We tried biking all 12 miles of Hilton Head’s beaches. Here’s how to do it right
It may have been a doomed mission from the start: Bike all of Hilton Head Island’s beaches, from Fish Haul to South Beach.
We’d park a car at Coligny Beach Park on the south end, rent bikes on the north end and cruise down 12 miles of hard-packed beach sand before a celebratory ice cream cone, a shady bike ride through Sea Pines and back to the car at Coligny.
The whole trip would take about two hours.
If you’re scoffing, you’re right.
I’ll spoil it for you: After nearly three hours and 13.5 miles dodging beach chairs and pluff mud, my biking partner and I threw in the towel.
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Learn from our mistakes. Here are some ways to do it right:
Don’t really start at Fish Haul
It sounds really appealing to ride from the north end to the south end of the island. You can tie your journey up with a little bow and say you’ve biked the whole thing.
But what you may not know is a folly divides Fish Haul Beach on the north end from Port Royal Plantation. So you’ll bike steep, soft-sand beaches for about two miles only to hoist everything you brought with you above your head and wade waist-deep through the folly.
Take our advice: Start after the beach turns to the south at Islander’s Beach or Folly Field. The sand is hard-packed, and there’s only an ankle-deep folly to navigate along the way.
Know your halfway-point bars
Hydration is important in any 12-mile jaunt. Jamaica Joe’z and Coco’s on the Beach exist for that very reason.
These spots are roughly midway through the ride down the beach. When you approach, sweating through your shirt and sunburned, you’ll fit right in.
A bonus: If the thought of biking through sand in direct sunlight for several more hours scares you more than an alligator or a Portuguese Man-Of-War, you can cut back to the paved, shaded bike path along U.S. 278 from both of these bars.
Oh, and pack a water bottle — or three. Ask to fill it up at your halfway-point oasis.
Avoid pluff mud like the plague
It may look like a spa-quality mud mask piled up on the beach, but pluff mud will suck up your shoes and your dignity in one swoop.
Prior to the aforementioned folly crossing and after several miles of loose sand, we encountered ribbons of pluff mud that enticed my sister, my biking companion, to test the mud’s strength.
Nevermind that she read the New Year’s Day article about the man whose jet ski was stuck in pluff mud off Hilton Head Island for several hours. When I interviewed him, he said his biggest loss was his pair of Crocs, which were engulfed in Lowcountry quicksand.
My sister was swallowed up to her knee. When she jerked her foot upward to escape, her foot emerged with no shoe in sight.
Nearby, a small child repeatedly jumped into the pluff mud up to his waist, only to be pulled upward again by his watchful parents.
There are bike paths for a reason
Biking on the beach is not for the faint-hearted. It’s hot, and once you turn to the east-facing beaches, you encounter big holes, tourists and beach tents.
Fortunately, Hilton Head Island has 60 miles of public pathways that are mostly in the shade.
My recommendation: Use them.
This story was originally published July 5, 2019 at 10:33 AM.
