Wednesday, July 19, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
15
Hikers ditching famous trail for Oregon Coast Trail
By Katie Frankowicz
The Daily Astorian
ASTORIA (AP) — At the
end of June, a woman picked
up three young backpackers
walking along the highway
near Gearhart. They had been
hiking the Pacific Crest Trail
(PCT) but heavy snowfall in
the Sierra Nevada mountains
stopped them 700 miles in.
Rather than stop hiking,
they decided to hop over to
the lesser-known Oregon
Coast Trail (OCT). And they
aren’t alone.
“Everyone is coming
here,” they told their driver.
This spring, dozens of hik-
ers snowed out of California’s
mountains or, as the snow
melts, faced with dangerous
river crossings, have aban-
doned the PCT and jumped
over to the OCT.
But the trail isn’t ready for
them.
As he stretches next to a
sign pointing back toward
Arch Cape, Ryley Delgado
has just been voted his group’s
sweatiest hiker. Again. He
shrugs. The hikers gather at
the edge of a road off U.S.
Highway 101 to eat a late
breakfast in the shade before
continuing on to Falcon Cove
in Oswald West State Park.
Bri Hochadel sits cross-
legged and looks around at
the forest on either side of the
road. Peter Carpenter ven-
tures a couple of steps down
the trail and then unfolds
his sleeping pad to make a
more comfortable seat on
the ground next to Hochadel.
Tanner Annichiarico, the
only Oregonian in the group,
remains standing, loosening
his heavy pack and stretching
his arms.
The four hikers started
on the PCT this spring. They
hiked more than 500 miles
before they hit snow. They
heard it was even worse
farther ahead. They didn’t
want to split up, but they
weren’t sure they wanted to
push through the mountains.
Should they just wait for the
snow to melt?
They hadn’t expected to
finish the PCT anyway. At
the leisurely rate they were
going, hikers who started two
weeks after them had already
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caught up and passed them
by. They were the only hik-
ers they encountered who had
packed games: Yahtzee and
Frisbees. They were put off
by PCT hikers obsessed with
mileage, whose first question
was, “How many miles did
you make today?”
Then Annichiarico and
Carpenter stumbled on the
OCT while researching alter-
native routes online. The
group canceled a grocery run
and started figuring out how
to get to Astoria. They began
their hike at South Jetty in
Fort Stevens State Park and
plan to walk the approxi-
mately 400-mile-long trail all
the way to where it ends near
Brookings at the California
border.
The trail has been heaven
after weeks of California’s
deserts, they say. It hugs the
Oregon Coast and there are
long stretches of flat beach,
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The trail is not set up for
backpackers, or thru-hikers.
Legal campsites are few and
far between. Different sec-
tions of the trail are main-
tained at different levels.
Gaps exist where hikers must
trek along highways or down
neighborhood roads, or hitch
rides with friendly boaters to
get across waterways.
There are really only two
authoritative books on the
trail, one by Henderson and
another by Portland resident
Connie Soper. Both focus on
day hikes, but also offer tips
and information specifically
for thru-hikers. Soper has
advocated for the trail to be
finished, the gaps closed.
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cliff sides thick with trees,
green woods dense with
mosses and ferns. But there
are also challenges.
The OCT was officially
declared “hikeable” in 1988,
a legacy of the state’s land-
mark 1967 Beach Bill that
granted public access to all
of Oregon’s beaches, writes
Eugene author Bonnie
Henderson in her guidebook
to the trail. The trail is a work
in progress.
Unlike the world-famous
PCT, which winds through
remote backcountry, the
OCT is what hikers call a
“civilized” trail. In Clatsop
County, sections of the trail
are popular as day hikes
at Fort Stevens, Ecola and
Oswald West state parks. In
a single day’s trek, a hiker
might start on the beach,
cross a highway, dive deep
into quiet woods, climb in
and out of ravines and end up
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