Beaver Creek
1/23/2022: This is a peaceful family friendly hike through a forest of Alder, Douglas Fir and Sitka spruce, around wetlands and Beaver Creek. When you hike in Western Oregon expect to see a bunch of trees of varying types. It is an easy trail with some elevation gain starting around two miles in, but there are at least two good opportunities to shorten the loop to keep it easier. And a GPS is definitely not required. There are cougars, bear and elk in the area.
Marg’s Notes: Charlie 5! To Newport Breakfast/Brunch @ The Coffee House 😊. A bit before 9 we headed out to Newport. We planned to go to the Coffee House on the bay. Had a wonderful breakfast as always! We found out that the owner had sold out to her longtime head chef. So he and his family are running it now. Still the same menu and quality, but some additions and now open for dinner! After we ate, we continued south to the Ona Beach area. Across the road from Ona Beach is a state forest and the Beaver Creek Natural Area. Took a road back to the Beaver Creek Loop. Started our hike ~12:15. It was a nice hike through the forest. Looked like much of it was an old logging road. It was a nice loop with some cutoffs if you wanted to make it shorter. Total of 2.86 miles. Beautiful sunny day. Took 1hr 15 min. saw more elk poop and some BEAR poop that looked pretty fresh! Back to condo for a rest!
P.B. toast & apples
Rod’s Ramblings from the Trail: Starting about 12:15 on this very easy loop trail. Interestingly, there was a sign at the trailhead that said a cougar was seen here on January 18th. So we have a few rocks in our pockets just in case. At 0.7 miles in you can take the older Antler Overlook Trail if you want to make it a much shorter hike of about 1.5 miles or less.
The trail is pretty muddy this time of year but if you have waterproof boots then you're fine. The trail was very wide so I suspect it was once a logging road.
Beyond the Antler Overlook Trail there is Snaggy Point Trail and further along is the North Fork Trail. That one is not on the map. There is also a Marsh Trail. One could spend a lot of time out here exploring all the trails.
At 1.5 mi in going clockwise. we ran into our first downed trees. Just take your time and you can get over them. Little ones should have no problem, as they could probably just crawl under the branches.
At 1.63 miles you will come to the Marsh trail. You can walk out there and take a hike through the marsh if you want. We chose not to but got a selfie anyway.
At about two point zero miles or just under 1.95 to be exact, you reach the uphill part of the climb and it's a pretty steep. Still, I consider it an easy hike.
So there are plenty of opportunities to make this a shorter hike if anyone happens to be whining. And right there is bear poop. [Yes, I was recording, looked down and saw very fresh bear scat. I am 90% sure it was bear scat because I don’t think anything else would make that type of poop, but I have been known to be wrong. FYI: the North American black bear slows down in the winter, but doesn't really stop activity to fully hibernate, at least not in Oregon's milder climate zones.]
Although there were three other cars at the trailhead, we only saw one other person and they did a short out and back up Antler Overlook Trail.
The trail is very nicely marked with good signs that tell you what trail you're on and so forth. This one you do not need a GPS😊.
It was a good hike. 3.05 miles. 4 stars on AllTrails.com. If somebody wanted to come back I would bring them but I would not do it again on my own. Two hearts on my website.