yelped how to get to the trail and then in the end, we ended up stumbling about a totally different route! Ha! Funny how it works out in the end. And it was such an adventure that turned almost into a mini rock climbing expedition! Read on if you’d want to attempt it for some of my tips and landmarks to look out for, or even just to see the cool photos.

1. Salk Institute Road

The night before we attempted this hike, we were trying to catch the sunset for sunset photos from the Torrey Pines Gliderport. This was only 3 miles from our Marriott hotel, yet it took us 45 minutes to drive there during Friday rush hour! And then when we got close, they closed off the Gliderport because there was some sort of huge event going on and it was Event Parking only! No wonder for the ridiculous traffic! I was crying inside for missing my golden hour!

Travel Pearl: If you want to see a sunset around the Torrey Pines Gliderport, check to make sure they don’t have events going on prior to trying to get there!

Due to the event, instead of turning into the Gliderport, we had to drive past it and I told my husband on impulse to turn right on the next street–which happened to be Salk Institute Road. We drove to the end, which was a dead end, but plenty of parking and people walking back from the cliffs. We decided to try our luck and headed out where they were coming back from, as the sunlight had almost completely disappeared beyond the horizon and it was fairly dusky.

We found some good vantage points and I still managed to practice a bit on the DSLR in manual before it got completely dark. We got a few cool shots! But when I went back to the hotel at night and was researching the Ho Chi Minh Trail and where to start, I realized that perhaps the trail we had stumbled upon also led to the trail we wanted to take the next day! All the Yelp reviews said to drive to La Jolla Farms and it would have been a bigger loop for us to take, coming from the north.

Inadvertently, I guess we winged it and found another start to the path! And I actually thought it was a pretty good trailhead beginning because I’ve read the entrance at La Jolla Farms can sometimes be tricky to find as it’s between two houses??

So if you want a fairly easy-to-find trailhead, I’d recommend driving to the end of Salk Institute Road and starting there! Google the Torrey Pines Gliderport, but turn on the street before/after it (depending what direction you are coming from!) Some of the spots are employee parking spots, but we found places that were not. It may have helped that we also came at 8am in the morning. But it also seemed like a fair amount of people also started their hike from here, so I’d say it’s a well-known place to start too.

2. Walk the Plank!

Once you head down the path past the gates, the gravel road turns into dirt soon. You’ll actually see the Gliderport to your right, and you’ll want to head left and head down as this short but difficult hike basically takes a steep direct route down to Black’s Beach. The first landmark to help you determine that you’re going in the right direction is the wooden plank.

There will be a little ditch and a wooden plank to help you walk across. The plank is not entirely the sturdiest, but it seems to hold well enough for one person to cross at a time. And if you’re really worried about the plank breaking or falling from it, just walk go ahead and walk in the ditch and climb back out. It’s not THAT deep, and if it’s dry, it’s not really an issue! Once you pass the plank, keep to the left alongside the canyon wall. You’ll start to see a narrow gorge open up on your right.

3. Descend the Slot Canyons

Ok, so this is what I came for. At some point, you will start to see the rocks smooth out a bit and become large white rock formations with a view of the ocean in the distance. Some of the surfers might keep walking to the left along the cliff walls, but don’t be fooled by their deceptively easy paths. They are highly skilled at climbing these cliffs and they make everything look way easier than it is!

You can head down the narrow slot canyons ever so slowly, as this part is kind of cool to see how nature evolved over the years. Push outwards with both your hands against the canyon walls to help you descend. It’s one person at a time going up or down this path but it’s not that long, so just be patient as other people pass. This is one of the bottlenecks of going down to the beach, unless you’re a pro surfer/seaside bluff climber.

4. Choose the Ravine vs. the Cliffs

Once you climb out past the slot canyons, you have a few options of how to continue. None of them are that great in my opinion and quite frankly, I never want to try them again. You can either:

A) Continue on the left along the cliffs like the surfers do. However, I do NOT really recommend this unless you’re a good climber. I nearly slid down the walls into the ravine because I couldn’t get a good grip on the rocks! My husband had to come save me and I was literally in tears hugging the whole wall with my body, feeling like the rocks were slowly crumbling under me into the ravine. It may have just been in my head because he was able to get a good footing in the walls for me to step on and hoist myself up, but then again, he is a rock climber. Either way, I thought I was going to die and we ditched this plan and went to option B.

B) Walk directly in the ravine and follow the water down. This can also be a difficult task if it’s wet because the trail gets quite muddy and at one point when we were there in January, the ravine was filled with water and we weren’t sure how deep it went. There is a point where you have to cross a section of water by getting to a giant rock wedged between the canyon walls.

It is a lot of “spiderman-ing” as my husband said (see above), or you can put your back against the wall and feet on the other wall and inch your way down. Either way, this is a tricky and difficult section. Then there’s another very muddy section to descend down– a couple hundred feet later after you pass the wedged rock.

C) Follow the ravine slightly but then ascend the walls to your right and walk along the cliff walls on the right side. This side is where some of the tour guides were taking their groups so it must be a little easier. Except I wasn’t sure how they got up there so we did option B. It leads to the open gravel in the next section too.

Travel Pearl:  The surfers walk barefoot along the cliffs and the tour guides also told their groups to take off their shoes once they got to the ravine to climb up the cliffs on the right. I’m guessing it would be helpful without your shoes, but then you’d need to carry them. I’m pretty wary of where I step though, especially in muddy waters, so I still preferred to use my hiking shoes. These Merrells are more for walking, with less ankle support than the ones I used for Havasupai.

5. Scale down the Rope

At the end of the ravine, the water starts to trickle into smaller streams eventually into a bunch of rocks and gravel and more open space so you don’t feel so trapped between narrow walls. There’s a huge drop off at the end of the trail and the beach is literally in sight.

The last thing you’ll have to do is scale down the last drop using a very long rope that extends to the Black’s Beach. This also sounds easier than it is especially if the wall is very wet and muddy, as it can be early in the morning or around times when it has rained a bit–aka winter. It can be very slippery when muddy so the good shoes with good grip are helpful here. However, you may want to remove the layers of mud from your shoes once in awhile too to prevent more slippage. No photos because I was trying not to slip or die here as well…haha!

It also helps to have someone anchoring down the end of rope at the bottom where the beach is, as two lovely girls visiting from Minnesota helped us out with! Hiking folks are generally some of the nicest people I meet!

And there you go, you’ll literally drop off at the end of Black’s Beach!

6. Enjoy Black’s Beach!

From here to your left is La Jolla Shores and to the right you can see the Gliderport on the top and watch hang gliders come down. If you keep walking up the beach, you’ll reach the northern end of the beach where the purported nudists hang out. Ha…pun intended? 😛

A lot of surfers do surf here so they’re kind of fun to watch too, and of course, you have to admire the black sand that you came for too! It’s chilly in the morning, but the hike definitely works up a sweat! We weren’t able to stay too long because we had to check out of our hotel by noon and head to Temecula for a wedding, but I would have loved to chill some more and people watch!

Final Advice and How to Return

• Have good hiking shoes, ditch the walking poles: can’t stress good shoes enough! Poles will NOT be helpful on this trip.
• Come on a dry day: it will make walking in the ravine and scaling the walls MUCH easier, but it’s hard to tell what a dry day is since it had not rained for at least a week before we came.
• Come early in the morning: the plank, the slot canyons, the rope are all one person pathways and you will have to wait to descend/ascend the slot canyon and use the rope as well. Coming early in the morning allows you more time to do this without a crowd. When we returned around 11-ish, there were definitely more people trying to head down and they would have to take turns waiting for people to come up or go down.
• Wear a small backpack and don’t carry too much on you: I like using a small Camelbak like the one I linked, but I was really stupid not to bring it on this hike and I brought a crossbody bag that just kept getting in the way when I was trying to scale down walls. I also kind of regret bringing the DSLR because I was really just focusing on making it down and up alive. In the end, my husband took all my belongings and carried them so I could just focus on staying alive…lol
• Ladies, leave your rocks at home: I mean the really expensive ones. My husband and I both ended up taking our wedding rings off at one point and tucking them into a safe compartment because we were getting really rough with grabbing the walls and rocks and didn’t want to bang up the rings!
  • On the same note, wear tactical gloves that I wish I had with me because it would have made the rock climbing that much easier!
• You can return the way you came, or apparently there are stairs that lead up to the Gliderport! This was something someone told us AFTER we climbed back up the rope. I decided it would still be faster to just go back up the way we came since there was a line waiting to use the rope in both directions when we were returning!

And I recommend coming for sunset too, just not all the way down to the beach. You can hike over to this viewpoint in the picture below and get a much better overlook of the bluffs! But I thought the terrain of this hike was so interesting and beautiful, albeit challenging. Just come prepared, and don’t underestimate nature, as I’ve read reviews of people getting injured here.

Have you done this hike before? Is there an easier way to get back up to the top or visit Black’s Beach? Let me know if there is!! 🙂