Sunday, April 28, 2019

NOTE: Before you read on, if you are planning to visit God’s Thumb please use good judgement. People come here and make poor decisions and then need rescuing. As of this writing, the trail to the top of God’s Thumb is rough and steep and unofficial.

This was a GORGEOUS day at the coast so I decided to hike to God’s Thumb before driving home. I used the directions from this article, but unfortunately I turned too soon which resulted in me hiking a bunch of extra unnecessary mileage.

I parked at Road’s End State Park:

Then started walking up Sal-La-Sea Drive (where a red-winged blackbird greeted me):

The directions said to walk one mile “to a junction with NW Port Drive, and turn right. There may be signs pointing the way toward “The Knoll.”” I had not gone one mile, but there was a sign for The Knoll and a gate, and Google Maps said this was Port Dr. So I turned right.

That sign had a nice map on it that I photographed, glanced at, but should have looked at closer. I realized too late that I should have kept road-walking to the parking spot directly south of The Knoll, where the red marker is. Instead I turned off at the other marked parking spot, just below and to the right, and started hiking east.

The right-of-way was pretty wide with the path down the middle. It looked like it was intended to be a road at one point:

I popped out at the end of NE Devil’s Lake Blvd (labeled “cul de sac” on that map). Later I did some research online and discovered that this whole area I was hiking through was called The Villages at Cascade Head. Back in 2013 Lincoln City purchased it “from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) at the end of May for $2,500,000. The property is the subject of an environmentally-friendly development that was foreclosed upon. Its 363 acres are almost entirely wooded and provide habitat for a number of protected species of animals and plants.” (article)

At that time, the city planned “to keep some of the property as open space, develop some of it for affordable housing, and then sell off pieces of the property to private investors to develop in an environmentally-friendly fashion. In the meantime, the City will designate the property as an interim park.”

I found this presentation from 2017 that indicates that city would like to develop the area along Devil’s Lake Blvd, but based on the maps it doesn’t look like it would include The Knoll.

I crossed to the other side of the cul de sac, and picked up the trail heading east:

At some point it felt like I left behind what was once intended to be a road, and was now on a true forest trail:

However, maybe I was wrong because I passed the rusting remains of an old car just downhill from the trail. It was too far-gone to tell what it once was.

Also, it appeared that someone had recently (and probably illegally) driven their vehicle on this path, as I saw tread marks for quite a distance:

I was now making a big unnecessary loop over and around:

The Knoll was out of my way, an out-and-back side trip that would not be on the way to God’s Thumb, so I decided to skip that. I passed through a meadow:

I was now out of the parcel owned by the city and was hiking in the Siuslaw National Forest. I hiked through more trees, and emerged into another meadow:

And I could now FINALLY see the ocean:

Just a little further on I got my first view of God’s Thumb:

I hiked down to a saddle below it:

Then scrambled up to the top where I had a great view north to Cascade Head:

And a great view south:

After sitting there for awhile I made my way back down and headed down the path that would dump me out at Logan Road. I took one last look back at God’s Thumb before entering the trees:

Many parts of this section of the trail were horrifically muddy:

The path came out on a gravel road which I followed to Logan Road, passing through a gate. It now looked like a driveway, but were not any “no trespassing” signs:

To get back to Road’s End and my car I walked down to Logan until I reached this beach access point at NW 73rd:

And then I walked the rest of the way back on the beach:

Before getting off the beach at Road’s End I turned back and saw God’s Thumb poking up to the north:

I’ve heard a lot about this hike so it was nice to do it on such a beautiful day. I hope the city can improve the muddy parts of the trail.

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Greg and I spent Thanksgiving weekend in the Coos Bay area. We drove down Friday in the POURING rain, and since the weather was so abysmal we did a fun indoor activity: wine-tasting! We visited three tasting rooms in the little town of Elkton, which I visited on a much nicer day back in 2012:

We drove on, stopping at the Dean Creek Elk Viewing Area. Most of the elk were far away, but we saw a few that were close:

We checked into our yurt at Sunset Bay State Park, then backtracked 20 minutes into town for dinner.

The next day we did a hike that started at the Sunset Bay day use area:

Before long we reached a nice viewpoint:

Sunset Bay:

Hiking on we continued to see cool rock formations and great views:

We also had views of the Cape Arago Lighthouse:

Looking back along our route:

Erosion is constant at the coast. We saw this broken fence dangling along the cliff edge:

Loved the clash of water and rock:

Saw several cool mushrooms:

As we approached the main part of Shore Acres State Park we crossed the old tennis courts:

Cool cannonball rocks:

Louis J. Simpson built a mansion here in 1907. It burned down in 1921, was rebuilt in 1928, and then the property was sold to the state in 1942. The second mansion was razed in 1948. This observatory now sits on the site. It has nice views and interpretive signs explaining the history and geology of this place:

Looking north from the Observatory. Starting to get colder and cloudier:

Looking south:

The botanical garden from the Simpson days is still here. We would return in a few hours to see the holiday light show here:

We made a loop by walking back on the old Simpson driveway:

After some hot tea back at the yurt we drove to the third state park in the chain, Cape Arago. We walked down a short trail to see the sea lions. What a racket!

There were a lot of them gathered on that rock out there, which we would see from a roadside viewpoint the next day:

After dinner we went back to the park to see the holiday lights. The backup of cars waiting to get in had been VERY long earlier, but later in the evening we only had to wait at the staging area for about 10 minutes.

An underwater scene:

I’ve been wanting to see the holiday lights at Shore Acres for decades, so I’m glad I finally got to see them!

Sunday, November 25, 2018

Today we did a hike in Cape Arago State Park. We started at a locked gate at the day use area and hiked past a “pack trail” sign.

At first we were on a road:

Then we were on a trail:

After about a mile we reached a signless T-junction. We saw a feature on the map to our right called Arago Peak so we decided to see what we could see. We were now on an old road that was brushy in spots:

We reached a big grassy area, stayed to the right, and kept going:

Now we were in an old clearcut:

We topped out in an open area in the clearcut:

From here there was a limited view of the area surrounding Coos Bay:

And some of the mountains to the east:

We could see a bit of ocean to the west:

According to the map Arago Peak was further along the road, so we kept going. From this point the road is in really great shape. It’s timber company land and they drive up from the Seven Devils Road to the east. We spotted this cute rabbit ahead of us:

It turns out there really isn’t much of a peak. We walked past the spot on the map and realized that was it. Not prominence, no marker, no view. So we turned around and went back to the T-junction and continued straight to finish our loop, still following old road:

The trail was in REALLY bad shape in spots. It appeared as though Friday’s downpour had washed away a lot of soil:

We passed this picnic table which hasn’t had a view in a very long time:

We also passed the concrete remains of this old WWII bunker. We were dismayed to see the all the vandalism and graffiti here:

We continued following the old road down to the Cape Arago Highway which we crossed. The trail took us through the trees and then to some ocean views:

We reached the roadside Sea Lion Viewpoint / Simpson Reef Viewpoint:

We could see and hear the sea lions on the rocks out there. I was glad I had my binoculars. We even saw sea otters frolicking in the ocean! My camera’s zoom lens wasn’t long enough to get a shot of them, but it was cool:

We crossed the highway for the last bit back to the car, and spotted these cool fungi along the way:

Nice hike! 6 miles, 870′ elevation gain.

Sunday, November 11, 2018

In the fourth edition of William Sullivan’s 100 Hikes / Travel Guide: Oregon Coast & Coast Range (2016) a new hike appeared: Angora Peak. It is right next door to Neahkahnie Mountain so wither another gorgeous day in the forecast we grabbed a copy of the page from Sullivan’s book and set out on Sunday. Turns out we should have done more research beforehand, and we were in for a bit of an adventure.

This entire hike is on roads, both old and current. We parked at the gate off Highway 101 and set off:

We hiked through the “beauty strip” buffer of intact trees between the highway and the clearcut. There are some nice trees here!

And then we emerged into the hideous clearcut:

As we followed the road up through the clearcut Angora Peak was ever-present to the east:

We saw two hunters heading down and exchanged friendly greetings. We continued hiking up the road:

We turned right and passed a gate onto a road that was pretty grassy in places and didn’t look like it had been used in awhile:

Now that we were getting higher we could see the beautiful blue ocean:

We could turn around and look back down over the area we just hiked through. That’s Neahkahnie Mountain on the left:

View to the north. Cannon Beach is out of sight behind those two forested humps, but you can see the tip of Haystack Rock:

The road climbed up along a basalt cliff. This was a pretty cool stretch. It had gotten very cold the previous night and with the shade we saw patches of frost on the ground:

At the two-mile mark we reached another viewpoint at a bend in the road. We were high enough now we could see even further north:

At the viewpoint we saw two hikers heading down and I asked if they had made it to the peak. They said the route had gotten too brushy so they turned back. That worried me a bit, but they were wearing shorts so their tolerance for pushing through the brush would have been low.

We reached the end of road and here is where we went wrong. Sullivan says “At a small cairn of orange rocks just 150 feet before the grassy roadbed ends, angle up to the right on a faint, brushy deer trail that may be marked with red ribbons”. We saw neither trail nor orange rocks nor red flagging and were now at road’s end (not 150 feet before road’s end). We should have backtracked and looked for the trail, but we saw a trail heading off to the right at road’s end and decided that must be it.

And here’s what that looked like:

It started resembling an old road. But it was the wrong old road:

We realized that our route and landmarks were no longer matching Sullivan’s description. After some research on the phone, which included looking at the satellite imagery of our location, we realized that there were TWO old roads. They paralleled each other and we were on the lower (wrong) one. It was also at this point we realized that Sullivan does not take his readers to Angora Peak itself, but a viewpoint that is north of the peak. What a rookie mistake, not reading the description carefully enough! [hangs head]

So it was time for a course correction. Rather than backtrack to the end of the main road, we scrambled straight up the steep slope to reach the upper abandoned road, the one that we should have been on and that would take us to to the peak. Fortunately the forest was not brushy here and other than being incredibly steep terrain we had no trouble getting to the upper road, where we turned left (south) and continued hiking.

We were soon treated to nice west-facing views:

The road headed south along the mountain face before curving east. It had obviously not been used in a very long time, so we were pleasantly surprised to find it in very good shape:

Looking back down the road to the west and the ocean:

The road came to a T intersection where we turned left. Suddenly our easy road strolling was over. This stretch was overgrown and in bad shape:

In some spots the road bed was gone, slid away down the mountain in a landslide. As you can see in this photo, we had to scramble up a bit to bypass the washouts:

We took a hairpin turn and kept following the road:

The road passes just below the peak but doesn’t go the summit itself. There is no trail that goes up there, but thanks to a waypoint from a geocacher we knew more or less where to leave the road and start scrambling up. This was another short steep scramble (burning thighs!) and then we emerged out into a summit-like area where there was an open rocky area and some trees. This was not the true summit, but it was very close and good enough for us.

A fierce and raging wind was blowing from the east so we used this rock for shelter:

Looking east out over the Coast Range:

We were very pleasantly surprised to see distant volcanic peaks. Mt. Rainier:

Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams:

Looking south out over the Nehalem River and Nehalem Bay:

Looking west at the ocean (and straight into the late afternoon light):

We would have liked to stay longer and enjoy the fruit of our efforts, but the days are short this time of year so after 40 minutes we started heading back down:

We experienced a 40-minute delay for Greg to find a geocache (it required him to do some serious bushwhacking while I turned back and waited on the old road) we continued on. We reached the point where we had scrambled up the hill to join the upper road, and continued along that upper road:

We took a short side trip to check out Sullivan’s viewpoint, which was pretty nice, especially in the late afternoon light:

There’s a stone shelter nearby, probably built by and used by hunters:

Continuing along the abandoned road we emerged out onto the main road and looked back. Well no wonder we missed this on the way up. I didn’t take a picture, but the turn from the main road onto the old overgrown road is not remotely obvious. There is no cairn and no flagging and you can’t tell there’s a path or old road there. Once you’re ON it then it’s easy enough to follow, but finding it would have been difficult. Sullivan had provided GPS coordinates for this intersection and we should have used them. Oh well, it all worked out in the end.

The sun was setting fast and it was obvious we would not be back to the car before the 4:50pm sunset. This actually turned out to be ok, though, and I discovered the usefulness of hiking through a hideous clearcut at this time of day: no trees to obstruct one’s view of the setting sun.

Our timing was actually perfect as we were high enough on the road to see the horizon and the sunset, which was quite pretty. The sunset faded right at the point that we were low enough to not see the horizon anymore, but there was just enough lingering light for us to see our way back to the car. I had my headlamp, but we didn’t end up needing it.

Well that was quite an adventure. We managed to cobble together the correct route (more or less) thanks to Sullivan’s book, the topo map, the satellite imagery, geocaches and their corresponding waypoints, and intel from SummitPost (thank goodness we had a data connection).

An interesting side note: my brother-in-law Karl was also up on Angora on Sunday. I had texted my sister that morning to tell her where we were going and she texted back that Karl was also hiking on Angora. He got an earlier start than us and is a very fast hiker, plus he was doing some side trips that we didn’t do, so he was ahead of us and we never saw him. In fact, other than the two hunters and two hikers we saw early on, we had the place to ourselves. Quite a welcome respite after the crowds on Neahkahnie the day before!

8.5 miles round-trip, 2,100′ elevation gain.

A quick note: this land has changed hands several times but is still owned by a timber company. They allow hunters and hikers in here and let’s help keep it that way. Please practice LNT while visiting Angora Peak.

Saturday, November 10, 2018

Greg and I drove to the coast today for a three-day weekend and WOW did we luck out with gorgeous weather! We have hiked the trail up Neahkahnie Mountain’s south side several time (most recently in January) but today decided to hike up the south side. Lots of other people had the same idea and we had to lurk like vultures in the trailhead parking area and swoop in to take a spot as someone left.

The first stretch of trail has some open areas that allowed us to see the ocean:

That’s Cape Falcon, a hike we did in January:

The trail is in pretty bad shape. It’s badly eroded with lots of exposed roots:

And in places where people have cut the switchbacks, the trail is eroding down the hill:

After a 2.3-mile hike up the mountain we made it to the top, where we scrambled up the last little bit to the rocky summit. On this beautiful day we were definitely not alone. There were so many people up there it sounded like a crowded restaurant. But the view was fantastic. This is the iconic view looking south along the coast at Manzanita, Nehalem Bay, and beyond:

After hanging out on the summit for awhile we headed back down. To our surprise we passed several groups heading up, probably to watch the sunset from up there. I would NOT want to hike this trail in the dark. It is just too rough. As we neared the end we were awash in golden light from the sinking sun:

We headed south on Highway 101 and found our Airbnb, and octagonal-shaped cabin between Nehalem and Manzanita. This place was great! What a perfectly cozy place to hang out with a book next to the fire. We would definitely stay here again.