I tossed and turned during the night in my island of dry, and fortunately the damp clothes I wore inside my down bag ended up drying from my body heat over night. It’s a neat trick to go to bed damp and wake up dry, but it only works if things are damp, not wet.

When I heard Amber moving around I knew she had survived, and in fact she said it was the best night of sleep so far on the trip! Huh! 

We knew the miles to the sea wouldn’t take all day to walk, so watched the sky lighten with our hot coffee in hand. Daylight had us laying all our gear out and shaking off the remaining puddles. Since we had no more sleeps we could hike in all our dry clothes…beds for all tonight!

We had arranged to meet Anne, Amber’s wife at Ona Beach this afternoon, and even though there was plenty of time, we moved at a steady pace through the chilly, and dry morning. We had a spot of cell reception last night and marvels of all marvels, found a day of no rain would see us to the ocean. How did we get so lucky?

I hobbled behind Amber, my pace starting to wane as the miles ticked by. My planter fasciitis had gone from uncomfortable to excruciating. This pain sucks. 

We entered another beautiful section of trail through the last layer of coastal mountains before the sea, and we could smell the salt in the air. Much excite!

Now the C2C has alternates that hikers and bikers will need to follow depending on the season and logging schedule. We had already detoured a bit, adding some miles onto the trip, but since some of the trail goes through active logging areas and sensitive habitats, it’s really important to abide the closures. Have you ever seen an active logging area? Trust me when I say you don’t want to be anywhere near one. The massive hulk of the machines, the size of the trees, and the speed those trucks take when barreling down forest roads can be a terrifying for a hiker. Think of the ants you don’t see but squish while walking down the trail. You are the ant in an active logging operation. Anyway, the C2C has some of those. Please follow the detours around them!

We finally popped out on a paved road near the Beaver Creek Wildlife Area. I realized with delight that this was a place Kirk and I had paddled our sea kayaks before…the wetlands are a wildlife bonanza, and that fact was reinforced by our next unexpected encounter on the road walk. 

A small red car sped by us, then whipped a u turn to come back, parking partially in the road. A loquacious local got out of the car and talked at us for a few minutes about trail, cougars, bears, and various other critters found near by. We smiled and nodded, and before we knew it she was back in the car speeding away. We looked at each other a bit confused by the encounter, but happy to be acknowledged at all.

Soon we were at the final carsonite posts on the side of the road that marked the end of the trail….but it wasn’t the end for us, we were going to finish at the ocean.

After another quarter mileish through the park we saw the sea. Packs down, shoes off, into the Pacific. Now we were done!!

We had some time before Anne would come to whisk us away to food, showers, and a warm dry bed, so made some hot drinks on the beach and soaked in the November sun.
Now walking to the ocean was fab, but we decided that walked to Corvallis might be a better way to go. Ona Beach didn’t have the delights we were craving: no celebratory beer, no clam chowder. If you walked to Corvallis you could end at a brewery or eatery of your choice. And because we all know one of the best things about hiking is eating, you might consider that for your hike of the C2C.

When Anne arrived, she sped us up to Newport for the clam chowder we had been talking about for days, and before we knew it were back in the land of walls and artificial light.

A short and sweet journey!

Ha ha, joke’s on me.

I went to bed feeling smug because we were going to hike as if the time change didn’t happen today. We hike by the light of day!
Then I woke up, started my morning coffee and writing routine and the sky started to lighten. What the?

Because my phone had been on airplane mode, I didn’t think it would change time automatically. I thought I was besting the system, but the whole time I was playing with time I was getting played.

Doh! 

The phone did change.We got a later start.
But did that extra half hour help our bodies knit themselves back together after all the stress we have been putting them under? I like to think so.

We immediately started sweating on a trail climb. The trail wove through old growth and the ferns and moss were getting mossier if that is even possible. These forest appear to be saturated most of the time…the undergrowth is thick and jungly.

We climbed up and up and may have been a bit grumbley about it until we came to a pair of big ‘ol trees and we adjusted our attitudes accordingly. 

I made the mistake of sitting down during morning break when it wasn’t raining, and we got chilled when our bodies cooled. Geez, I won’t do that again, it take too long to warm up after that. 

Managing the wet. That’s the phase of the hike we are in now. It started pouring when we were packing up, so both of our tents are soaked through. We both have wet feet, and the only solution is to keep moving. 

We had a chat about being safe in the cold wet out here, and we both agreed to keep each other apprised if we slipped into the “danger cold” phase where we would stop and fix or hike out. We still had dry sleeping bags and some dry layers…still in good shape if we manage the wet appropriately. 
More climbing and rain and lush green rainforest. We had much to admire today.
Lunch was in a rare spot of sun. I know! We are still so lucky with the sun…we didn’t expect to see any.

We kept it brief and started up Palmer Mountain, our last big climb of the trip. We’ll be done tomorrow already!

Then we hiked in best part of all, a dense old growth forest. We had to weave in and out and around the verdant life, ducking beneath green hairy branches of a forest older than everything. 

We got water next to a rushing little creek, and started up a climb. We climbed and climbed…the trail was an old road bed here so the climb was slow and gradual at just enough incline that we had to initiate the grind.

And then…at the top, but not top. We didn’t go to the summit, the road just leveled out. 
And we kept walking. A few more miles downhill brought us to a churned up hill of dirt, and we poked around looking for a flat spot to camp. Finding none but eyeing the sky that was about to start dumping on us, we decided to throw up our tents on the gravel side of the road. 

I had helped Amber put rocks on her rain fly (the ground was too hard for stakes) and had just hurriedly started putting mine up when the water came. We didn’t make it. We were still wrapped in our rain coats and trash bags and our packs were covered, but we both had rivers running through our tents. I think there were a few balls of hail too.

The sky dumped. 

We kept putting our tents up. We had to get in those wet things stat and transition to dry asap.

Once inside we kept to the islands of our inflatable sleeping pads and watched the puddles surrounding us grow.

I ate snacks and surveyed the damage: everything is kinda wet, but I know my body heat will dry out some of it over night, the temps shouldn’t too cold, and I had hot food and drinks to look forward to.

Amber was in a similar state, and every once in a while when we could hear each other over the pounding couchaphany of the rain on our tents, we shouted encouragements.

We were alive and dry with snacks. And tomorrow we would walk to the sea. 

The rain started overnight, but was very considerate and stopped while we were packing up camp. We were out and hiking at first light…that means 7:30ish these days. Daylight savings starts tomorrow, but we’ll still follow the sun’s lead, not some arbitrary number on a watch.

We started down a section of trail that Amber had helped clear before and found a few more logs for her to come back and address with her chainsaw. The forest was dripping with rain, but flashes of blue sky still teased us from above…this would be the general pattern of the day.

Umbrellas up, Umbrellas down, rain coats on, raincoats off. We made progress and periodically had views back towards Mary’s Peak….a hiker on the C2C could summit Mary’s Peak if they wish…we did not wish, so kept moving. 

Lunch found us near one of the numerous C2C kiosks that had been installed. They all contain slips to register your hike, but I’d suggest they add a trail register note book so we could read tid bits of those who had come before us, or leave advice of our own, like: “bring more whisky for this section.” (We ran out of whisky today).

Even better for a lunch break? Sun!!! We plopped down in a rare patch of sun and had a glorious lunch and lie-down in the warming light. We have been pretty lucky with the sun on this hike…but then came the hail.

We had walked close to Harlan, a town that time forgot, (a town with no services that is, not a pizza food truck to be found) when a great rush of wind pushed a small hail storm into us. We sought refuge under a giant doug fir tree as the squall passed. 

Later we pulled over briefly to let some traffic pass….30 cows and a few cowgirls on horses that is, and kept walking.

On and on, and on and on. We plod up the road (plenty of road walking today, but also lovely little stretches of trail) and decide to skip checking out Big Elk Campground (the half way point!) and decided to make a few more miles before stopping for camp. 

We turned onto some new trail construction and got a few liters of water for the night at a stream crossing before climbing up the many switchbacks to the ridge above. The next section of trail paralleled a road, and after we crossed the road and climbed up and the road stayed level, posited that the road may be a less “oofta” inducing experience. 

Aches and pains update: my legs feel like lead weight and my feet are angry. Amber reports feet feeling like hamburger (echoing a comment I made at one point yesterday), and sore shoulders. Since I am writing this in the dark early morning of the next day, she also adds “my neck hurts because I can’t sit up in my tent and have to hunch over. ” Note to Amber: get a new tent.

We made camp right before another heavy rain storm unleashed the wet from above, but we are buttoned up warm and dry to welcome another 14-hour night.

It was February, 2020, BC (before COVID) when I last visited my friend Amber in Corvallis.

This is where I first heard about a new long-distance trail that crossed the Oregon coastal mountain range to the the Pacific ocean.

Amber was doing trail work for the almost-complete 60-mile Corvallis to Sea trail (C2C) and was putting her saw skills to the test clearing trees from the path. Amber and I met in 2007 when we were both training in a trail crew leader development program at South West Conservation Corps in Durango, Colorado. We spent days learning to use chainsaws and cutting down scores of tall pines in thinning projects for the forest service. It was back-breaking work, but we were young and the work was empowering.

When I heard the C2C had a grand opening in August of this year, I sent Amber a text and asked if she would thru-hike it with me. The only time our schedules aligned was in early November, so we braced ourselves for the short rainy days that are typical in late fall in this part of Oregon. 

On a Thursday afternoon I drove over the pass through driving rain to Corvallis. Amber and I spread the contents of our packs across the floor of her living room and proceeded to talk our way through gear choices in what was sure to be a rainy and cold four days.

  
On further examination of the weather between here and Ona Beach, the temps would be in the 50s and 40s, so not too cold, but with 90-100% chances of precipation, we girded ourselves for constant rain.
Friday morning we set out into the dark-almost light of the day from her front door. Amber only lives 2ish miles from the start of the trail in downtown Corvallis, so why not walk out her front door? 
We crossed busy traffic and as the sky lightened we could see color and patches of blue sky. Hmmm, blue was not what we expected, but we’ll take it!

I regailed her with tales of pain, stress, and heat from the month Kirk and I had spent on the John Day River this summer, and we cruised through the urban part of this trail.
Sidewalks and paved bike paths took us through Corvallis and into Philomath. The benefits of urban hiking became apparent when we took an alternate to Sissy’s Donuts. Sissy herself was at the counter, and as she filled our donut order, took curious looks at our packs.

A few minutes later we walked out with a full water supply (it will be a dry camp tonight) and our first trail magic of the trail – two donuts for the road! How wonderful! I told Sissy that she was our first trail angel of the trip, and she positively glowed. Trail community starts with lovely experiences like this! 

Then we went next door to the Dizzy Hen Cafe and ordered lattes. Multiple people stopped to hear about our plans as we soaked in the unexpected sunshine, donuts, coffee, and conversation. This is proving be to a most excellent start to the trip.

We walked out of town and turned right onto Old Peak Road. The pavement-to-gravel road wove through a temperate rainforest of dripping mossy trees in shades of neon green.

Next up was a tree-farm part of the route…one of the only sections where you need to get a permit to pass through the private lands of the Starker Tree Farm.
A few gorgeous old-growth trees remained along the road. These mind-bending beauties had trunks so big we just had to stop and take it in. This was a glimpse into a world where the forest had been filled with trees of this size. We would be walking through a visual history 200 years of logging.

The sun was still out. Can you believe it? We had sun the whole day. It was simply incredible and highlighted the golden yellows of fall in the deep green forest. We practically skipped through the forest as if our muffin-tops and legs weren’t sore. These 40ish year old bodies were a bit achy, but also lucky to be walking through the forest on a sunny November afternoon with gifted donuts in our pack. The trail provides. 

We made camp off a decommissioned spur road, and watched the last traces of day fade from the blue sky. BLUE SKY!