Oregon Coast Trail – Part 2

I got a big bowl of noodles at an Asian Fusion Restaurant in Pacific City. It was the first “town food” I had gotten on trail, apart from a single Samosa at a convenience store the day before, which is actually impressive once you realize how many towns there are on the OCT. I was going through towns every day, sometimes multiple towns in a day. Apart from abundant food, this also meant lots of tourists, who mostly made for good people watching and easier hitches when I needed a ride. It also meant road walking. For the most part the trail stays away from the 101, but there are still plenty of beachfront avenues, parkways over headlands, and local backroads to traverse around rivers via bridges. By the time I ended my hike in Newport, I had decided that the OCT would be much better as a cycling route, and in future that will be my advice to anyone who is interested in walking it. 

I didn’t get out of Pacific City until 11 am, having stayed in a hotel that night and deciding I should try to get my money’s worth of sitting in a comfy bed. My plan was to just do an easy 6 miles out of town, having been hiking between 15-18 mile days up to this point and being quite out of shape going into this hike – it seemed prudent to have a rest day or two. I would hike 5 miles on the road to get out of town, then 1 mile to a spot on the beach where I would be allowed to camp. My plan very quickly went out the window however. I walked maybe 2 miles on the road when I figured I would just try hitching and see how it went. I stuck out my thumb and not 5 minutes later was picked up by a guy who just got out of the Coast Guard and was using his GI bill at Olympic Community College in Washington. He was road tripping before classes started and didn’t really have a destination in mind, he was happy to shuttle me the remaining 3 miles to where the road departed from the 101 back down to the beach. His yellow lab riding in the backseat was very excited to have a guest in the car and we chatted about his hiking in the Olympics. 

Once I was back on the beach it was only about 12:30 and it felt silly to sit around at a campsite on the beach all day. I decided to walk the next section of beach to Neskowin, a little community at the base of Cascade Head and stay at a Hiker/Biker campsite there which would set me up nicely for summiting it the next morning. It was nice to be back on the beach again after all the road walking and hitchhiking. The sun was out again and I had freshly acquired sunscreen, realizing that my hat and hood weren’t keeping the sun that would reflect off the sand from burning me. This is the first time I can remember wearing sunscreen on a hike since I was a kid.

When I arrived in Neskowin I sat down at a picnic table near a public toilet and considered my options. I could camp there in town and pay for a campsite, but I felt like I had more miles in me for the day and I was eager to get away from busy tourist towns. I could also road walk again on the 101 to the last marked campsite in the woods just after leaving the highway and right before beginning the ascent over Cascade Head. If I didn’t camp there, there wasn’t another legal campsite for another 15 miles which I definitely didn’t have in me that day. Even if my feet were in good enough shape to hike a 25 mile day, it was too late in the day. But I also checked the weather and realized that the fog was going to roll in again and cover Cascade Head, and if I waited till the morning to go over, I probably wouldn’t get any of what was supposed to be some of the best views on the OCT. After missing the views at Cape Lookout for the same reason, I felt like I didn’t want to miss another of the trail highlights, so I made the choice to continue hiking. There was a privy and parking lot on the other side of the mountain, another 10 miles for me, and I decided I would just bite the bullet and stealth camp there. 

I ended up dragging myself over the hill. It wasn’t a huge climb, up to 1400 feet over 3 miles then back down again to sea level, but my pack was heavy with food and water and I was beginning to realize that my shoes were a problem. I had never hiked in this particular brand, and I had also forgotten how much my feet swell when I hike. I was developing two substantial blisters on the ball of my foot and on my pinky toe, and my toe was jamming against the side of my shoe with every step, although the shoes had fit perfectly a week earlier. They also didn’t have the kind of support necessary for the amount of walking I was doing on paved surfaces, and this would be the first day I was having numb feet and pins and needles in my soles.

On that climb I spent a lot of time contemplating why I was doing this. It’s a familiar thought process for me when hiking long distances. You get to a certain stage of physical discomfort and you start to think, Why, why possibly am I doing this to myself on purpose? It occurred to me that I didn’t have anything to prove, I already knew I could persevere through intense pain having done it before. I didn’t have people around me to enjoy the experience with which always makes a thru hike worth it. Primarily I was on the OCT to train for the Blue Mountains Trail, and I thought that would be motivating enough, but the road walking was wearing on me and I was feeling homesick. 

I powered over the headland anyway. I didn’t have a good answer for why I was doing what I was doing, but it wasn’t like I had any options to bail at that particular moment, and I had made the choices to put myself in that situation. The only option was to continue, and I had already accepted that. 

My reward was some beautiful views on the descent. The summit of Cascade Head is mostly covered in trees, but there is a conservation area on the front side of the headland that is solely grassland, a rarity on the coast. On a clear day you would be able to see for miles to the north and south, or west out to sea, unobstructed. Much of the summit was already socked in with fog unfortunately, but I did catch peeks of rocky coastline over cliffs, and I also saw a herd of elk. 

When I arrived at my intended campsite, it was about 8:45 and I was wiped out, feet sore and painful. I discovered it was not an ideal place to stealth camp. It was a public park without any real tree cover so I would be pitching my tent out in the open. It was also on a residential road and based on the signage I was seeing, they weren’t the type of locals to be super excited about some stinky hiker pitching a tent in their backyard. I didn’t have any other options though so I waited until 9:15 when most of the cars had gone and it was getting dark and pitched my tent in a shadowy corner of the grass just as it started to rain. I waited until 10 to fall asleep when it was actually dark, anxious that someone would spot me and tell me I had to pack up and leave. It rained all night.

Despite planning to do a short day, I had ended up hiking 16 miles, which my body felt more than up to, but my feet were becoming a problem. I hoped that if I really did do a short day I could heal up the blisters and be okay to hike another 6 days before I would head back to Eugene where I could pick up some new shoes before the BMT. I woke up at 5 am to get out of dodge before anyone noticed my presence. I didn’t eat breakfast but started the 6 mile road walk into town on the 101 into Lincoln City.

I stopped at Ace Hardware to buy a fuel canister then walked 2 more miles to get to the hiker biker camp right in town where I finally was able to rest the remainder of the day. There was a cyclist from the Netherlands there too, also taking a rest day. He was just doing the Oregon Coast and then heading back to the Netherlands. We chatted for a while about gear and food and highlights on the trail. I went about my chores, drying out my tent in the sun for a while and the rest of my gear that was a little damp from hiking and camping in the rain the night before. I also drained my blisters, the one on my pinky toe was like a second toe and a lot of fluid came out. This turned out to be a very good choice and made walking on it bearable in the next few days, but the short day did not allow them to recover completely.

The next couple of days were a grind to Newport. I continued to hike longer days, but my feet were worsening, not improving. I knew that if I could get new shoes I would probably be able to continue hiking, but the coast is not exactly overflowing with REI outlets, and Eugene was a far enough bus ride that it didn’t make sense to get a bus there, get the shoes, then come back to the coast for a day or two before I had to head back for the BMT. I spent a couple days walking and thinking obsessively about my feet. 

There were a few highlights. Through Depoe Bay you walk (along the 101) from atop a high seawall where at high tide the waves crash against the rocks and walls and are quite a spectacle. Just before arriving at Depoe Bay I paused for 20 minutes, having spotted a seal sunbathing on the rocks below. I quickly noticed a baby seal in the water trying to get up on the rock as well. The water was just below the level it needed to be for the baby to haul itself out of the water, and I watched it swim back and forth along the rock shelf, looking for a route up. With a big wave it would attempt to swim up on the rock, sometimes getting a little bit of a grip before sliding unsuccessfully back into the water. I was practically biting my nails, worried because the tide was going out and the longer it took the seal, the harder it would become. A big swell came along and seal paddled and wiggled and struggled, it teetered on the edge of the rock and I held my breath, watching it tumble back in the water. A moment later another big wave came and this time, finally, it pushed itself up on the rock, “Yes!” I yelled out, then glanced around to make sure no one was around. It paused for a moment to rest before wiggling its way over to the adult seal. I continued walking, satisfied and having forgotten about my feet for a few moments. 

The beach at the Devil’s Punchbowl was also an interesting diversion. I was stopping every 2-3 miles to get off my feet and I was happy to discover that 7 pm wasn’t too late for the surfers to still be out. There was a convenient bench just up from the beach along the stairs built into the cliffside up to the parking lot, and I sat and watched the surfers paddling, and even standing up and catching the waves. It looked like a lot of fun, although I imagined that being tossed around by the waves must be exhausting. 

My last moments before deciding to get on the bus back to Eugene involved arriving at my intended campsite, the state park just North of Newport and finding it to be closed for the season unexpectedly. Camping was allowed on the beach a mile south of the park so I loaded up on water and continued on. The beach in that section was inhospitable to camping however, I didn’t spot any dry sand that looked like it didn’t get covered at high tide, which would happen sometime in the middle of the night. I didn’t want to get washed away, but I had done about 16 miles already that day and my feet were not in good shape to continue on. At that point it was my only option though so I continued walking. Shortly I came across a woman who seemed to be collecting rocks on the beach and she stopped me, asking if I was hiking the OCT and questions about how it was going. She and her daughter had hiked the Camino del Norte in Spain a few years ago, and she was impressed that I was carrying a tent as they simply stayed in hostels every night on that trail. I quickly told her that I was in a pickle and was having a hard time finding a place to camp that night and, without questioning, she offered me a ride to South Beach State Park, just south of Newport. For propriety’s sake, I pretended to consider the offer, but I was already dancing a conga line internally. I enjoyed talking to her and her daughter on the car ride. She was an artist who had recently relocated from Hawaii and was working on a mosaic sculpture for the lighthouse in Newport constructed entirely from beach trash which is what I had seen her collecting. 

I stayed the night in Newport and the next morning started walking on the beach. My feet were numb when I woke up and I decided I would just start the day and see how things went. Two miles in though I knew it wasn’t good. I had drained my blisters again the night before, and every step my toe was jamming into the side of my shoe. I needed new shoes and the situation wasn’t going to improve. So I got on a bus and was home by that evening. 

In all I hiked about 120 miles, which I considered enough of a warm up to the 530 mile Blue Mountains Trail to be called a success. My feet continued to be sore and tingly for the next few days and I realized that I had made the right call to leave and get a few extra days of rest before heading to Eastern Oregon. It’s funny, as hard as it is to hike when you’re in pain, it’s even harder somehow to decide not to hike. I felt like I let myself down by not at least making it to Yachats or Florence, but again I had to ask myself, what was I trying to prove? I was never going to have time for the whole trail, and Newport was just as arbitrary an endpoint as Florence would have been. No one was judging my performance but myself. I believe I experienced the Oregon Coast Trail as it should be experienced, as a “Choose Your Own Adventure” trail, and not necessarily a continuous footpath. I met a lot of kind and generous people in a very short time. I got my body prepared for the next, much more rigorous challenge. That was enough.

Arriving back home, I was able to participate in some community events going on at the eco-village where I live. I joined a group of interns and permaculture design students in learning how fire can be used to regenerate forests and spent the morning doing manual labor clearing underbrush in a densely overgrown part of the forest. I also volunteered to take a neighbor to a dental appointment, dropped off a lab sample for another neighbor, and gave a ride from the University of Oregon campus to our eco-village site where she would be giving a lecture to the permaculture students. She was from Sierra Leone, in the US on a full ride scholarship and we had a lovely chat about refugees and victims of global conflict, and the role Americans play in that conflict. These are things that I wasn’t experiencing on trail, being part of a committed, stable community, working collectively towards a goal, they are also things I wouldn’t have been able to engage with if I had continued hiking. I found the time of separation from these things that are becoming more and more a part of my daily life to be refreshing and invigorating. I enjoyed volunteering my time to help others, after having received so much support from strangers in my stint on the OCT. My hiking is not over for the summer, but I did get a glimpse of how a period of separation and struggle can renew your excitement and appreciation for the things you do day to day. 

Stay tuned for the Blue Mountains Trail! It’s going to be a fun one.