May 19th, 2024

Mary's Peak, Hoka Anacapas, Alsea Falls

We camped down at Alsea Falls this weekend. The highlight of the trip was our hike up Mary's Peak.

A folding love seat on a green mat in front of a silver Solo Stove under trees. — Alsea Falls camp site

Alsea Falls is a great place to camp. It's a federal camp ground out past Philomath. The sites are all roomy and a little bit isolated from each other, especially site #1. The host puts together carts with firewood you can self-serve. It's just quiet and small and isolated.

The front of a store with a sign reading "Alsea Mercantile," with fish-shaped signs that read "YES" "TACKLE" and "DELI." — Alsea Mercantile

It's a short drive from Alsea, OR, a very small town that has a mercantile, a cafe, a school, and some homes.

A red gas station with old pumps painted green and blue in front. — Alsea Gas Station

A battered blue building with a brown flag/sign that reads "Espresso." — Alsea espresso

The mercantile is one of those places you find out in the country: Junk food, alcohol, cold drinks, tackle, miscellaneous hardware, and corndogs. There's a long, folding table with chairs around it near the cash register where people eat whatever they got out of the deli.

Shot from the top of a 4000-foot elevation, with rolling hills going back to the horizon. — Near the top of Mary's Peak

Mary's Peak is a 4000-foot hill. It's about 3 miles up from the trailhead over a series of switchbacks. The terrain is pretty easy and the switchbacks aren't too steep. At the top you get some nice views in all directions. According to my Garmin Fenix, we ascended about 1,500 feet. It was pretty easy. Not as arduous as the Hobbit Beach/Heceta Head trail, which also has about a 1,500 foot climb, but is much more steep. I used this hike to test out my new Hoka Anacapa Breezes. I started wearing Hoka hiking boots some time before the pandemic, and it has been something of a progression, from the super-padded models Hoka was first known for to lighter weight trail runners. For this season I got Anacapa Breezes. They're low-quarter hiking shoes with a big, stable base but lighter build. Sort of a compromise between the Anacapa hiking boot and the Speed Goat trail runners. They were great. The hike was six miles round trip over easy terrain with the occasional patch of rock and root. The shoes preserved a sense of the terrain underfoot but still provided plenty of cushioning. I think they'd be fine for the hard part of the Smith Rock trail, which is not so much the steep ascent on decent terrain but the steep descent on loose gravel and dirt. I noticed in reviews that Hoka's changed something about either how it is designing or where it is making its shoes, so the other big change was sizing up to a 14 for these, which worked great. Hoka 13s were always a close call, but after reading people saying Hokas had become too cramped over the past year, I ordered in a 14 and that paid off.