Wandering the Southern Oregon Coast - November 2021

[Occidental]

We took a long weekend along with Veterans Day and headed to the Southern Oregon Coast. We spent time at Harris Beach and then a couple days up the Chetco river before a quick side trip up the Rogue and then back home again. The coast is always a good change of pace after a few months in Central Oregon.

Trip report can be found here: https://www.occidentalist.org/wandering-the-southern-oregon-coast-2021/

I hope you enjoy!

 

[Vic Harder]

good stuff. Video adds a lot!

 

[JWL]

Thanks! What a treasure the land in the NW is, thanks for sharing.

 

[ski3pin]

We enjoyed your trek through a different landscape for us and your "Let's go see what's there" style. Wonderful!

 

[Casa Escarlata Robles Too]

We have passed that SP many times over the years and didn't even think to stop.
We'll have to make a point next time we visit our friends in Eugene,since
we travel the coast for our route.

Great photos.
Thanks for sharing.
Frank

 

[Foy]

Very nice, thanks for bringing us along.
The "cloudy blue" color of the Chetco makes me think of rock flour from active glaciers, but a 5 minute glance suggests no glaciers in the Chetco watershed. Glaciation in the Klamaths on the whole looks to be in the southern portion, on the California side.
At any rate, it's nice looking water.

Foy

 

[Casa Escarlata Robles Too]

Yes the water in the Chetco River looks like glacier melt,but yes no glaciers in the area.
Frank

 

[AWG_Pics]

The oregon coast is amazing. Thanks for the photos and video. Our favorite section is between Yachats and Cape Arago -- but it is all good.

 

[Occidental]

Very nice, thanks for bringing us along.
The "cloudy blue" color of the Chetco makes me think of rock flour from active glaciers, but a 5 minute glance suggests no glaciers in the Chetco watershed. Glaciation in the Klamaths on the whole looks to be in the southern portion, on the California side.
At any rate, it's nice looking water.

Foy

Hi Foy, I think it may be due to the particular color of that watersheds serpentine rock. It seems more blue than the typical green. You can see it in the fragments at the surface and I think it translates to the water color. Not sure of the particular mineral though.

 

[Occidental]

The oregon coast is amazing. Thanks for the photos and video. Our favorite section is between Yachats and Cape Arago -- but it is all good.

I'd have to agree with that assessment, you can't go wrong on the coast, although there are a few gems to be sure.

 

[Foy]

Hi Foy, I think it may be due to the particular color of that watersheds serpentine rock. It seems more blue than the typical green. You can see it in the fragments at the surface and I think it translates to the water color. Not sure of the particular mineral though.

Could be from weathered serpentinite rock. The Franciscan Complex outcrops in the Oregon Klamaths and is a "melange", which can be described as scrapings from the slaughterhouse floor in that its rocks were scraped off of subducting oceanic floor and mashed up against and accreted to the western edge of the North American plate. There is a lot of serpentinite bedrock in the Fransciscan. Never heard about weathering serpentinite rock coloring streams, but that means nothing--I'm dead last in knowledge of the Franciscan and most West Coast terranes.
The rock flour we see in other environments is created by and delivered into the streams by actively moving glaciers, so flour-stained mountain streams often remain stained year-round or at least from early Spring to late Fall as melting from the glacier provides a steady supply of rock flour. But if it's weathering serpentinite providing the staining, obviously no glacier is required!

Foy

 

[Wildcat]

We took a long weekend along with Veterans Day and headed to the Southern Oregon Coast. We spent time at Harris Beach and then a couple days up the Chetco river before a quick side trip up the Rogue and then back home again. The coast is always a good change of pace after a few months in Central Oregon.

I hope you enjoy!

Did you find any decent campsites along the Chetco and/or Rogue? I saw you discovered a few unmaintained ones. I'm heading there in May from Norcal. Love the coastal OR banana belt and was there recently in Oct and March, staying at st park sites. This trip I'm heading inland and hoping to find dispersed camping along those rivers. I'll be checking FS websites and other sources too.

 

[Occidental]

Along the Chetco we found you could camp pretty much everywhere there was river access. I wouldn't expect it to be too private though, with people coming and going. We thought about staying overnight but had the feeling there might be middle of the night traffic. There were a few other campgrounds upriver that would likely be open in the spring / summer / fall that were closed when we were there, they looked alright.

For the Rogue, I think you could camp on a few of the river bars but we didn't explore them too much. I think if you did a little research with Google earth or something similar you could come up with a few options but I feel they would be somewhat limited.

 

[Jack]

Did you find any decent campsites along the Chetco and/or Rogue? I saw you discovered a few unmaintained ones. I'm heading there in May from Norcal. Love the coastal OR banana belt and was there recently in Oct and March, staying at st park sites. This trip I'm heading inland and hoping to find dispersed camping along those rivers. I'll be checking FS websites and other sources too.

About 4 years ago we stayed a night at the FS Winchuck campground on the Winchuck River in the high season - but there were only a few other campers. Check with FS - wildfires have a habit of wiping out campgrounds along with the forests.

It's about 5 miles from where the Japanese bombed continental US in WW II. From a seaplane lunched from a submarine, the pilot Nobuo Fujita and his co-pilot dropped two incendiary bombs, one of which started a small fire. Nobuo Fujita made a second bombing run 3 weeks later, but the result was unnoticed. Nobuo Fujita was invited to Brookings in 1962. He was very nervous, but was warmly
welcomed and returned many times thereafter. I believe that on one occasion, he was the grand marshal of the towns annual parade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuo_Fujita

 

[Wildcat]

Jack, WOW! I had never heard about any bombing of the US mainland during WWII. I was in Brookings this past March while on the way to Cape Blanco for a camping trip. I'll have to stop at the library in Brookings on my May trip to check out the 400 year old samurai sword from Fujita's family that he gave to the city of Brookings.

 

[PaulT]

Fort Stevens, Oregon was shelled in WWII also.
https://www.historylink.org/File/7217

Paul