Cape Arago - East Loop Trail

 

A big wind hit this ridge

Here is a challenging hike that also offers a few easy levels of confusion just to add to the sense of adventure and wonder. I could not find this hike on any official State Park trail map. I also couldn’t find the name of this trail listed on any of the many hiking sites that do have the trail shown on their (probably FITBIT generated) overlay maps.  However, we ran into a Ranger at one of the state parks and he said it was a great trail, that it was called the East Loop Trail, that he hiked it yesterday on a nature talk hike that no one showed up for, that it wasn’t marked, and that it started just across the main road from the entrance to his access road that leads to his maintance area and no we couldn’t walk through it. 

To get there, you drive through Sunset Bay State Park and then park your car in Shore Acres State Park. Then you walk across the street and hike in Cape Arago State Park. These 3 parks are contiguous and the main difference seems to be that you need a state parks pass to park in the big parking lot at Shore Acres (but that is also where the nice bathroom and gift shop are).  

There are a lot of trails hooking these 3 parks together. We are going to hike the hardest and least scenic today. We are doing it because we didn’t know that it was the hardest and least scenic and because we wanted to hike a new trail. The other trails all run along the coast over tall (75 foot) bluffs with stunning views of the Ocean and the off shore sea rocks formed by the unique geology of this cape. At the furthest tip, Simpsons Reaf, shows a large off shore colony of Sea Lions barking and basking on the up-jutting rocks a few hundred yards off of the coast.  So if you are into that sort of thing, you might not spend the effort finding and hiking the East Loop Trail.

Let me give some directions on how to find this trail,  just in case the Ranger isn’t walking by on the sidewalk when you park your car. You can start this hike from anyplace that you want in the park and just head toward the bathrooms at Shore Acres,  but we were looking for about a 5 mile hike and so we parked our car right there by the bathroom and world famous Gift Shop (they actually sell pocket knives WITH YOUR NAME ON THEM) (HOW DO THEY EVEN KNOW MY NAME?). If you don’t have a Oregon State Parking Pass, and you don’t want to pay the $5 parking fee, you can usually find a place nearby to park on the main drag (Cape Arago Highway).  

This East Loop trail is referred to as part of the Perimeter Trail in all of the (non-official) maps that I could find online.  The Ranger insists it is called The East Loop Trail, it just doesn’t appear on any maps and isn’t signed. It is a real trail, however, and a lot of work has been done on it. Amongst other things someone has hauled an awful large number of large concrete blocks up the hill to make a number of stairways on the trail. This trail is NOT the Pack Trail. The Pack Trail is a well marked old road (at least at the start). We are going to be hiking on it later but we don’t want to start on it. It is also not the road/trail that goes up to the old WWII bunkers. I don’t know where that is but everyone asks me “Oh, did you see the bunkers?”. No, I did not. It also isn’t the trail that goes down to the surfing beach. It is the trail that goes way the fuck up the  hill that I didn’t even know was there. 

Dang. We haven’t even found the Trail Head yet. 

OK. Here it is. Park your car near to the bathroom. Follow the parking circle around back to the entrance to Shore Acres. That is, go back out to Cape Arago Highway. Turn right (south) and head down Cape Arago Highway until you see a little paved utility road on your right. There will be a “Authorized Personel Only” sign near the entrance. Now look to your Left, on the East side of Cape Arago highway. Look hard. There is no sign. There is a trail that goes on a short scramble up the roadside and then continues into the dark of the trees and heavy foliage. That is the East Loop Trail. Or you have found some other unsigned trail. But lets go with the idea that you have found the East Loop Trail.  My partner and I searched around in this area for 5 minutes before we convinced ourselves that we had the right place. 

Up the hill the trail goes. This area is extremely green and lush. My first time finding mountain huckleberry in the wild, and it was everywhere with lots of berries. Add to the underbrush a profusion of blooming deer-fern along with the usual Oregon mix of Mahonia, Salal, and ever invading Himalayan Blackberry. The trees towering overhead were mainly Sitka, and there were some giants there. 

The footing in this area is all a thick layer and moss and pine needles. I haven’t seen this kind of ground in other places. Everywhere you walk there is this springy effect on the ground like you are walking on some advanced rubber covered playground. It makes for a very comfortable walk. 

The first mile of the trail is very intent on getting to the top of the ridge. Once there you break out into a large flat area that appears to be an old burn. There are many large old burnt remnants of trees but the surrounding  growth is still recent enough to be low lying, so you get some sun. This area has a lot of newly sprouting Rhododendron which should offer some nice color in a few years. Watch your step here, the trail was cut through a thicket of small growth and there are a lot of short small bush stumps in the ground to trip you up. My partner was also sorry that she didn’t wear long pants and shirt, just because of the many sticks (and sometimes thorns) that were crossing the trail. 

Along the Oregon Coast (and this area was certainly no different) it is hard to get an appreciation of what a Natural setting would be. What would a healthy natural forest look like in this area? What do I mean? If you are hiking through the wonder of nature and you keep coming across huge tree stumps, much larger than the growing trees, and these stumps have the flat top to show that they were harvested a century ago by some logger baron, then I would argue that you are not hiking through a natural forest. Not hiking through an area where the trees are born and grow up and die in a sort of long term cycle of death and renewal. You are in an area that was stripped clean and then all of the trees started growing at the same time. I guess a big forest fire might cause that sort of thing, though I am guessing you don’t get 500 year old trees in places that have forest fires. 

After you leave the clear area, you enter back into the Sitka forest. There were some HUGE old skeletons of trees back in there. See the pictures. These were burned some but it was unclear if the fire killed them or they were husks a century before the burn marks. We continued deeper into the forest and now we were in a area that was big trees continuously. The trees were all about the same size and height and they blocked enough sun that the undergrowth was only the low lying shade loving plants like Oregon Grape and Deer Fern and the like. Things were a little soggy underfoot and so there was also the occasional profusion of Mushroom and other fungi. We are up on the ridge now, which afforded some good views of the trees. You need to do some slugging along now. The trail is general winding up, but it does duck suddenly down a time or too to cross a small water course. We are hiking late in the season (September) and we have a glorious warm and sunny day, but we don’t have any wild flowers. 

At this point in the trail, as you wind up and down the ridge, you will encounter the many concrete block steps that I had mentioned. These are the kind of stones you might use in a large retaining wall in your yard and are all over the ridge. I am guessing this trail is pretty muddy in the winter and spring and the stone may be necessary to keep the trail safe. 

Rhododendron in the burn area

This is one stump with 3 sections left. Huge.

Another half mile or so on and the East Loop Trail intersects the Pack Trail. Once again, this intersection is not marked. If you were on the Pack trail and trying to find the East Loop Trail, it could be a bit challenging. The Pack Trail, however, is an old jeep track going right up the hill and you can’t miss it when the East Loop dumps you out on it. Take a left and head on up the gentle slope. This is a great time to walk next to your partner and catch your breath. But don’t do as I did and assume that the pack trail stays this wide track all the way to the end of the cape (even if you have been to the other end of the trail by car and saw that it was this wide at the other end). 

The Pack Trail continues nice and wide but then takes an easy right turn and narrows back down to a single track trail. 

My sister lives out this way and she told us last year that she had talked to some ranger friends and they had told her that a storm had made the Pack Trail impassable with downed trees all over the place. However, since then, the trees had been cleared and the Ranger we talked to said that the trails were now open. We had run into some cleared trees but nothing that I would have called ‘impassable’. Yet. Did I mention that I am taking this writing correspondence course and we have just reached the chapter on foreshadowing? 

Right about now, in the midst of your quandary over my use of foreshadowing, you will come to a fork in the road. Two trails of equal size and use, one to the left, one to the right. The one to the left seems to be going more in the right direction. The one to the right goes right down the hill, which isn’t really what I was expecting. The one to the right, however, had a big tree cut off at head height by a chain saw right there with fresh saw dust on the trail and bulk of the tree down in the gulch. So. Trail Maintenance. We go right. And we were never seen again. 

Man oh man, I really wanted to end the blog there. My partner really wanted to end the hike there too. But since I couldn’t drive our car to that part of the trail, you are going to have to keep reading. I admit that though this part of the trail was the most challenging, it was also the most interesting. There were large trees down everywhere. They had been blown over in that storm and they littered this drainage that we now have to cross. 

Sitka Spruce are a thick bodied tree with many symmetric branches that grow on the wet rocky mountainous Oregon coast. They maintain their hold on the hillside with a large shallow spreading root system instead of a deep thick root ball. If you were to make a model of the Sitka and its root system you could easily set it flat on your kitchen table, that is how flat the root system is.  I was looking at this many toppled trees and I realized that this root system (though perhaps ideal for the rocky terrain) means that the trees have a very definite center of balance. They don’t so much dig into the ground but sit uneasily upon it. You push hard on the top and you can over balance them and then down they come. That is what that big wind storm did. And the trees don’t break (at least not until they hit the ground) but rather push over taking their bit round flat root systems with them.  Once pushed over, the root systems stick 20 or 30 feet into the air and created a sideways forest with bushes growing out of the once tops of the ground. 

The guys with the chain saws put in a lot of effort to clear the debris and construct new trails through this mess. You have to climb over and around a number of falls. In one place, a 15 foot stairway has been constructed with log rounds cut from a felled giant as stepping stones. 

You have to go way down into the gulley and then back up to the ridge. I don’t know if this is the historic trail or if we are going around some other blockage. I also don’t know where that left turn in the trail went. Need to find that Ranger again and ask him. Maybe I can send an email. 

Once back up to the ridge, you run back into the wide part of the Pack Trail, and this will lead you an easy half mile down to the loop a the end of the Cape Arago Highway. 

Somewhere in there is a unmarked turn right off of the Pack Trail and onto the new trail that goes through the woods over to Simpson Reef parking lot. I think I saw it, but wasn’t really sure. We had decided to walk the road back to Simpson Reef. 

And there you go. Oh shit, we didn’t make it back to the car yet. Haven’t even stopped at the world famous Gift Shop. 

Also Simpson Reef.

Simpson Reef

OK. As you walk the road toward Simpson Reef, go over on the left side (facing traffic) and take the little beside the road trail that goes behind the fence. You will come to a place where you get a big view of the ocean and will no doubt be attracted to the loud noise that all of the Sea Lions are making on their rocks a quarter mile or so off shore. There are hundreds of the noisy guys out there. There is an equally good view from the Simpson Reef parking lot. Just past the parking lot is a little white arrow on a post that leads into the forest along the cliffs. Follow the trail with plenty of nice views through the close growing salal until you eventually come out to Simpson Beach and then the Shore Acres parking lot. Here is the bathroom. 

And The Gift Shop !!

The gift shop has a nice selection of historic books for sale as well as plenty of tea shirts and sweat shirts that say “Shore Acres State Park” on them. You might even find a pocket knife with you name on it. 

I love these little Douglas Squirrels. 
Even when they sit and yell at me.