Delights are in the Details at Yachats

Published 09/01/2012

(Yachats, Oregon) – It's hard to spend any amount of time in this wild and wave-filled place without becoming completely entranced. The sleepy central Oregon coast village of Yachats gets you immediately spellbound with its intricate, rocky shapes and shelves that stand hard and fast against the raging waters of the Pacific, creating massive and sudden barriers to its onslaught, instead of a soft, gradual slope like a sandy beach. So the waves make a constant raucous, careening and crashing onto one surface or another, given no where to go but straight onto their final destination.

All that pounding and battering makes for some fascinating surface features along these basalt slabs, formed over 40 million years ago. This, in turn, makes for a surplus of surprises that sit hiding in plain sight, a bundle of details to discover on these rocky shores.

Like the surreal cracks and crevices lurking in various spots around Yachats, such as the one at top. The ocean has hollowed out parts of the ruck here, and this particular pair of holes has a roundish, oval shape in some ways – looking a bit like something Roger Dean might've created when doing album covers for Yes back in the 70's.

Another crack causes the ocean to squirt up in tiny bursts, like a small spouting horn.

Spouting horns are, of course, partially what the Yachats area is known for. They exist in a few spots along this stretch of rocky Oregon coast – some more obvious than others. Some are massive monsters that erupt in spectacular curly shapes and other aquatic acrobatics, like one that sits along the 804 Trail.

Others are simply spots more prone to powerful blasts of ocean than others.

On the southern edge of Yachats, you will find its “secret spouting horn.” Their miniature version of the big ones makes for some delightful shapes and spews, along with that thoroughly awesome hissing noise.

In other spots around Yachats, the tide pools abound. Some have created colonies in uniquely shaped places, like this one in the midst of a curious crosshatch pattern embedded in the rock.

Some of the more fascinating features of the area sit tucked away in beach spots nearby, like this striking pattern in the rock that looks like the ruins of a stone stairway. It is, in fact, an interesting geologic feature caused by lava injecting itself into other, older basalt rock, and then splitting apart into this kind of structure after the elements start wearing away at it. They can look like tire track, stack of wood or this curious stairway appearance.

This one sits at Strawberry Hill beach access, halfway between Yachats and Florence. To find more lodging in the Yachats area, look below.

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