Tahkenitch Dunes Hike

You never know when it will be a good week to spend on the beach in the winter. Mostly it is cold and rainy. But sometimes the sun comes out and shines and makes things very pleasant.  I have been really lucky in the past and I find myself with even better luck this week. We are staying on the Southern Oregon Coast for a few days and the weather has been fabulous. Clear, a little cold, but very sunny. 

As part of our desire to do new hikes we have picked the Tahkenitch Dunes for our efforts. 

Ever been to the Oregon Dunes? They are huge areas of tall dunes that, since you really can’t build on them or mine them or cut trees down from them, have been set aside as National and State parks and recreational areas. They are really quite beautiful and imposing, with the large (moving) mountains of sand rising seemingly out of the sea and pushing like slow moving giants across the landscape. 

The trail we have picked for today is a loop made out of a couple of intersecting trails. We will park at the Tahkenitch Dunes campground and hike the Tahkenitch Dunes Trail pretty much straight to the Ocean (2 miles). Then we will hike along the shore for a mile until we interesect with 3-mile lake trail which we will follow the  3 miles back to the trail head. Though that all adds up to 6 miles, because of rounding and switchbacks I think it ended up being more like 7 miles. 

Sallal Tunnels

I really liked this hike because, though somewhat difficult, it was a interesting melange of intersecting biomes. When we first started, we were in a young doug fir forest, the earth was a loam and sand mix and the understory was very thick with huckleberry and salal, both growing in tall bushes that overhung the trail and made it a bit like hiking through a tunnel. The Tahkenitch Dune trail branches off the main and heads straight for the beach. As we wend through the tunnels I can see something tall through the branches off to our left. We are working our way around it, however, and don’t have to do much climbing before we get to the dunes. 

Coming on the dunes is very sudden. The trail skits a sunken swampy area, turns a corner, and then there before and below you is the bright sand of the rolling dunes. Down a little more of the trail and the woods end suddenly in a steep downward embankment of sand. The trail guide warned that the dunes are a moving thing and the trails across them may be hard to find. They are marked with 10 foot high round wood poles with a blue stripe on top. Be looking for those but don’t be too surprised if you can’t find them. Today, the trail has not wandered much and we can see some footprints through the sand that stretch off across this set of dunes to a trail entrance on some forests that we see over toward the ocean. Oh yes, we can also see, and hear, the ocean. Just over there, a mile or so. 

Dunes

People lost in the dunes often leave a trail of 
extra garments to try and find their way home

It is significantly harder to walk across the soft moving sand of the dunes than the firm pine needle base of the rest of the trail. Your feet sink in a bit and if you are going up hill, you always slide down half a step for every step you take. The hills can also be quite steep and switchback trails are not employed on the dunes themselves. I am not sure why but I assume it is because they would just collapse down upon themselves. Going toward the ocean isn’t that hard, however, because that is mainly  downhill. 

Scrub Pines in Sand

After a few hundred yards of moderate slugging we get to our third different set of plant life. Here we have the scrub pins that grow out of the flat sand in a lower area that has signs of frequent flooding; perhaps a seasonal shallow lake or bog. The walking here is easy, but we have lost sight of the sea. You can still hear it, especially when a big wave booms somewhere along the beach. We now crest a little rise and can see the beach sand and the Tahkenitch creek flowing through the shore dunes and blocking our direct path to the ocean. There is a crossroads with a sign indicating that the Tahkenitch Creek Trail is joining with our Dune Trail. We now turn left and the trail follows the creek south for a while. 

Another crossroads. Now you have a choice of going out to the beach for a hike or turning inland a bit and hiking across the Dunes directly for a mile or so. Both ways leave you the oppoortunity of joining up with the 3 mile lake trail. I think it is just random chance that the 3 mile lake trail is listed as being 3 miles long.

And what is with all of the places in this area that are named after distances? 3 mile lake. 10 mile lake. 6 mile creek. I asked a local (Ok, my sister) and not only did she not know, but she hadn’t really noticed the names and assumed I was just keying into some unrelated random event (Oh, like I would do that). But I pointed some of them out to her  on a little road trip (Along with a large number of blue cars) and she is now a believer. Deep and meaningful research on the internets revealed no obvious solution to this conundrum so I have created my own. I think it has to do with logging and logging train tracks. I think these things are all distances of train track back to the central town or facility. One would leave from the town and go out ‘To that Lake at mile 3 of the tracks’ to cut down trees. Train tracks always have the big mile markers on them, you know. And there you have it: Science at Work !!

Tahkenitch Creek and Beach

Where were we? Oh yes, we had decided to follow the trail to the beach, which to my surprise was still another quarter of a mile away, as we still had to get around the mouth of the Tahkenitch creek and a also pass a little headland at the creek mouth. Once to the sand we stopped and sat down on a nice grey sun and sea weathered log and have a little rest and a snack. The sun was hiding and the fall ocean wind had a bit of a bite to it so we pulled an extra layer out of our packs and sat and enjoyed our Fig Bar and the ocean waves.

A lot of the coastline of Oregon is accessible to motor traffic and you will often see vehicles driving across the firmer sand closer to the water at low tide. Today we saw a little 4 wheel vehicle in the distance coming in from the north, but it was stopped by the creek flowing to the ocean.  As we walked South along the shore, we eventually came to a sign in the sand that said driving north passed the sign was prohibited. There were some wheel tracks there. 

Beach Grass and Trail/Mile Marker

A mile of hiking along the beach brought us to the trailhead that exited through the rising sand on our left. Along the Oregon Coast, shore access points are usually marked with large yellow signs with mile markers on them. These help you find your way back to your vehicle but also server as reference points for calling for help (‘We have a person floating out to see at marker 137’).  Here we turn away from the sea and hike through a section of dune grass common along the shore. This is our fourth different environment area. 

What I was expecting, at this point, is that we would reverse back through each of the ecosystems that we had traversed through on our way out. The scrub pines, the dunes, the tunnels of salal. I was almost right. 

We did go through the (now dry) boggy areas and then we got a chance to slug through the dunes again. This time the slugging was bit harder. There were more up and down to the dunes and the up parts were steep and slow. My partner said she was walking behind me and stepping in my steps as that was easier. It reminded her of being a little girl and stepping in her fathers steps when out walking in the snow. 

Now we did one last slow clump up a big dune and we came to a firm footing in pine covered high dunes with a little sign indicating which way to go to the ocean or to the campground (where our car sits). This is the 3 Mile Lake Trail (or perhaps the Three Mile Lake Trail). But where, wonders my Partner, is 3 mile lake? (or perhaps, Three Mile Lake). Well….. what is that over there? We walk along the top of the dunes for about 50 feet and we come suddenly to a very steep slide. It goes down 80 feet or so of losely held sand right into the water of a tall pine-lined lake.  3 Mile Lake!! (Three Mile Lake !!)

Three Mile Lake!!

This is a good example of how the lakes along this area must have been formed. There is a creek running out of the mountains and the sand gets pushed up against them from the shore by wind and storm and these big dunes dam up the creek and make these little, but often long, fresh water lakes that parallel the shore a mile or so away. And the Dunes are so tall. How do they get so tall? Why don’t they spread out and flow into these lakes and drown them in sand? Please leave your answer as a comment at the end of this blog. 

After our view of the lake, we followed the sign toward the Tahkenitch camp site. We are now on the 3 mile lake trail heading toward our car. This trail is listed, variously, as 3 miles, 3 and a quarter miles, and 3 and a half miles. I think it depends on which direction you are going. But that is besides the point. The point is that I was expecting a sort of easy downward trail back through the salal tunnels to the car. What I got, however, was a steadily upward set of switchbacks through yet another biome. This time we were hiking through a traditional Oregon Coastal forest of giant sitka and sword fern. We are not on a sand based hill either, this is a good old fashioned dirt and rock mountain going up 700 or 800 feet. I can see it climbing. We also have to go up a little gorge valley to get around 3 mile lake and its little feeder creek. We eventually hit a bridge, but then we have to switch back up the hill again. This is much harder and longer than I was expecting. When you come to unexpected obstacles in your path, they seem to take a lot more out of you than expected obstacles. So it was with this hill. Which just seemed to go on and on. Where did this hill come from? We didn’t pass it on the way to the beach. Did it sneak in here when we were eating our snack, with our backs turned? None of these answers is very satisfying. I suspect ancient Aliens. 

Sitka and Fern Forest

Anyway, climb up the hill through the really beautiful forest. Large Sitka but NOT old growth. You can see the old growth off through the woods encrusted in fern and huckleberry. Century old sawed off tree trunks 4 times the girth of the existing living giants. The sign back a the trailhead explains that this area was ‘harvested’ around 1910. That means that big sitka that we are looking at are around a hundred years old. How old does that make the trees that were cut to make those huge stumps? Half a millenia?

We finally come to a spot which I think of as the top of this range. There is a little bench seat built there and we have a view looking west at a patch of dunes and the creek winding through the sand to the ocean. A good spot. We sit down and eat the rest of our lunch. We are now hiking down, we have about 1.5 miles to the car. 

We have one more interesting thing to run into. We are heading down this steep straight section of trail and below us we can… sand. A sand dune is at the bottom of the hill, it intersects the trail and extends up and up and up. Wow that is a big hill of sand. We get to the bottom and the well walked trail ends in the sand. There are trails in the sand going in a couple of directions and we choose the most likely one. We are now walking along the side of the dune as it pushes out into the forest on a steep forested slope. It is pretty clear that the old trail used to be here and the sand has flowed in during the last 5 or 10 years (or perhaps last year) and overrun the trees and trail. There are some big sitka that appear to have 10 or 20 feet of sand covering over their roots. We walk up in their low branches. This encroaching dune extends perhaps 100 yards across the trail and then, just as suddenly as it began, it is gone and we are back on the dirt and leaf trail. A little more hiking and we leave the Sitka and are back in the pine and salal tunnel area of the start of the hike and, sun of a gun, there is the intersection with the Dune trail and just 10 more minutes and we are back to our car. 

So,  think I counted 6 different eco-sytem biome thingees:

1) Pine and Salal tunnels

2) Dunes

3) Sandy Scrub Pine area

4) Beach

5) Beach Dune Grass

6) Sitka semi-old growth forest.

A very visually stimulating and diverse hiking experience. 

Multnomah - Wahkeena Loop: 5 years after the burn

About 5 years ago, the Columbia Gorge was alight with a huge forest fire that burned many of the popular hiking and recreational areas on the Oregon side. I have not revisited the Multnoma – Wahkeena loop for 2 years (because of my knee replacement) but my partner and I got back to it today and we had us a little adventure. 

The fire burned through the Oneta gorge and then up and over the hills on the east side of Multnomah creek. Up that creek, most of the trees on the east side are dead, though still standing. The fire burned across the creek and up the hills on the west side but got stopped in places and didn’t completely engulf the Wahkeenah creek valley. The forest up above The Multnomah Wahkeena Crossroads is scorched, but still mostly alive. Below that appears to be mostly dead. A large stretch of the forest that that trail runs through along that ridge is extremely dead. Let me rephrase that. The big trees are dead, the understory is alive with new growth, especially thimble-berry. 

When the fire came through, most of those big trees didn’t burn out-right. The fire burned the understory all around them and the heat blackened their trunks and damaged or killed the trees. Those trees are still standing, but 5 years down the line now they are starting to rot. Some of them rot up near the top and their branches fall and maybe the wind breaks them off halfway up so they become benign standing stumps. Others rot down in the roots and this loosens their tenuous hold on the earth so when it rains heavily and the wind blows down the gorge, the entire huge tree rips from the soil and falls over and then, perhaps, goes sliding down the steep gorge walls.

Needless to say, all of this excitement is wrecking havoc on the trail system. We hit a few obstacles when we were out hiking today. The most common was just downed dead branches. These were all over the trail in some places, but they were not that big and could be stepped on or over. In a couple of other places there were trees that had fallen across the path but we could duck under them, perhaps on hands on and knees. The biggest problem was the huge trees that had been growing with their roots as part of the trail. When they toppled they left a big hole in the trail and created a dangerous obstacle for hikers.

One tree looked like it had partially toppled in the last few days. This was up near the top of the steep gorge walls. The tree was tall and it had fallen over and was leaning against another (also dead) tree. Paige and I looked up and there, 100 feet above us, the tops of both trees were swaying back and forth in the 30mph gusts of wind. The base was not moving, but there was a big hole you had to negotiate. You choices were to try and stay on the trail, which was tilted over and going down the hill with the tree in the not too distant future, or go uphill of the trail and try to walk around the new tree root hole without falling in. Both choices required the tree and root-ball to stay where they were. 

Another tree was a 4 foot diameter log that had fallen down the hill with the root-ball above the trail. You had to go over the tree, which meant that if you didn’t have long enough legs to stradle the tree, you had to hug it and sort of slide over. This wouldn’t have been too bad except the tree trunk was completely scorched black, so you were going to get covered in soot. The other problem was that the tree was wet and sitting at a big angle going down the hill. If you couldn’t keep a foot hold on one side, you had the chance of slipping down the rain slicked tree trunk until you hit a branch 50 or 60 feet down the gulch. Not good. The guy who went just ahead of us had long legs and it was not problem. My partner had a harder time and I admit that it was sort of scary for me also. Good thing we are both intrepid adventurors. Oh, if this blog ends suddenly, it means we didn’t make it over the next obstacle and you should call for a rescue.

These trees are scorched at the base but still alive.
This is looking up toward the ridge of Devils Rest

All along the trail, wind and rain and tree fall erosion have been greatly accelerated by the fire damage. The trail is going to need a lot of work as the rate of fall of these dead trees picks up over the next few years. The other strange thing is how much better the view is now from the top of the ridge. 6 years ago you really couldn’t see much of the Columbia or Washington from the Multnomah ridge, either in the Summer of the winter. Now you have a great view. You can also see the magnificent stone pillars that make up the Oregon side but are usually hidden by the understory and the thick tops of the trees that are growing way down below you but rise up to block your view. 

Large New Undergrowth

Unobscured views of cliffs

The creeks are also getting choked with wood from trees that have slid down the gullies into the rushing water and are then broken and smashed and pushed into big logjams that are all over. This, of course, changes the way the river flows and pushes rocks and dirt around to different places. Lots of change up in those burned hills. It will be interesting to see what kind of trees grow up in the places where all of the dead Doug First now stand.  I don’t know if the Forest Service plans to replant with something or just to see what happens. 

Salmon River Trail 'In Secundo'

Just about two years ago, between Christmas and New Years, my partner and I set out to hike the Salmon River Trail, up near Welches on Mount Hood. It was a lovely winter day, not too cold, no snow or ice on the trail by the river. The sun was peaking out on occasion. We had a lovely little hike but I just didn’t feel like making the last big push up to the promised viewpoint at the end of the 3.5 miles out. We turned back about a half mile short. A good thing too. About a mile from the car my bad knee just went out. I didn’t fall or twist it or anything. I was just walking along and the knee just went. I came down on it and it screamed like a further mucker. Oh my God it hurt. And it continued to hurt. Every inch of the way back to the car it screamed and yelled and complained. It was so loud that my wonderful wife could hear it. (yes, that is a joke thing).

My knee took like 5 months to recover from that trauma but that didn’t matter because I didn’t trust it anymore. If that had happened when I was 3 miles out, Paige would have had to go for help and a stretcher. No Thanks. I had the knee replaced.

So Today. Today, we embark on the same trail for the first time since that injury. I admit to having a little PTSD whist sitting in the parking lot at the trailhead tying the laces on my boots. Once more we have lucked out with the weather. It had been raining for the last 24 hours, and had been raining the entire drive up the mountain, but it stopped as we took the little side road over to the trailhead and now, in the parking lot, the sun is out. Oh Boy. 

It is a wet Saturday at the end of October. The parking lot at the trailhead is pretty full. You need a Forest Pass to park here from May to October 1. We shoulder our packs and head off down the trail. 

The trail starts right at a road bridge over the Salmon, it goes up a little embankment to get away from the road and then descends quickly to the river. This first part by the river is gorgeous. The river has hit a little wide flat bottom land and sent a small finger as a mountain stream through the forest there. The Doug Firs are tall and majestic and the understory is filled with ancient downed logs and the ferns and moss that love to grow on them. Stop and enjoy the view. Also be careful where you walk, the trail is still cut out of the mountain side and is full of slippery rocks and awkward carved terraces. 

When you leave this little bottom land you follow a space where the river is hard up against a rock facing and the trail is cut from the facing just about the water. This is a great place to get a long view of the river. We had the sun breaking through to light us up and the sparkles off the water were a lift to the soul. 

This is another natural forest that hasn’t been logged… perhaps never been logged. I didn’t see any old sawed-off stumps and all of the tree fall seemed to be very old and natural. There were a lot of places that saws had been used, but only to remove big logs from the trail. The sawed sections were still sitting over on the side. 

The Pacific North West, West of the Cascades, is Green Green Green. My partner and I found ourselves remarking on the similarities of this trail to other trails we have hiked the past year. Oh, this section reminds me of that hike up the Ho river rain forest in Olympic National Park. The soaring rocking mountains on one side and the fast moving river on the other, with the huge moss covered trees surrounding the trail. Oh this reminds me of our hike up to Fall Creek Falls. The steep-to of the trail winding above the river. It made me think of how many lovely places there are all around the PNW. So many places to go that are just hard enough to get to that they have not been ruined. Each unique but all sharing so many common elements. The profusion of Cedar and Doug Fir, the Nurse logs and Sword Fern. The running water and volcanic stone. Can a person become immune to this beauty and stop appreaciating the wonder of it all? Oh, I hope not. 

At around 2.0 miles you enter into National Forest Wilderness area. There is a sign and a place to fill out a permit during the high season. We are moving pretty fast (for us) and have taken off all of our layers except our medium outer shirts. It is a nice day with occasional sun breaks through the clouds. Welches is just low enough that it doesn’t usually get snow this time of year and sometimes not even in high winter. People stay there in cabins and then take the short drive up the mountain to the snow to take the kids sledding or whatever.  

At 2.5 miles, there is another wide spot and a camping area has been made over close to the river. Camping is legal and common along this stretch of the river, though we don’t see anyone wanting to try it at this time of year. From looking at the flat spots where people have put tents I am thinking that a hard deluge might put a half inch of standing water in that spot.

Now the trail heads up and it does it pretty determinedly. We quickly come to the spot where I made us turn around 2 years ago but we are determined to get to the viewpoint. People that pass us coming back down say the view is clear and lovely today. So up we go. I am guessing that it really isn’t all that steep or high or far, but it sort of felt like it today. I need to come back here when I am 30 years younger and see how it feels. I will report back. 

At the top of all of this whining we come to a place where the smooth tall rocks stick out from the side of the forest and crowd the trail up against a sheer wall. Across a canyon we can see more of these rock outcroppings. Down below you can hear and occasionally see the river  as it carves its way ever deeper into the stone. Up here, we have a great view of the blue and white sky against the dark green of the surrounding tree strewn mountains. Off in the distance to the East, I catch a glimpse of some white in the trees on the highest summit. Perhaps a little snow from the precipitation we have been getting this week. 

The 'Meadow' on the top

Paige knows a side trail to get up on the very top of the ridge and a nice flat spot. There is a sign there that says “Camp in the Trees, not in the Meadow”. A strange sign. We presume it is some warning about the danger of on-coming weather out in the open. Like Lightening and wind. We sit in the ‘meadow’, which is really just a slightly grassy spot out on the rocky prominence, and enjoy our little lunch and the view. This is a great destination. 

But now, the horses want to get back to the barn. The downhill 3.5 miles is much easier and faster than the uphill part had been. But do try and stop yourself every once in a while to enjoy the view. The sights on the way back down a trail are often different from the ones you saw on the way up. 

We get back to the car around 4:30 and decide to grab an early dinner at the Zig Zag Inn before we head back to the city. I would just like to say that this is one of my favorite little places to get food. It is very quaint and a little weird, the service is good and friendly, and the house made Pizza is excellent. In fact, it is my new best pizza in the world. I also like their coffee mugs, so I got myself one. I also recommend the Ice Pick beer, but you can only have one of those if you drove up the mountain and your partner has signed up to drive back down.