Sea kayaking in Oregon means, for the most part, day-paddling from the beaches out to the various capes and headlands that stud the coast. For this year’s Oregon trip, I had hoped to paddle around Cape Perpetua, on the central coast near Yachats, to visit some of the amazing “spouting horns” or blowholes for which the cape is famous.
Unfortunately, calm conditions on Saturday had worsened by the time I arrived in Yachats on Sunday. Five-foot swells (1.5 m) were breaking across a wide, rocky surf zone. The forecast called for conditions to worsen in the afternoon, which made me worry that even if I were able to punch through the surf during the launch, the landing might be even scarier.
I gave up on Cape Perpetua and went north to Cascade Head. Every beach in Oregon is a surf beach, but some have less surf than others. At Cascade Head, the mouth of the gentle Salmon River creates a gap where the surf is not so high, at least not when the tide is flooding.
I punched out without difficulty through two-foot breakers across the river mouth, although the surf was more than twice that high just a hundred yards to my left. On my return at the end of the trip, the tide had risen so high that there were no breakers across the river mouth at all.
Route map. The boat dock at Knight County Park was so slippery it was almost unusable at low tide, because it had settled at an awkward angle onto the mudflat.
The river had reduced the height of the surf breaking onshore, but out at sea, far from the protection of the river, the swell was rolling in as high as ever. When the swell struck the towering cliffs at Cascade Head, waves rebounded in various directions. The water lurched to and fro in unpredictable ways. It made me feel sea-sick when the horizon was hidden behind waves while my kayak bobbed up and down.
Cascade Head is best known for its sea caves. When conditions are calm—say, swell at three feet or less, wind at five knots or less—it’s possible to enter the caves, especially when the tide is high.
Today, the swell was running five feet high and the wind was blowing ten knots. In the turbulent conditions, it didn’t feel safe to enter the caves. The best caves at Cascade Head are carved from the steepest cliffs, but the steepest cliffs were precisely the ones from which the waves were rebounding with the highest energy, creating the worst conditions.
Another notable feature at Cascade Head is the “Two Arches,” an offshore rock so named for the two vaulting archways cutting through its center. When it’s calm, it’s a wonderful experience to paddle through the arches, watching the rock pass high overhead. Today, surf was breaking all around and even through the arches. It wasn’t even safe to paddle between Two Arches and the mainland. I had to go around the island to the seaward side.
Paddling down Salmon River. Of the two dozen kayakers I encountered, I was the only one to cross over the river bar onto the open ocean.
Kayaking through foam off southernmost prominence of Cascade Head. When the wind gusts reached ten knots, clots of sea foam would blow up the cliff all the way to the peak, then drift inland on the breeze.
Cascade Head and Two Arches, seen from south. From inside some of the caves, audible from half a mile away, came the echoing barks of California sea lions who had taken up residence inside.
Waves washing beneath Two Arches. Brandt’s cormorants and brown pelicans were roosting on the rock.
One of the things I like about coming to Oregon is the chance to see different compositions of bird species than I do on my usual kayaking grounds in Washington and BC. For example, Oregon has a lot more murres than Washington or BC do. Brandt’s cormorants are more common than pelagic cormorants in Oregon, whereas the reverse is true in Washington and BC. Brown pelicans are uncommon in Washington and rare in BC but abundant in Oregon.
On this trip, I saw several adult male common murres swimming alongside newly hatched, downy chicks. The fathers will feed the young until they’re ready to forage on their own.
The best bird of the trip was a lone great egret foraging on the mudflats of the Salmon River. Its bright white plumage was visible from a long distance, shining in the sunlight. From time to time, the egret would dart forward and spear a small fish with its long, yellow bill.
Great egrets are rare north of the Columbia River, so I was excited to see this bird. It wasn’t as excited to see me. The moment I came within a hundred yards, it flew away downriver.
There were half a dozen motorboats downriver, dropping crab traps and trolling for chinook salmon. The egret didn’t like these boats any more than it liked my kayak. After several more flushes, it finally settled on a sandbar on the far side of the river, but to me it looked unhappy. I regretted having disturbed it in the first place.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the egret would have been flushed anyway, since there were so many other kayakers out on the river, but I still wish I had not been the first one to flush it.
Great egret, Salmon River. The flesh-and-bone forelimb of the wing is visible beneath the feathers.
Purple martin, Knight County Park. My wife, Rachel, thought its mouth resembles that of an iguana.
Western gulls, Knight County Park. Western and glaucous-winged were the only gull species I saw on this trip.
Red-necked phalaropes off Cascade Head. The same waves that were giving me so much trouble did not perturb these tiny shorebirds in the least.
The great egret had gone by the time I returned to the river. Its foraging grounds had disappeared. Seawater had rushed in, reversing the flow of the river, submerging the mudflats and riverbanks. I was sorry to have missed the egret, but it was interesting to watch the ocean filling up the river instead of the river filling up the ocean.
According to signs in Knight County Park, the estuary of the Salmon River was badly disturbed by what they call “development” during the decades between the 1940s and 1970s. People diked and dammed the river for all sorts of inappropriate purposes, including an amusement park, a campground, and a mobile-home park right in the salt marsh itself.
These projects all went bankrupt long ago. Today, at great effort and expense, government agencies and environmentalist groups are removing the offensive features to restore the natural functions of the estuary.
Reading all this made me feel better about having bothered the egret. The future seems brighter than the past for the Salmon River.
—Alex Sidles