100 Stair Beach
My partner grew up in the Portland area
and her family had a tradition of going to the coast and of going
rock hunting.. Because of this, she has been bugging me for months to
go to one of her favorite little beaches to do some Agate
hunting.
Well, this weekend was finally the day.
The weather was going to turn sunny for a day and we both had a
little bit of time to kill, and besides, it was her birthday!! (Well,
at least the same month as her birthday). So we threw some snacks and
some extra jackets (always bring extra jackets when you go to the Oregon coast) into the back of the Action Adventure Mobile, and
off we went.
Our target beach is call 100 Stair Beach. You will never guess why it is called this. I actually counted
132 stairs (though the height and step size are varied and in some
cases arguable), but I guess it would not be such a romatic notion to
call it “One Hundred and Thirty Two Stair Beach”. The beach is
out on Cape Meares just a little south of the Cape Meares Light. In
previvous seasons we would have gotten there by going north around
Cape Meares on the loop road. But the road was washed out by
landslides a year or so ago just North of the Light and they haven't
got it fixed yet (perhaps they can't fix it). Anway, you have to go South around through Oceanside to get to the 100 steps.
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| The Spring flowers are starting |
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| Not sure what this little tunnel was for.... Perhaps to get out of the rain. |
The steps down look like they were put
in by private groups over the last 60 years. The are just wood and
dirt steps, with a few drift wood based benches and such along the
way.
In truth, 100 steps isn't all that
many. Just 5 or 6 floors in a normal building. But those steps will
get you from a small fading sign on the side of the road (with parking
for like 10 cars) down to a really wonderful and picturesque little
beach. Since this is an Agate hunting beach (and evidently a pretty
well known one) I knew there had to be a stream or two emptying onto
the sand. In fact, there was a stream or two, but very little sand.
This is good, because we were not sand hunting, we were rock hunting.
And if you want to find big agates, you have to look in stacks of big
rocks.
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| Is that an Agate? |
Right where the cliff ends the strip of
rounded volcanic rock starts. Hundreds of thousands of flat egg
shaped black rocks that stretch up and down the beach to the
headlands at either end that define this little cove. Just off shore
is a rocky cliff island. During low tide you can walk to the island.
I don't see any way to get up on top of it, however. Too steep. I
think the local authorities would frown on such an exercise anyway.
Don't want you tromping around and upsetting the nesting avian
life.
My partner and I had worn our 5 fingers
wet shoes so that we could walk through the water and stones without
hurting our feet. We may have been better off in our kayak dry suit
booties, as the water was cold and the stones were hard. Our feet got
both numb and bruised at the same time. We first walked along a
little spit of sand. My partner told me that her biggest fear was
that the recent storms would have stirred up the sand and pushed it
up over the rocks. When that happens the entire beach is sand. Which
is nice and all except for the absense or Agates. As it was, things
were looking pretty good for our hunting experience except that the
tides were ill timed for that day and had already started back in.
Ideally you hunt for agates in the retreating surf. Not the charging-in surf.
We were not alone on our beach. There
were a number of kids and adults out there. Most of the kids were
carrying big plastic buckets. Buckets that they carried in such a way
as to suggest that they were not light. i.e. buckets full of rocks.
My partner asked one boy what he was
collecting. He gave her an incredulous look and said “We are
finding Agates”.
“Have you found any?”
“Oh, yeah. Lots”
“Can you show me one?”
At this point he put down his bucket
and started to dig through the gloves and socks on top. Then he
stopped and said, “They are going to be on the bottom and too hard
to get too.”.
“That's OK,” I chimed in. Then I
asked the important questions, “How big are they?”
“Oh, the big ones are about the size
of marbles. Lots o small ones, though”
OK, So, we started our own hunt. My
partner said that she had never found an agate on the South side of
the island before. So we slugged over to the North side and began our
search. We started finding some small ones pretty much immediately.
I like looking for agates. It is very
soothing. You need to position yourself such that the sun is at an
angle where your shadow doesn't fall on your search area, bend over
and get close to the sand, and then empty your mind off all thought
and let the shiny clearness of a wet agate find YOU. And then when
you find one...... scrape around in that area a bit looking for more,
because agates travel in packs.
Oh, one more thing. Since you are
hunting for agates on the west coast, in the afternoon (so the sun
isn't blocked by the cliffs), you are going to be hunting with your
back to the sea. You are going to be hunting with your back to the
sea, right at the edge of the land water boundary on an in coming
tide. Since you are tightly focused on the agate finding function,
sooner or later a bigger than average wave is going to come up behind
you and, if it doesn't just knock your face in the sand, it will get you very
wet. Deal with it. Perhaps bring a spotter. And bring a spotter than
will warn you in a manner other than pulling out her camera and
waiting until you get drenched. (Editor's note, notice who's in the photos getting drenched, and who must be wave spotting for whom)
So we are hunting and hunting. Getting
a lot of tiny little things. Then I find a place where I find like 5
pea sized rocks in a row. Oh, what a find. I run over to my partner to
show her how amazing I am. She looks and agrees that I am truly
amazing. Then she shows me her hand. She has twice as many marble
sized ones. DAMMIT.
“This isn't a contest, you know, Jon.
Why do you feel you have to measure the size of everything?”
Easy for a person with the largest
Agate to say.
We searched our way down the beach
almost to where it ended in the cliffs. Then we walked away from the
shore a bit to where the rocks got big enough to sit on and eat
lunch. The wind was cold, our feet were cold, but the sun was out and
the rock we sat on was warm. I also earned extra points because I had
remembered to bring one of those chemical hand-warmers and I gave it
to my partner to warm her poor, cold, agate hunting hands.
Wow, since you bring it up, I think I
will take this opportunity to talk about this great hand-warming
technology. I like these things because they are such cool science.
They consist of a sealed bag of supercooled liquid. When a
crystallization site is provided (by the clicking of a metal disk)
the liquid quickly solidifies and the phase change brings about a
release of heat. The heat lasts for about 15 minutes, but after it is
done, you can reset the reaction by putting the (now solid) plastic
bag into a tub of boiling water until the crystals melt. Then you let
them cool and you can do it all over again.
The chemical mix used in these things
is a supersaturate mixture of Sodium
Acetate. I got this particular one for Christmas (I think it
came from Urban Outfitters). I have other ones, but this is by far
the nicest.
Ok. Sorry. Engineer Jon got out there
for a minute. Where were we? Oh yes, romantic lunch on the beach with
our slowly warming hands and feet.
The tide was starting to come up high
enough to endanger our lunch spot, so we packed up and headed back
down the beach again. We were trying to head back to the car but we
just couldn't resist stopping and looking for agates as many times as
our backs could stand it. Got hit by a couple of more waves. Got our
pants pretty wet. But my partner came up with the find of the day
with a huge golf ball sized agate. (I have pictures !!).
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| Look at that Rock!! |
By the time we got back to the
stairwell, our feet were once again very cold and they were also very
sore from walking on the larger rocks. Ouch. But up the stairs we
went.
I could feel the heat leaching back into
my toes as we drove back around the peninsula toward Tillamook. We
stopped at our favorite little hole in the wall restaurant, the
Pacific Restaurant. A quaint little place built into an old strip
motel. But the food is tremendous.
