Painters Rock Beach
Sleep in hostel pod was pretty decent. A little yuked they don’t use duvet covers on their blankets and there was no top sheet but whatever. Again, got a later start then I expected but feet hurt and I only had 7.5 miles today. Even though FitBit says it was closer to twelve. Probably somewhere in the middle…
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| Good morning, Tillamook Head! |
Turned out that if I got breakfast in town today, I didn’t need to stop by a grocery store. Twist my arm. Had an almost too heavy breakfast of biscuits and gravy with a side of two scrambled eggs and two sausage links. Protein? Walked around Seaside a bit (ah… half mile to breakfast, a little backtracking to see some stuff I missed..okay. Adding up) and then slowly started the creep towards Tillamook Head. About a mile before the trail head was the last spot for water until tomorrow, so I tried to camel up and still packed out a gallon.
It’s always interesting to me when I do something Hiker Trashy. Public restroom’s sink was wayyyyyyyy too short to get a bottle under, but I had an unused Ziploc bag I could fill and then pour that into my bottles. Modern problems require modern solutions.
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| Elegance. Grace. A beautiful water source, and my trekking poles gave my bunny ears. |
Anyway, heading toward Tillamook. But then there was this beach and folks were surfing and I’m not hiking with anyone. Like. I don’t HAVE to be anywhere. This isn’t like the AT where I have a couple of folks I’m keeping track of. So. Eh.
Found a nice piece of driftwood on the rocky edge of the beach, took off my shoes and socks to UV Magic my feet, popped open the umbrella… and just watched the surfers for a good half hour. It’s madness to me how many people seemingly enjoy 45-50 degree water (not my estimate: the local averages). Some of y’all just built different.
Around 1 I collected my belongs and made my way towards my destination. I noticed that while a couple, not many, folks have crossed sidewalks to move away or just seem started AF when I say hi, the surfer dudes I walked by were friendly and actually said hi first. I’d like to imagine there was a Like recognizing Like there: look at us, it’s a weird life and we both have greasy hair, but it’s a damned nice day to be outside. A few of them were clearly van lifers and my pack is like a van… if you squint. Anyway.
Boom. Trail head. About halfway done with the day and it was only ten minutes after 1. Let’s go!
Now. I had been warned the trail was… in need of maintenance in some sections. Lots of downed trees. Trail washed out so slick and steep in places. Okay. Lost the trail and back tracked until I found it again and tried to consult Google or AllTrails for where to go. No help. Huh. Okay…
Then this young couple goes flying past me. “It connects,” the dude says with such confidence I did just believe him.
I didn’t know he was fucking high. Bwhahahahaha!
Dude tried to kill us all.
They get way ahead of me, I can’t even hear them, and I keep busting out the Google going, “yeah. This. This isn’t a trail.” It’s was a cross between a mountain goat path and a proving ground for a local who found themself bored with the official route. So, it was steep, muddy, “overgrown” (but not, cause not a trail), and just terrifying cause every now and then was a, “no. Seriously. Don’t fall here.” About five minutes in another pair of dudes comes up behind me and I tell them, “yo. This ain’t the trail. I was following someone and he has led us all astray.”
“Yeah. This is bullshit. We are turning back.”
And they did, but I saw on Google I was only 670 feet away from the trail, as the crow flies, and didn’t want to backtrack… and then it got worse, but sunk cost fallacy. And while 670 feet isn’t far, I’m also not a crow, so I zigzagged up this ridiculous muddy face, at times actually needing to take off my pack, balance it on something, toss my poles ahead, and climb. With the added fun that as I climbed, the terrain rapidly eroded. Commit…shit. Commit! Ahhh! CooooooMIT!!!! Whew. Okay.
Got muddy and at some point scratched my leg a few times. Didn’t feel it. And if my feet hurt, didn’t feel it either. 300 feet as the crow flies now. “Hello?” I began calling, hoping someone would answer back and I would at least know I was heading the right way. Cause sometimes Google lies (hence the original predicament I found myself in). Silence. I tossed out a “hello” about every thirty seconds as I dug my way up the side of the mountain. The word actually started to lose meaning, and while I could see the way the young couple had went (yeah. The trail was basically just tracking), every now and then I could see where they had fallen. Slid. Taken a couple of tries. Fuck me.
200 feet. Are you effing serious??? Zig left, zag right. No broken branches or viable disturbances in mud… maybe over that MASSIVE fallen tree.
100 feet. Fuck their trail: I’m pushing though… boom. There it was.
Now. I did get a bit freaked out about halfway up. “No one knows where I am.” “Are we lost?” “Can I find my way back?” “Can I even go back the way I came?” “I feel like I’m not lost, but doesn’t everyone feel like that even after they are over their head?” I got a little case of the spooked shakes but just tried to ignore. Don’t stop. Don’t get overwhelmed. Don’t panic. Just keep going forward BUT keep building a mental path in case we do need to backtrack. But when I saw the trail, ugh. Okay. The full body relief was real.
Too many chemicals in the body to feel hungry, though, so we just continued on. What could have been a .8 hike ended up taking almost two hours.
A better story though. The rest of the hike to camp was uneventful. Beautiful with great trees and ferns and the occasional view of the Pacific. Today was also the hottest day of the year for the region. 85 maybe? I got a wee damp but certainly didn’t need to take off any long layers.
At camp, after setting up, I talked briefly with a NoBo OCTer, Zoomer, who said that the last two days of the trail sucked and everything after that is great. Told me, “you are doing the hard, crappy stuff now. It gets so much better and easier.” Okay. I needed that. Ate my lunch finally, skipping dinner tonight (not hungry and basically ate my lunch cause I felt like I should.
Then I saw the couple who tried to kill me, and told them so. We had a good laugh. They struggled, too, but at least their were two of them! Nope, they had no idea the trail actually connected: they just felt like it did. We shot the shit and just told stories, they are both pretty athletic, and as they were eating dinner I heard, “hey! Beer Girl!”
I had met some PCTers (Munchies, Colonel, and Giggles) the other night at Ft. Stevens. They caught up and boom. There I was, sitting at a shelter, hanging out with hikers after we bonded over the trail trying to kill us, and then some other hikers walked in saying Beer Girl. Nostalgia for a time that wasn’t so long ago. The dudes who took the correct trail rolled in. They got here super fast and were able to hike a bonus three miles before calling it a day, adding a loop on from here to another parking lot. They congratulated the young couple and I for not dying and said we were fucking insane, which is really the nicest thing you can call a person.
Good vibes. A fire was made, and we all headed down the .2 to the cliff overlooking (I ended up doing this a couple times cause I got here so early) Tillamook lighthouse to watch the sunset. It’s amazing to think how many people are out there in the trees near towns with their only little subculture and community.
I like the part where no one died coming up here OR getting too close to the edge of the cliff. High five, y’all!
Stats!
12.65 miles
30,382 steps
4,460 calories
22:06 bedtime!
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