On To Port Orford

I was lulled to sleep last night by the ocean waves about 100 feet from my stealth hammock site. In rainy weather this site is certainly a swamp and there is standing water at the periphery even now, but inexplicably, there are no bugs. I did not see mosquito one. The canopy of the wind blown pines is so dense that it is always twilight amongst them. The eerily wind sculpted forest keeps the wind out, too. So it was a calm and peaceful night. 

On tap this morning, I would finish hiking up and over Blacklock point. This would all be done on a forest trail until I descended the southern side down to the beach. There would be 1.2 miles of beach and then the Sixes River. Billed as a bigger river that should be crossed at low tide, I planned to get there a little early.

It was a blue sky morning with the wind out of the south for the first time this whole trip. Heretofore it has been from the north or northwest. The forest on Blacklock was wonderful and the route gave occasional views of the point and the ocean. As I dropped down the southern side of the point I was confronted with stacks of driftwood and immense rocks before the beach. Driftwood on the Oregon coast is not just the usual boards, branches and the like. It includes old growth trees and stumps, some 5 to 7 feet in diameter! Stack a few of those together and you have a real obstacle. I had one such spot to negotiate, which is not easy with a pack. In fact, it wouldn’t have been easy without a pack, but I scrambled over using a little rock climbing technique and a short jump to the sand. 

I arrived at Sixes River an hour before low tide and this was a fairly big river. I decided to give it a try. I found a wide spot where the channel was split and started across. The first half was the bigger channel, but was only about knee deep. There was a short sand bar and then the second channel. The second channel was only calf deep and then I was across.

It was another 2 miles on the beach out to Cape Blanco. Cape Blanco is the second most western point in the continental US. The OCT works it’s way up and over the Cape and back down to the beach on the other side. Two miles down that beach is Elk River. The guidebook says, as a small river, it can be crossed at any tide. Well it was almost two hours after low tide so I would put that theory to the test.

As I started across this knee deep river I was amazed by the current, not of the incoming tide, but the outflow of the river. It literally pushed me down stream as I crossed. This somewhat narrow river had the strongest current of any I’ve forded on this trek.

Once across it was about five more miles of beach walking to Port Orford. As the tide was incoming, I had less and less beach to walk on. I was getting worried that I would get cliffed out and have to backtrack, but I slipped though the narrowest spot before the tide could catch me, and was once again on a wide beach.

I made it to Port Orford, found my motel and got my laundry done, so life is good. Tomorrow Nancy, aka Professor, and her sister, Sara, aka Cappuccino, arrive. Then Cappuccino and I head out the day after tomorrow for California.

Happy Trails…