1. Ecola Creek Forest Reserve
Cannon Beach gets its drinking water supply from three springs in this reserve. You can hike in up a road to some big Sitka spruce. Once the road rises up the hill, there are several ancient cedars, each several hundred years old. There’s also a footpath that leads around a hillside. We tiptoed along it, trying to avoid stomping on legions of migrating newts. To finish the loop, you have to ford Ecola Creek’s West Fork. I allowed Tina to go first, saying I “had her back” as I scouted for voracious salmon and other water monsters.
This short trail can be hiked from the main Cannon Beach parking lots. First, we went around the water treatment lagoons, which support a variety of waterfowl – hooded mergansers, green-winged teals, and buffleheads among them. Past the aeration ponds, there’s a sliver of Sitka spruce woodland with a trail through it. North of the water treatment facility, a path leads along a wetland and Ecola Creek itself. Past the high school, you can hike out to the beach.
Recently measured as Oregon’s biggest tree, based on a points system, the Arcadia Cedar resides in a patch of the Clatsop State Forest opposite Arcadia Beach. I received very good, should I say excellent, directions from a Portland Hiker of unblemished repute, but the printed instructions became a soggy illegible ball on the rainy day my wife and I sought it out. Thus, we ended up at the decoy tree and only realized our mistake when we looked at photos of the real thing. Upon my return, I found the real one, and lots of other ancient, gnarly old cedars besides.
This small beach lies between Arch Cape and Cape Falcon, and there are a couple of points of access for the public. The beach is backed by a high bar of lava cobbles which clink and clank when the high tides reach them: thus, it is also known as “Magic Rocks Beach.” The stretch of sand at low tide is entirely covered by high tides. Gull Rock is close to the shore, while Pyramid Rock juts up farther offshore. At either end of the beach are lava headlands, but the community of Cove sits on a soft former ocean floor and a few houses have already slid down the slope. Near the south end of the beach, the magic rocks dam a driftwood-filled lagoon.
5. Cedar Wetlands Preserve (Rockaway Beach)
A short trail leads into this preserve to another massive and ancient cedar: this one could be as old as 800 years! A deck has been built around the base to prevent compaction of the soil. Winter storms have destroyed the rough trail system around the swamp, so you can no longer do a loop, but there are many damp and dim corners to explore in this primeval remnant.
I stopped in at Barview to do a short stroll below the north jetty, which runs from Garibaldi to the mouth of the bay. All of the land now encompassed by Barview Jetty County Park is new since 1914, when the jetty was constructed. The sand deposited here would have found a home farther south, on the Bayocean Spit, and the lack of it resulted in erosion of the spit and eventual destruction of the “resort” community of Bayocean. There are still some of the old railroad trestle pilings on the jetty, dating to its original construction. The Army Corps of Engineers did a major revamp of the jetty in 2010 using stimulus funds, but both the north and south jetties of Tillamook are in need of further repair. The lookout tower is there for a reason: the Tillamook Bar is one of the most dangerous on the entire west coast and has taken more than 200 lives.
This project of the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum in Bay City is almost complete but has been open to the public. Paved and gravel trails lead through a spruce wetland to mudflats on Tillamook Bay – in all a little over two miles. There are brochures at the trailhead and, being part of the museum, the trails present numerous interpretive signs about the natural, Native American, and settler history of the area.
Five rivers flow into Tillamook Bay. From north to south, they are the Miami, Kilchis, Wilson, Trask, and Tillamook. The last three come together at this estuarine wetland. Like most of the estuary area on Tillamook Bay, this tongue of land was drained and diked to provide rich pasture for dairy cattle. These 377 acres were purchased under a NOAA grant and, though still diked and tide gated, they are reverting to estuarine habitat. I scared up a few deer, and there seemed to be a red-tailed hawk perched every few hundred yards. This is a four-mile flat hike around the dikes and gravel road tracks.
I would love to see some of those huge trees though. Thanks for posting about these places!
Very nice! Awesome TR and photos! Thanks for some really nice hiking ideas. When I was at Cannon Beach a couple of weeks ago, it was too stormy (winds blowing to 85 mph and tidal surges of 25 feet), I couldn't do a lot of hiking. Got a lot of storm coverage though. But I'm returning for another vacation over there at the end of January and will definitely check out the places you described.
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