Wild Wonders of Oregon Coast: Where Water Explodes

Published 02/26/2012

(Oregon Coast) – They mesmerize, amaze and hypnotize. They draw you in, to stop and stare, while simultaneously creating cause for caution and pushing the buttons on your fright and flight instincts.

They are the places of massive waves on the Oregon coast - rocky spots where it often doesn't take storm conditions to cause the ocean to fly upwards in daring, even surreal, acrobatic movements. Sometimes, it only takes a nudge from the Pacific Ocean.

While the Depoe Bay area is well known for its oceanic monsters, one spot just south of town is especially incendiary. Rodea Point, under the right conditions, can create tall, towering waves that crash with startling intensity – not just visually, but the booming noises this place makes is even a bit frightful. It is probably the unsung hero of wild wave-watching spots on the Oregon coast, however – not well known.

Perhaps one of the most popular places of watery pyrotechnics is on the central Oregon coast in downtown Depoe Bay, where the spouting horn goes bonkers in the right conditions. It will spray sea stuff all over its adoring public – and the cars driving by. Sometimes this wonder fires off 30 feet into the air or more.

Most of Yachats is one big platform for oceanic fireworks. The basalt ledges that line the area make for a constant war between shoreline and powerful waves, as the abrupt rise gives the waves no other choice than to slam into the rocks and fire upwards. Along the 804 Trail and these rocky ledges, some spots are more dynamic than others, creating blowholes that cause the waves to tower at varying degrees.

Even without storms, the place is wild and crazy.

Just south of Yachats, closing in on Florence, the Cook's Chasm area provides fanciful flights of water via this particularly acrobatic spouting horn.

Up on the north coast, near Cannon Beach, Silver Point is a deceptively calm place. Just south of Cannon Beach, those grand overlooks that provide such legendary views to those that have just arrived via Highway 26 also look out over a set of rocky behemoths. One of them creates this unusual display of waves, as white-topped breakers appear to go racing north to south, instead of in from the west, in one spot.

There are times it distinctly seems as if something huge is chasing back and forth beneath those waves. However, there is a reef here that causes this.

Also, given the right conditions, the “needles” at Cannon Beach's Haystack Rock will also create some mesmerizing aerial water maneuvers.

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