Terrible Tilly

Sometimes, good trips go bad in a hurry.

My friend Chuck and I decided to take a trip to the Oregon Coast one weekend in early February. We knew it would be rainy, but, heck, that's Oregon. We left late on a Friday night after a dissertation meeting Chuck had at the University of Washington.

We jetted down I-5 through southern Washington and into Oregon. We eventually made it to Cape Lookout State Park near Tillamook, Ore., around midnight. We found a camping spot in an eerily vacant portion of the campground. We set up the tent in the rain, pounded a few Deschutes and Widmer Brothers beers and went to sleep. The crashing waves of the Pacific lulled us to sleep.

We awoke to the sound of a vehicle driving up, the slamming of its door and the crunching of boots on gravel.

"Good morning," a serious voice said. "I'm ranger John Johnson. I'm here to inform you that you're camped in a part of the campground that is closed. You're too close to the dunes. Waves have been known to crash over them and flood this section of the campground."

It was 7 a.m. He gave us two hours to get out of there. So we hurried. We grabbed some coffee and Tillamook cheese and drove a couple hours to Tillamook Head, which guidebooks dub as the quintessential Oregon Coast hike.

Things started out well. The beach was beautiful -- it's where "Goonies" was filmed. We trudged up up a steep cliff lined with lush trees and overlooking an especially gnarly part of the coast. We eventually emerged at a cool campground with wooded structures, walked past an old World War II bunker and peered over a huge cliff. There, in the distance, was Terrible Tilly. It's an iconic Oregon lighthouse that got it's name because it endures some of the worst sea storms in the U.S.

Most people stop there and turnaround. But we decided to trudge further through the forest to a place called Tillamook Head. We happily hiked. At one point a huge tree had fallen on the trail and we had to trek a quarter-mile out of the way to get around it.

As the trail got worse, a couple trail runners blazed past us, burning through the trees. We started to descend the trail. Then it disappeared in a mess of mud, fallen trees and mist. We trudged around for a good half hour or more. Then we were thoroughly lost. We thought the trail was a loop, and we desperately wanted to find the way back.

We never did. In fact, we found a different trail that took us further from our car. We didn't stick on it long. We eventually found the original trail and hiked back the way we came. Chuck and I didn't talk much. We were tired. We were hungry. We were pissed. And the rain never let up.

We got to that fallen tree. Instead of walking around, we climbed over the huge splitters and dangled over a 500-foot drop to the ocean. We made it fine, but it was scary.

We eventually made it back to the car, downed some Gatorade and ate the cheese. Our original plan called for us to camp that night. Instead we drove to Portland, drank a lot of beer at a Deschutes Public House in Portland and slept in our car in a Portland State University parking lot.

All in all, it was pretty miserable. But, as more time gets between then and now, the adventure seems sweeter. We're both glad we did it.


The details:
Tillamook Head
Location: About 5 miles north of Cannon Beach, Ore.
Length: 4 miles (or 6 if you get lost)
Beginning elevation: 20 feet
Peak elevation: 1,010 feet
Difficulty (out of 5): 2, worse if you get lost