Oregon
Wilderness-like adventure through landslide to Harts Cove, Cascade Head on Oregon Coast
Normally, the adventure begins once you arrive at the trailhead.
At Harts Cove Trail, just reaching the trailhead is an adventure.
Located just north of Lincoln City on Cascade Head, Harts Cove has long been considered one of the Oregon Coast’s most beautiful hikes.
Old-growth forest, barking sea lions and a meadow that seems to hang above the ocean makes it a trip worth taking. Add views of its namesake cove, where a thin waterfall drops into turquoise waters, and you have an Oregon gem.
Problem is, reaching the trailhead has become an ambitious undertaking.
In December 2021, a landslide damaged Forest Service Road 1861 in three areas and obliterated the road prism just off U.S. Highway 101. Siuslaw National Forest, which manages the land, said a short-term fix wasn’t viable. The federal agency is just beginning a project that may, or may not, restore vehicle access in coming years.
For now, Road 1861 is closed to cars but open to bikers or hikers. The trails are open as well, including Harts Cove, at least during its open season of July 16 to Dec. 31. But to reach it requires navigating around the landslides, dodging countless downed trees and traveling far longer than in the past.
The reward is a wilderness-like experience, which is rare on the coast, and one of Oregon’s most beautiful views in solitude.
Bike and hike to Harts Cove
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I loaded up my bike with a plan to ride Forest Road 1861 to Harts Cove Trailhead, hike the trail and then ride back.
All totaled, it was roughly 13.4 miles with around 3,000 feet of elevation gain. The road is 4 miles each way and the hike is 5.4 miles round-trip.
I wouldn’t recommend this trip for kids or adults that aren’t fit or conformable navigating in a wilderness-like setting.
“Tillamook County emergency response is limited in the Cascade Head area due to restricted access to FSR 1861 and cell service is limited,” the Forest Service wrote.
In other words, if you break an ankle climbing over one of the numerous trees blocking the road and trail, you might well be on your own.
As in previous years, Harts Cove Trail closes from Jan. 1 to July 15 to “protect sensitive nesting habitat.”
On the road
From a parking area on the side of Highway 101, I rode my bike up the closed road and shortly reached the landslide.
It lived up to the hype.
Cascade Head is prone to landslides, apparently, and the size of this one proved it. An entire chunk of the roadbed was gone in one place, leading to an avalanche of dirt that covered the lower road.
A narrow pathway tightropes above and through the landslides, and it wasn’t too difficult to navigate.
Beyond the landslide, the road rises at a pretty steep grade. I could ride my bike occasionally, but it was often easier to just push it uphill.
There hasn’t been any maintenance on the road for two years now and this being the coast, the forest is doing its best to reclaim it. Countless trees have fallen across the roadbed, necessitating a lot of bobbing and weaving above and below them. At points, having the bike began to feel more like a hassle.
But eventually, I reached the crest of the road and began speeding downward. I still had to dodge a lot of trees, but between views of the ocean and the salty air, the ride was a thrill.
Additional routes to Harts Cove
On the ride, you pass the trailheads for the Rainforest Trail and Cascade Head Trail. Both could work for a combination hike.
For example, it would be difficult but scenic to hike a Cascade Head Trail-Road 1861-Harts Cove route. Beginning from Knight’s Park Trailhead, you could hike Cascade Head Trail, managed by the Nature Conservancy, for 3 miles to Road 1861. Then, you’d hike the road about 1.5 miles to Harts Cove Trail, do it, and return the way you came. That would be around 15 miles all totaled, far more than 3,000 feet of climb and quite a workout. But it would be more scenic than the road.
Adventure to a stunning spot
After riding down the road, I reached Harts Cove Trailhead. At this point, and others, the solitude was striking. In the past, I’ve traveled this same road on busy summer weekends and found it jam-packed with so many cars it was difficult to find a good spot.
Now, on a sunny holiday weekend, there was absolutely nobody. No cars in the parking lots. Fews sounds except birdsong and occasional airplanes.
I locked my bike to the trailhead sign, to discourage the local cougars from getting any ideas, and headed down the trail.
The trail was the same as ever, with a lot more bobbing and weaving through downed trees. It begins in second-growth, but eventually drops into old-growth groves of titanic sitka spruce and hemlock.
The trail reaches a bench on one side of Harts Cove, where you can see it through the trees and listen to the bark of sea lions, but it’s another mile to the real show-stopping view.
There’s no place on the Oregon Coast that quite compares with the meadow and view of Harts Cove. The meadow, which protects rare butterflies and wildflowers during its closed season, seems to hang above the ocean. It has views as far north as Cape Lookout and you can explore or lay in the sunshine.
The view of Harts Cove itself requires a bit of navigating, down to the trees that stand just above the dramatic cliff walls. It’s precarious in places, but peers into the turquoise cove and boasts one of the few waterfalls that drop directly into the ocean. In this case, it’s Chitwood Creek flowing off the cliff edge.
The trip is a long one, but when you’re sitting above the ocean, without having seen another person all day, it’s a pretty unique moment.
The future: road or trail?
The plan from forest officials is to restore the road to vehicles if possible. But it’s also not a given.
They’re just beginning a geotechnical investigation to get a better understanding of the area’s geology.
“The reality is we won’t know what is and is not possible until our analysis is complete,” Siuslaw National Forest spokeswoman Joanie Schmidgall said. “We don’t want to do all the work of restoring the road just to have another landslide.”
The Nature Conservancy, which also owns land on Cascade Head, is hoping the road is reopened. Spokeswoman Kate Natoli noted having the upper trailheads, via Road 1861, provides public access “that serves people with a diverse range of abilities, including the potential for an ADA-accessible trail to Cascade Head.”
However, Schmidgall acknowledged it may not be possible to reopen the road. In that case, they’d “look at an option to provide for sustainable pedestrian access,” she said.
That would likely mean a more cleaned-up version of the trip I did. They might let the forest swallow much of the road and turn it into one large trail network.
That would mean less accessible views than in the past. But it would also provide that wilderness-like experience so rare on the Oregon Coast. It might also be more in keeping with the head’s designation as a preserve. Cascade Head is, after all, a UNESCO biosphere reserve and experimental forest.
More solitude or better access? That’s one of the questions the U.S. Forest Service is asking people to weigh right now. To comment on the road project, go to fs.usda.gov/project/siuslaw/?project=65206. Another option for comment is to contact Hannah Smith at hannah.smith@usda.gov.
If the Forest Service does decide to move forward with reopening the road to cars, it’s likely to take years. So, for now, a trek to Harts Cove will require an adventure through this wilderness-like landscape.
Zach Urness has been an outdoors reporter in Oregon for 15 years and is host of the Explore Oregon Podcast. Urness is the author of “Best Hikes with Kids: Oregon” and “Hiking Southern Oregon.” He can be reached at zurness@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6801. Find him on Twitter at @ZachsORoutdoors.
The text came from an employee on Monday morning, as ordinary as any, and it completely surprised Corrine Coxey, owner of Salud Raw Food restaurant in Bend.
“Woody Harrelson is here, and he’s raving about your food,” the text read.
Harrelson, a “Cheers” actor and devoted vegan who ordered “rawkin’ tacos” and other items with his wife, Laura Louie, returned to the restaurant Tuesday and promised to come again. He said they were visiting family in the area. Headlines followed.
“I’m just very honored they came in and raved about it,” Coxey said. “Woody has been a vegan for 30 years and you know he’s eaten at the best places around the world so it was a real compliment.”
Coxey opened her raw food restaurant, which uses no stoves or ovens to prepare healthy, organic, plant-based dishes, in 2013. This year has been the slowest ever, she said, to the point she has often wondered whether she’d have to close. The TV and movie star’s arrival has been a “blessing” for business, she said.
“All of this publicity couldn’t have come at a better time as it’s been pretty bleak lately,” she said by text. “The local news here did a story on the 6 o’clock news tonight. We were twice as busy as we would have been today!”
She hopes he returns, too, not just for the sake of her bottom line: “He and his wife were very sweet and humble.”
— Beth Slovic is an editor on the public safety and breaking news team. Reach her at 503-221-8551 or bslovic@oregonian.com.
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Oregon
Big Ten reverses course: Oregon football has clinched a spot in Big Ten championship game after all
EUGENE — It was the clinch that appeared to be, then wasn’t, then was again.
In a reversal, the Big Ten Conference announced Tuesday that Oregon football (11-0, 8-0 Big Ten) has in fact earned a spot in the conference’s championship game. According to multiple sources with knowledge of the discussion, Big Ten athletic directors met virtually Tuesday to discuss the conference’s tiebreakers, and whether Oregon had clinched.
While the conference previously claimed the Ducks needed Ohio State and Penn State to lose this coming weekend in order to secure their spot this week, it may have misinterpreted its own tiebreaking procedures. Oregon appears to have clinched a spot with Saturday’s win at Wisconsin.
“Following a comprehensive evaluation of all possible scenarios over the final two weeks of regular-season play across the conference’s 18 teams, there are no conditions whereby the Ducks do not finish No. 1 or No. 2,” the Big Ten said in a release.
The conference did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Prior to Saturday’s game against the Badgers, the conference told The Oregonian/OregonLive and officials from the Oregon athletic department that even a victory would not secure the Ducks a spot in the Dec. 7 game in Indianapolis. That was the operating assumption as recently as Monday, when The Oregonian/OregonLive reported a follow-up story based on the conference’s interpretation of its tiebreaking procedures.
The Oregonian’s original interpretation of the tiebreaker rules was that Oregon needed only to beat Wisconsin to clinch. That appears to have been true.
While the Ducks’ trip to Indianapolis is finally locked in, their opponent remains a mystery. Indiana, Ohio State and Penn State all still have a path to meet the Ducks at Lucas Oil Stadium.
— Ryan Clarke covers the Oregon Ducks and Big Ten Conference. Listen to the Ducks Confidential podcast or subscribe to the Ducks Roundup newsletter.
For Oregon Duck fans that were gripping their seats and tracking flight logs to Tuscaloosa, Alabama while unfounded rumors of coach Dan Lanning’s departure ran amok last year; be ready to experience some deja vu.
With the No. 1 Oregon Ducks currently standing at the top of the College Football rankings with an 11-0 record and a likely bid to the Big Ten Conference Championship, there’s a lot of praise coming Lanning’s way as well as a lot of expected rumors towards a potential departure to the NFL.
In the midst of rumors circulating that Lanning is becoming a prospect for a coaching job in the pros, former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky joined “The Next Round Live” podcast to share his own praise for the coach.
“He’s authentic. I think he’s got a no-stone-unturned youth, a Nick Saban youth to him,” Orlovsky said. “Nick Saban is notorious for; there is nothing that is small. Everything is big. I think Lanning has that quality to him.”
Lanning coached under the legendary coach Saban early in his career in 2015 when he was a graduate assistant at Alabama. During that season, Lanning helped the Crimson Tide win yet another National Championship for their dynasty against the Clemson Tigers. After a tenure at Memphis, Lanning went on to coach outside linebackers and eventually become the defensive coordinator under Georgia coach Kirby Smart; another coach Orlovsky lauded kind words to.
“It’s funny, when they beat Ohio State and did that 12-man on-the-field penalty, I said, ‘It’s very clear that we have two elite coaches in college football. Kirby Smart being one and Dan Lanning probably being the second. And people are like, ‘You’re an idiot, this and that,” Orlovsky said.
Lanning’s calling card on the field has been seen this season through gutsy plays and team-involved gestures. The 12-man penalty vs. Ohio State, Dillon Gabriel’s NCAA record breaking touchdown throw to offensive lineman Gernorris Wilson during the Maryland game, his “Gladiator” inspired timeout for his athletes to watch Michigan’s stadium clear out (“Are you not entertained?”), and the most recent ploy for the Ducks to crash Wisconsin’s “Jump Around” fourth quarter celebration are all stimulated by Lanning himself. Several of these strategies and play calls have social media sports enthusiasts calling Lanning a “mad man” for his inspired coaching choices.
Despite claiming detractors, to the former 12-year NFL veteran, there’s something very clear about Lanning, who just received a $200,000 contract bonus from the Ducks for beating the Badgers 16-13.
“It’s very clear that Dan Lanning, at worst, is the second-best College Football coach in the country right now,” Orlovsky said.
And with so much positive attention coming the way of Lanning and the Ducks, so do the ever-evolving rumors of a potential Lanning departure. ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler brought up Lanning’s name last week when discussing NFL buzz-worthy topics.
“The once-popular trend of plucking college head coaches for NFL jobs has slowed in recent years,” Fowler said. “All but one of the 32 sitting head coaches (Chargers’ Jim Harbaugh, formerly Michigan) came directly from an NFL job. Recent NFL failures of Urban Meyer and Matt Rhule haven’t helped the collegiate pipeline. But a league exec I trust brought up an interesting name to me this week: Oregon’s Dan Lanning. ‘He’s got some Dan Campbell to him,’ the exec said. While Campbell is in his own class right now, Lanning knows how to command a room, and the Ducks are 32-5 since he took over.”
It seems Oregon has constantly fielded coach departure rumors for the better part of a decade at this point. From the “blink and you’ll miss it” coaching tenure of Willie Taggart, who left the Ducks after one year for Florida State in 2018, and former coach Mario Cristobal’s unceremonious goodbye to join the Miami Hurricanes in 2022; Duck fans have a history of feeling anxious about their coaches.
However, it seems Lanning might possess a different perspective. Last year, when rumors flew about the young coach departing for the seat retired by Saban at Alabama, Lanning shared a statement that has since become a brand for the program.
“The reality is, the grass is not always greener; in fact the grass is damn green in Eugene,” Lanning said. “I want to be in Eugene for as long as Eugene will have me…This is a destination, not just for me but for elite players.”
Lanning appears to be on a quest to prove he can win a championship without the prestige of an SEC or tenured program. His bold moves and gutsy play calling are welcome in a program like Oregon that embraces innovation. Lanning’s continued efforts on the recruiting trail, intentions to include more alumni in the program, and deep family involvement in Oregon culture like the “Heroes” uniforms designed by the Lanning family all indicate deeper roots than a temporary tenure.
As rumors will no doubt continue to swirl around the sports world as Oregon continues their opening season in the Big Ten, it’s a safe bet to think Lanning will stick where the grass is green until other notice.
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