The hidden trails of Oregon
From the top of Crater Lake National Park, the Cascade Mountains fade into the distance in disappearing layers of misty blue. Drifts of spring snow dust the crater’s rim in sparkling white and in the center of it all, like a sapphire embedded in stone, is the most beautiful lake in America.
For the Native American Klamath people, who have made their home here for thousands of years, Crater Lake is a sacred place. Their oral history speaks of a battle between Gmo’Kam’c, The Creator, and a jilted spirit called Llao who hurled fireballs and torched the forests until Gmo’Kam’c forced him back into the volcano from which he came, collapsing it in around him.
Science now agrees. The crater that contains this lake wasn’t formed by an eruption outward, as is typical, but by an implosion inward that did indeed collapse the peak in on itself. The water came later, one raindrop at a time, 8,000 years in the making.
Seeing my jaw visibly drop my guide Nathan Dwyer, a local climber, turned to me: “It’s beyond our comprehension,” he said smiling. “That’s what the poets would call the sublime.” And that’s exactly what I was looking for.
I had come to Oregon to drive a new road trip that traces a roughly 800-mile loop around the western half of the state, from the counterculture of Portland to the southern border and back.
But I’d also come to make a documentary podcast about my journey: the ‘Hidden Trails of Oregon’. Recorded on-location in surround-sound, I wanted to create something that immerses people in the sounds and voices of Oregon, something that takes you to the places where words just won’t do.
Because of that, this is an article with a difference. Peppered throughout are short clips of my favourite moments, from hiking in Redwoods to kayaking with giants. This is a story you can absorb with your eyes, and your ears. So, click the players as you read and hear what it’s like to be there for real.
My journey began in Portland, one of America's coolest, greenest, and self-proclaimed ‘weirdest’ cities. That’s a good thing. Weird here means supporting local, celebrating diversity and being as barking mad as you want to be. Which is how I met Dresden de Vera who leads a bar tour with a distinctly Portland twist. “What we'll be doing,” he explains, “is gaining perspective about the city, growing together as friends, and all the while being mildly inebriated.” That’s my kind of tour.
We spent the night crawling his favourite off-the-tourist-radar bars, all so secret I’m not allowed to reveal them (one’s in old pub with disco lights in the restroom and one, well, just ask where the house party never ended and you’ll find it).
“Do you think you could describe Portland within a Star Wars analogy?” I asked, clearly now deep into the inebriated part of the tour. “Oh, totally,” he says without flinching. “Portland is the Rebel Base of the Star Wars universe. We're sticking it to the Empire.” Like I said, my kind of tour.
But, as famous as Portland is for weird, it’s also famous for food. There are more than 500 food carts (or food trucks) in the city, all as well-named as they are delicious: Fried Egg I’m in Love for breakfast, Lebaneser Scrooge for tea.
In the company of local foodie, Michelle Bergey, I literally ate my way around the world: Beirut street food, Ukrainian dumplings, posh poutine, a burrito the size of my head. Delicious and weird in all the right ways. “Portland is just a fusion of food,” she said. “And that really shows off the local culture.”
So is the wine. The Willamette Valley, an hour south, is world renowned for its Pinot Noir, small family run vineyards and down-to-earth tastings. “It’s hit after hit,” Chevonne Ball, my wine guide for the day explained. “Like a club where you know there’s always going to be a good DJ.” Napa this is not.
There was art and creativity too. Further down the trail I stopped at the Eugene Saturday Market, one of the longest standing art markets in the country. Makers of all kinds, and artists who paint purely in sound. “We’re trying to imagine an Oregon where artists thrive,” John Bellona, one third of the art collective Harmonic Laboratories said. “A place where you can immerse yourself in art everywhere.”
And then, finally, I headed west to the Pacific. From the weird to the wild. Here, the coast is desolate and raw, and at the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, near the town of Florence, covered in 40 miles of pristine dunes ripe for riding.
“You’ve got to flow with the sand,” three-time World Sandboarding Champion and local instructor Gabe Cruz told me as I strapped in. “Surf it like water.” Easy for him to say. He flowed like ocean waves; I flowed like the flush of a toilet.
Then I found The Watermen. Port Orford, a couple hours south of Florence, is a windswept spit of weather-beaten houses, rugged headlands and thick forests touching the white mist of ocean spray.
I hiked to the southern edge of Port Orford Head State Park, and found an old Lifeboat Station, which operated between 1943 and 1970. It now marks the spot where a group of extreme coast guard volunteers, known as The Watermen, would venture out in violent storms, and brutal seas, to aid ships in distress. A relatively common occurrence in a place where winds whip at 80mph and the ocean barrels boats with 20ft waves. Their motto defines the spirit of the Oregonian coast: ‘You have to go out; you don’t have to come back in.’
The next morning, it was my turn to go out. But in calm seas, with a kayak, and every intention of coming back in.
It was a lazy sun-sparkled day of drifting drowsily along the shore. Seals bobbed curious whiskers behind our boat, we picnicked on a sandy beach, and explored sea caves where waves would explode in echoed thunder.
Then suddenly, paddling home at the end of the day, a white plume appeared on the horizon. Eastern Pacific grey whales are known to migrate through these waters on their way north to Alaska. Usually they are deeper out, and just passing through. This one was feeding next to the shore and coming straight at us. “Just drift,” my guide, Dave Lacey, said. “Let her come closer.”
But the closer it got, the more nervous I became. My kayak trembled as it passed beneath me, rippling the water, a 40,000kg, 15m true Leviathan of the deep. With a flick of its tail, it could smash my craft to pieces, and me in it. Then suddenly, without warning, the whale breached less than 20-feet from my kayak. For just a second, as she rose briefly above the waves, her jet-black eye met mine and I saw it. Her intelligence, her sentience, her curiosity and gentleness, and I was no longer afraid.
Driving along Oregon’s coast is spectacular, deserted beaches poking between verdant trees. But perhaps nowhere is it more spectacular than the Samuel H Boardman State Scenic Corridor, which hugs the cliff like a knife edge for 12 miles of driving heaven. I took my time, stopping at viewpoints and short hikes until gradually the road looped inland, leaving the coast, heading for the sublime beauty of Crater Lake and a forest of giants and dreams.
Redwoods are remarkable trees, the tallest on earth, and among the rarest too, only growing in this single narrow band of the Northern Pacific Coast. The Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park is home to the biggest of all, known as the Grove of Titans. At 2,787 sq m in volume, you could fit 11 double decker buses within these tree’s massive frame and still have room to wiggle around.
It was like entering a fairy tale forest. I walked fully upright beneath the roots of fallen trees. I craned my neck and couldn’t come close to seeing the top. And yes, I’m not too proud to admit it, I hugged that old bark too. It would have taken six other people hand-in-hand to come close to reaching all the way round.
And there were more adventures to come too, but these ones were hidden underground. Beneath the cool outdoorsy town of Bend, a network of caves honeycombs the earth, carved from violent eruptions that forced molten rock deep underground hollowing out the stone as it flowed. They're called lava tubes, and I was about to go inside one.
“This particular cave is 567m long,” Chris Pleasance, my guide said, as he instructed me to switch on my head torch and follow him all the way to the end. I hopped over rocks, ducked through archways, and scrambled through low gaps in the cave walls.
It was cold and brooding, but beautiful too. The ceiling dripped hard stone like candle wax frozen in fall, scarred in stripes of orange and red. I could see the movement of the lava as it pushed through the earth, narrowing as it slowed, and then widening again as the pressure behind it increased.
Most of our lives, the forces that shape the Earth are invisible. But here I could glimpse it, like looking behind a veil where the magician reveals her trick. And the finale was yet to come.
As we reached the end, the tube became a vice. The first hard section was an army slide on hands and knees through a two-foot hole. The second was barely wide enough to fit my shoulders. I had to tilt my head to get through it, pulling myself through the dirt by my fingertips.
My final stop was the Warm Springs Reservation, an hour north from Bend, home of a confederation of three tribes, the Wascoes, Paiutes, and Warm Springs. Passing through their land is the Upper Deschutes, one of the best rivers in the state for fly-fishing, and Alysia Littleleaf, a native guide and activist, was taking me to her favourite spot.
She taught me to back cast, roll cast, how to read the river, where the fish hide and hunt. She seemingly plucked fish at will. I caught one all day, a steelhead so small it dwarfed my index finger.
But it wasn’t really about fishing. “I call it river therapy,” Alysia explained. “You're here to let go, to dial in with Mother Nature.”
That’s what this trip was about too. As I drove back to Portland, now at the end of my journey, I thought about what Nathan had said at the top of Crater Lake. I had come here to make a podcast that sparks the imagination, and shares something of what it felt like to be here for real. I wanted to tell in sound what couldn’t be explained in words. But perhaps the poets had it right, and these three come close: Weird, wild and wonder-filled. That’s the sublime, and I found it here on these hidden trails of Oregon.
Feeling inspired?
Listen to the full three-part podcast, the Hidden Trails of Oregon, on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your shows. Or, for even more more inspiration, head to the official Travel Oregon website below.
America As You Like It has a 12-day trip following in the footsteps of the podcast for £1,755 per person including flights, accommodation and car hire. Guided activities must be booked separately. For more information visit Oregon’s Why Guides programme.
Featured guides
Nathan Dwyer, Main Street Tours
Dresden de Vera, Throw Snakes Tours
Michelle Bergey, Lost Plate Food Tours
Chevonne Ball, Dirty Radish
Dave Lacey, South Coast Tours
Chris Pleasance, Wanderlust Tours
Alysia Littleleaf, Littleleaf Guide Service
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