The Oregon coast consists of a series of long, sandy beaches punctuated by rocky headlands with cliffs hundreds of feet tall. Offshore lie jagged islands, the remnants of older headlands that eroded long ago.

The modern headlands will eventually suffer the same fate. The relentless ocean swells are slowly beating them hollow. They, too, will one day collapse into the sea.

For now, the ocean’s work is only half done, but the ocean has already accomplished a lot. The swells have riddled the headlands with caves, tunnels, and arches, in the process creating a wonderland for sea kayakers intrepid enough to brave the waves.

Cascade Head is one of the tallest and bulkiest of Oregon’s headlands. Cascade Head does not protrude as far into the ocean as some headlands, but it has more sea caves than any other, including one of Oregon’s longest sea caves.

One of the attractions of Cascade Head is its ease of access. Whereas most headlands must be accessed by way of a surf launch, Cascade Head lies adjacent to the gentle Salmon River, where launching is a breeze.

While launching here is easy, reaching the ocean might not be. A sandbar lies across the mouth of the Salmon River. At low tide or during high swell, breakers can close out the mouth.

When I arrived, the water over the bar was only a few feet deep. Rather than batter my way through the confused chop at the mouth, I carried my boat over the bar and launched as if from a beach.

Arches and caves appeared immediately north of the river and continued all the way around Cascade Head. In three-foot swell, most of the caves were accessible even during low tide, but a handful of caves were closed off by rocks or else had so many rocks inside it would have been reckless to enter. The better time to visit would have been at mid- or high tide.

Inside the caves, the swells boomed as if the Earth itself were a giant drum. From the deep recesses of the caves, sometimes so far underground the light was lost, swells would rebound and surge back out the mouth, battling the incoming swells and kicking up chop. Some of the caves were so large my ears would pop from the change in air pressure each time a swell rolled in or out.

In such an alien environment, I could seldom relax. At every moment, I had to be alert for swells doubling up when they bounced off the walls, or rocks suddenly exposing themselves during especially deep troughs. In the deepest, darkest caves, it was sometimes difficult to detect the uneven contours of the walls.

The caves were a disorienting, intimidating environment for a human, but other creatures called them home. Inside some of the largest caves, I encountered harbor seals hauled out upon rocks or basking on underground beaches.

The seals could hear my approach, but they couldn’t see me very well in the darkness. They flailed around in a panic or tucked themselves into nooks along the wall, hoping I would pass without noticing. Whenever this happened, I would retreat to avoid stressing the animals more than I already had.

Inside other caves, pelagic cormorants and pigeon guillemots were nesting high up on the walls, where no predacious eagle or gull would ever find them. They panicked at the sight of me emerging from around the corner without warning. As with the seals, I had to back out to give them space.

Offshore of Cascade Head lay many jagged, rocky islands. The steep ledges made perfect habitat for pelagic and Brandt’s cormorants and huge numbers of brown pelicans. The cormorants formed dense colonies to protect one another’s nests from the only predators capable of reaching these remote redoubts: eagles and gulls.

The largest of the offshore islands had arches and caves of their own. Most notable of these was an island called “Two Arches,” so named for its most prominent feature. After scouting to make sure I wouldn’t disturb any roosting seabirds or basking seals, I paddled through the heaving swell beneath the arches.

My next destination after Cascade Head was supposed to be Cape Lookout. Along the way, I stopped at the magnificent parabolic dunes of Sand Lake.

Most of the dunes were managed by the US Forest Service as an off-road vehicle recreation area. Predictably, these sections were badly eroded and the vegetation obliterated by the thousands of hooting yobbos tearing around on their deafening ATVs. I don’t know when I’ve seen more Confederate flags and Donald Trump paraphernalia than I saw at the ATV campground.

Mercifully, there was one small section of the dunes off-limits to the yobbos. There, the silence, solitude, and splendor reminded me of the Sonoran desert, somehow transplanted a thousand miles north to the Oregon coast.

I arrived at Cape Lookout State Park at 6:30 in the morning, expecting to make a surf launch from the beach. The park’s day-use area was gated and would not open until 9:00, so I moved to the park’s camping area to scout the launch. A ranger pulled up behind me and threatened to write me a ticket for using the camping area to conduct a day-use activity. She gave me “exactly three minutes” to scout the waves, because I was committing “a citable offense.”

Looking at the ocean is a citable offense! Yet a thousand beer-chugging ATVers are allowed to tear down the irreplaceable dunes at Sand Lake.

The ranger’s punctiliousness had an unexpected benefit in that it drove me to nearby Cape Meares, where day use began at 6:00, not 9:00. I launched from the beach in Oceanside and unexpectedly paddled right into the most spectacular seabird nesting colony in all Oregon: Three Arch Rocks.

Signage at the launch beach claimed Three Arch Rocks is home to 220,000 common murres and 2,000 to 4,000 tufted puffins. I found these numbers hard to believe, especially with regard to the puffins. South of Alaska, puffins have suffered a 90 to 95% decline in numbers since the 1970s. I simply could not believe a colony of 2,000 puffins (much less 4,000) still exists anywhere in the Lower 48.

Further research confirms my suspicion. The “2,000 to 4,000 puffins” figure was likely derived from studies conducted in the late 1970s and 1980s, but those studies appear to me suspect.

According to the USFWS Catalog of Oregon Seabird Colonies (2007), Three Arch Rocks (catalog sites 219-054, -055, -056) had an “estimated” puffin population that reached 4,000 back in the 1970s. However, there was no actual count of puffins at that time. There were actual counts of other seabird species, such as murres, but not puffins. There is no description of how the 1970s puffin “estimate” was arrived at.

In the late 1980s, researchers counted puffin burrows at Three Arch Rocks. The total burrow count came to 1,450, from which the researchers estimated 3,000 puffins. I do not doubt the accuracy of the burrow count number, but again, the researchers did not count actual puffins.

The first time puffins were actually counted was in the early 1990s, when researchers counted only a dozen puffins. Somehow, 3,000 or 4,000 “estimated” puffins had, within fifteen years, become just 12 actual puffins! Even if we grant a 95% decline in puffins since the 1970s, there should still have been 200 puffins, not 12. And the 95% decline figure represents the decline between the 1970s and 2010, not the decline between the 1970s and the 1990s. In the 1990s, the decline from the 1970s should have been less than 95%, so the surveys in the 1990s should have counted even more than 200 puffins, not 12.

I suspect the original puffin numbers were inflated by unreliable eyeball “estimates” and the ill-advised use of burrows as proxies for actual puffins. Having visited more than a few puffin colonies myself in Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska, I can confirm there are always many times as many puffin burrows as actual puffins. The researchers erroneously assumed the opposite.

The sign’s claims of 220,000 common murres is also suspect, although not quite as egregious as in the case of puffins. In the case of murres, the Catalog of Oregon Seabird Colonies documents actual bird counts from the 1970s and 1980s showing some 110,000 actual murres. The researchers then inflated the actual numbers to produce the “estimate,” which made its way onto the signage as 220,000 murres.

Interestingly, however, the USFWS website for Three Arches Rocks NWR has stated, since at least June 2015, that: “Three Arch Rocks historically was a breeding site to more than 200,000 Common Murres. These days, the larger colonies are all but abandoned.”

The website also states that: “Formerly whitewashed with Common Murre guano, today the rocks are brown and mostly unoccupied: resurgent Bald Eagle populations have driven many of the nesting seabirds elsewhere. While still majestic, the ecological character of the refuge and wilderness has shifted.”

And also: “As of 2013, Three Arch Rocks NWR is still being photographed despite its lack of Common Murres.”

When I visited, on July 11, 2020, I encountered thousands of murres covering the rocks. I did not attempt a seabird count, but I estimate—look, now I’m doing it, too!—a minimum of 3,000 murres, likely many more. I also counted six tufted puffins.

It’s hard to reconcile the USFWS claims from the 1970s and 80s of 220,000 murres with the claims from the mid-2010s of no murres with my observation from 2020 of thousands of murres (but not hundreds of thousands). Murre populations are known to be mobile between widely dispersed colony sites, so I hope what’s going is merely that the murres are moving from place to place, not actually declining in numbers.

As for the puffins, even if the original population figures were inflated, their decline is likely real and precipitous.

It was an absolute joy to encounter so many seabirds. The murres kept up a steady, groaning chatter, magnified by thousands of voices until it was louder even than the boom of the swells striking the cliffs. There were so many murres I could have found the islands from downwind simply by the smell of fish.

Besides seabirds, the other attraction here is the three arches themselves. Actually, there are even more than three arches, but three of them—one on each main island—are more prominent than the others.

Of course, the kayaker’s first instinct on seeing such lovely arches is to paddle through them, but there were murres nesting around the entrances to the arches, and in some cases even inside the arches’ tunnels. I would never forgive myself if I flushed the largest murre colony in Oregon, so I had to keep my distance.

Luckily, the middle of the three islands—named, with typical Oregonian artlessness, “Middle Rock”—had an arch so tall the murres nesting around its rim would not be disturbed by my passage. I was able to shoot through at tremendous speed, rammed through by the swell. No Roman emperor ever devised a monument so majestic as this.

There were not nearly as many caves at Cape Meares as at Cascade Head. What few caves existed were inaccessible at low tide. Thanks to the incredible bird life, however, Cape Meares was every bit as wonderful a destination.

The next day, my original plan was to paddle Cape Falcon, ruggedest and least accessible of the north coast’s headlands. Rising swell and strong wind thwarted this plan, so instead I headed to the placid waters of the Lewis and Clark National Wildlife Refuge on the Columbia River.

The Oregon headlands offer some of North America’s best sea kayaking. The caving at Cascade Head rivals that of Cape Flattery, while the seabird colony at Cape Meares exceeds any other colony south of Solander Island. It is a rare privilege to visit such remote and wild places.

—Alex Sidles