View/Sign my Guestbook
Mark "SlowBro" Hurd
City: Eugene
State: OR
Country: USA
Begins: Jun 15, 2023
Direction: Southbound
Daily Summary
Date: Wed, Jan 18th, 2023
Journal Stats
Entry Visits: 819
Journal Visits: 4,597
Guestbook Views: 310
Guestbook Entrys: 39
(Click image for full size)
Me On The OCT Years Ago
A New Year and a New Trail
After injury and monotony ended my Appalachian Trail attempt last summer I spent some time recuperating from my knee and a lot of time thinking about how to proceed. I decided to change it up this year and hike the Oregon Coast Trail or OCT. At around 400 miles and usually hiked from north to south due to prevailing winds, it promises several weeks of interesting travel.
This is not a wilderness trek, although there is some wilderness. This is not an urban hike, although there are a ton of towns you walk through or by. This is not just a walk on the beach, although there are a couple hundred miles of that. This is not a road walk, but at least 20 percent of the trail is on roadways. Rivers and creeks must be crossed where they flow into the ocean. Wading, swimming, and hitching a boat ride may or will be needed in some places. Bays and harbors will be crossed somehow. Buses, taxis, hitching may all be employed. There is even a steam train that can be used for a short section. In other words it is an adventure.
Tide tables will be essential as there are many headlands and spits of land that can only be gotten around at low tide. The camping looks like a lot of it will be confined to State Park Campgrounds, but some of the previous hikers have done a fair amount of "stealth" camping in places that it may or may not be quite legal. With the potential of quite a few beach camping opportunities, I will be forgoing my trusty hammocks and will return to a tent. Using my old tent and air mattress along the CDT a couple years ago was such a disaster that I am purchasing a new tent and new sleeping pad for the OCT. More on that in another entry.
So there you have it, my trail for this year will be a thru-hike of the OCT starting around the middle of June. I will blog about my preparation and training roughly every other week until I start the trail. Then I will blog every day as I have on previous trails. I'm looking forward to the new and really different challenges of this trail, which I will talk more about next time.
See you in about two weeks...
Happy Trails!
SlowBro's Oregon Coast Trail Journey
"I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days." -Daniel Boone
"The Journey IS The Reward" -SlowBro
"If you feel like quitting, just keep walking." -Gypsy Spirit
Postholer.Com © 2005-2024 - Sitemap - W3C - @postholer - GIS Portfolio