Astoria Column – wanderingyuncks

Cathedral Tree, Young’s River Falls, and Fishhawk Falls – 05/12/2024

After spending the night in Astoria following a full day of hiking (post) we woke up on Mother’s Day ready to head home. We couldn’t resist the opportunity to get a little more hiking in on the way there though.

Our plan for the day was visit the Astoria Column by way of the Cathedral Tree, then take an alternate route from Astoria to visit a pair of waterfalls. We made the short drive from our motel to the Richard Fenscak Cathedral Tree Trailhead on Irving Street and set off past a gate.

A map at the trailhead provides a high-level overview of the mile long route to the Astoria Column. The AllTrails map was particularly helpful as it showed most if not all of the spur trails. The trail begins as a wide gravel path that climbs, briskly at times, approximately 250′ in a third of a mile to a junction on a boardwalk.

Thimbleberry

Coming up on the start of the boardwalk.

Scouler’s corydalis at the base of the boardwalk.

The boardwalk junction.

We turned left at the junction and arrived at Cathedral Tree in just 150′.

The base of Cathedral Tree.

One of two benches near the 300+ year old stika spruce.

Cathedral Tree

After visiting the tree, we returned to the junction and continued uphill towards the column.

Beyond the boardwalk the trail was a bit rougher.

Trail markers were present at times to help identify the correct route.

Pacific waterleaf

The Astoria Columnn.

We wandered around the column taking in the views and the art on the column itself.

Megler Bridge

Young’s River on the left and the Lewis & Clark River on the right

The early bird.

We decided to go up the column since it had been years since I had visited, and Heather had never been.

The spiral staircase.

It was stuffy inside and with a rail only on one side of the staircase Heather quickly realized that this was going to be outside her comfort level so she headed back down. I continued to the top, a little dizzy, but otherwise feeling good.

The view was great despite the clouds. They were high enough to allow for decent visibility and they were already breaking up.

Young’s River

Traffic on the Columbia River.

Looking out toward the Pacific beyond Astoria.

Deer in the grass below the Astoria Column.

Heather below the column.

After taking in the view, I wound my way back down the stairs (and got dizzy again).

We returned to the Cathedral Tree trail and hiked back down to Irving Street.

This was a spur trail 0.2-miles from the column (0.6-mile from the trailhead) that also leads down to Irving Street and could be used for a loop if you don’t mind some street walking. We opted to pass and did the hike as an out-and-back.

False lily-of-the valley

The last trillium?

Fringecup

From the Cathedral Tree Trailhead we followed Google map directions through Astoria to Young’s River Road and eventually to Young’s River Falls Park.
The start of the short trail to the falls.

It was clear from the parking area that it is unfortunately popular with the party crowd who can’t be bothered to pack out their mess. Regardless the falls were impressive, and the 0.3-mile round trip was well worth the stop.
Interpretive signs near the start of the trail.

The falls were noted during Lewis and Clark’s stay at nearby Fort Clatsop (post).

This was a tough one to photograph due to the amount of spray being blown straight at us by the force of the water.

After admiring the falls we returned to the car and made our way to Highway 202 following directions from Google. Once we’d made it to the highway we headed SE to Lee Wooden Fishhawk Falls County Park.

A quarter-mile trail here leads to Fishhawk Falls which we honestly weren’t expecting much from.
We pulled over onto the shoulder of Hwy 202 to snap a picture of these bulls.

Bleeding heart

Fairybells

Scouler’s corydalis

We spotted it too late to get a photo, but as we neared the falls a bald eagle took flight. The trail ends at Fishhawk Creek nearly a tenth of a mile from the 72′ falls.

The view is good from the end of the trail, but since this was our last stop of the day I decided to ford the creek and get a closer look. The water was knee deep, but not too cold.

I was joined by a pair of ouzels at the falls.

Looking back at Heather on the other side of Fishhawk Creek.

Me through the trees below the falls.

Maybe it was the timing of our visit, but this was one of the nicest waterfalls we’ve seen in a while. We finally pulled ourselves away and returned to our car. We made one more stop on the way home at the Jewell Meadows Wildlife Area to use the public restrooms before driving home.

Please note that you need a permit to park at the refuge.

The three short hikes came to a total of 3 miles and 500′ of elevation gain, mostly from the Cathedral Tree hike. They were quite enjoyable, and we were able to get home before Noon giving us time to unpack, clean up, and then visit my Mom on Mother’s Day. Happy Trails!

Flickr: Cathedral Tree, Young’s River Falls, and Fishhawk Falls

Astoria and Fort Stevens State Park

We continued our year of shuffling hikes on our latest mini-vacation. The string of wildfires starting in Northern California in the Klamath Mountains and continuing along the Cascade Range north to the Canadian Border had us looking for a last minute location for 4 days of hiking. We turned to the coast hoping to escape any possibly smokey conditions and wound up deciding on checking out the northern most part of the Oregon Coast as well as our first foray along the Washington Coast line.

We booked a room in Gearhart, OR and I began putting an itinerary together. We are still plodding along in our attempt to hike all of the featured hikes in Sullivan’s 100 Hikes guidebooks and there were several in the area we’d yet to tackle. I managed to fit eight of his featured hikes into the four days and even threw in an additional stop at Fort Columbia on our third day.

We set our sights on three of the hikes for our first day starting with a relatively short loop around Clatsop Spit. The spit is located inside Fort Stevens State Park at the mouth of the Columbia River and is the northern terminus for the Oregon Coast Trail.

As we were driving to the spit along Jetty Road we spotted some elk and had to stop for a couple of photos.

Once we had parked at the large parking area at the spit we checked out the view from the South Jetty observation platform.

We then headed west beside the jetty toward the Pacific.

We then turned north along the beach heading towards the Columbia River where we could see plenty of traffic on the water.

We turned inland at the river we had a view of the distant Megler Bridge.

We passed a host of people fishing along the shore but didn’t see anyone having any luck.

We looped around a peninsula near Jetty Lagoon and located the wildlife viewing bunker near the park’s Parking Lot D.

view from the bunker.

We crossed a footbridge to the parking lot and then had a 1.1 mile road walk back to the spit parking lot.

We drove back along Jetty Road and parked in a signed lot for Battery Russell.

We took a set of stairs up to the concrete bunker.

For forty years (1904-44) the battery guarded the Columbia River from enemy attacks. We spent quite a while exploring the old bunker. The history made it neat but too many video games and horror movies kept us imagining what might be hiding in the dark corners of the rooms.

We followed a path at the far end of the bunker toward Coffenbury Lake.

The path passed another set of old buildings.

We continued on this path a total of 1.25 miles to a signed junction where we followed a pointer to the lake.

We headed around the lake counter-clockwise on a nice trail.

After completing the 2 mile loop around the lake we followed “Shipwreck” pointers for 3/4 of a mile to the beach and the remains of the Peter Iredale which ran aground in 1906.

We backtracked from the beach a short distance and turned left on a paved path at a pointer for Battery Russell (among other possible destinations).

We followed this path for a little over half a mile before turning right at another pointer for Battery Russell.

We followed this 1.1 mile paved path back to the parking lot.

The total distance of the Clatsop Spit hike had been 5 miles and this hike came in just under 7.5 miles. Twelve and a half miles is pretty good for a day, but due to our typical early start we were done with these two hikes before 1pm. Our check-in time wasn’t until four so we still had a few hours to kill.

We had been prepared for that and headed north from Fort Stevens to Astoria where we parked at the Columbia River Maritime Museum

From the museum parking lot we headed west following the Riverfront Trolley line.

Seabirds lined the waterfront and we also heard some sea lions but never saw any.

We more or less stuck to Sullivan’s described route (Hike #4 in the 4th edition of “100 Hikes/Travel Guide Oregon Coast & Coast Range) following the the trolley line to 6th St. then turning inland for three blocks before taking a left on Commercial St. After a block on Commercial St. we turned right on 7th for two blocks passing the Oregon Film Museum and the Flavel House.

We walked around the Flavel House and headed downhill on 8th St. turning right when we arrived back at Commercial St. We turned right several blocks later on 12th Street and right again a block later on Duane St. passing a Chinese Garden.

We continued zig-zagging through town passing numerous historic homes, churches, and other buildings. One home that stood out was an old run down home that had the quintessential haunted house look.

We also passed Fort Astoria on the corner of 15th and Exchange.

By the time we were done we wandered around town for a total of 3 miles.
Astoria

One of the landmarks not on the route was the Astoria Column. It was visible from the waterfront rising above the city. It was one of the times the 30x zoom on the camera came in handy.

We still arrived a little early at our hotel but luckily our room was ready. We had a nice view south to Tillamook Head.

It had actually rained lightly on us in Astoria which was a wonderful change of pace. The sun went down behind the clouds that evening ending the first day of what was shaping up to be an interesting vacation.

Happy Trails!

Flickr: Astoria & Fort Stevens