October 12, 2024—After a three-year hiatus, I finally returned to Beaver Creek for a paddle with my close friend Stephanie. I hadn’t paddled on Beaver Creek since I worked on an internship program at South Beach State Park three years ago. Up to then, I paddled on the creek at least four times a year, usually at least once each season. In the past, I led guided trips of the creek, so Beaver Creek was like an old friend, and perhaps that’s why I needed to take a break from paddling on the creek—paddling there had become mundane.
Stephanie stopped by my house around 7 a.m. We moved the J cradles from my rack over to her SUV. Loading my kayak onto the rack turned out to be a little more challenging than I anticipated. I had to load my boat on the side opposite of how I normally load my kayak. Being left-handed, I normally have my left hand under the boat to lift it, but this time I was using my right hand. It felt a little awkward and unnatural. Worried I might lose my balance on the step stool and drop my boat, I decided to load the boat looking at the stern instead of the bow. That seemed more comfortable and reassuring, and I got the boat up into the cradles and tied down.
Off we headed to the creek.
Beaver Creek is a lovely creek about 10 miles south of Newport, Oregon. It’s a popular creek, but today there was only one vehicle in the parking lot when we arrived a little after 9 a.m. There was a kayak tour company unloading a legion of all types of kayaks for an upcoming paddle.
I conducted a site assessment of Beaver Creek four years ago for an outdoor recreation class I had taken at Oregon State University. My assessment raised some concerns about whether the creek could handle more boating traffic and noise that was likely to occur following the building of the campground and crowds it and a larger parking lot would draw. My friend and South Beach State Park manager Dylan Anderson assured me that the creek would handle the increased crowds. I was curious to see what changes had happened since my assessment. One of the changes that had yet to happen was the development of the campground.
Stephanie and I headed downstream toward the mouth of the creek where it flows into the ocean. It can get shallow—I had accidentally grounded my kayak on some rocks during a previous paddle, which resulted in a crack in the gelcoat and fiberglass I had to repair. I didn’t want a repeat. Since the tide was high, I thought the time was right to head to the coast first. The creek isn’t usually affected by tides unless they’re high enough to breach the beach, which usually only occurs during King tides. King tides allow ocean water to spill into the creek, allowing coho salmon waiting offshore the opportunity to navigate over the beach and spawn in the creek. Most of the time, the water just trickles into the ocean.
We passed under the foot bridge that allows park visitors to reach the beach and entered the beach zone. The water was very shallow, so I carefully made my way down the creek. The first thing I noticed is that there was now a sandbar in the middle of the creek. I paddled to the left of the bar but found I couldn’t go very far. Stephanie, meanwhile, had paddled to the right and had managed to paddle farther down the creek. I turned around and joined her a few minutes later.
The paddle upstream was very relaxing. The warm glow and warmth of the sun greeted us as we casually glided along on the water. Great blue herons stood as sentries along the creek as we paddled inland. At one point, a great egret flew low overhead. We encountered numerous mallards and kept an eye out for river otters, though I hadn’t seen any otters there in five years.
As we passed under the road bridge that crosses the creek, I marveled at the ferns growing on one side of the bridge and wondered how they managed to stay anchored to the bridge. There was little on that side of the bridge to get any kind of a footing except for some moss, yet there they were.
We turned into the north branch of Beaver Creek. I wasn’t sure how far we’d make it. The last time I paddled this arm, the water was very shallow, and my kayak occasionally scraped against branches on the bottom. As luck would have it, we made it all the way to the dock. I contemplated getting out of my boat and onto the dock to check out how much of the blackberry I had pulled three years ago as part of my internship had returned.
By the end of my internship, I had mounds of blackberry bushes removed. Tree trunks and fences that once were hidden were visible after all my pulling. I had made it a game to see how big of piles I could make and how many. The area looked really nice when I finished, but my back paid a price. It’s worth noting that while I was pulling blackberry bushes, a cougar had been sighted in the area, though I continued pulling without any concern.
In the end, I decided not to venture out of the boat because both Stephanie and I were short on time and still had plenty of creek to explore. We turned around and headed back down the arm the way we came. In our journey back to the main creek, I spotted a muskrat swimming along the bank. While not as interesting as river otter, they are, nonetheless, cute animals to encounter.
Exiting the north arm of the creek, we turned and headed east upstream. The creek under the foot bridge that takes hikers over to the other side of the natural area was choked with debris in the water. One thing new I noticed was that the state park had placed a sign on the foot bridge alerting paddlers that they were leaving the state park and not to exit their boats onto private property. That sign seemed a little misplaced since the park boundary, as denoted by small blue signs a little farther up the creek, marked the park boundary. I guess the foot bridge provided a convenient structure on which to place the sign.
A short time later, we reached the low foot bridge on private land that has, up to this day, been the turnaround point for my paddle trips. On the tours I had led, we’d stop here and have a snack before heading back. The bridge always seemed too low to get under. Today, however, Stephanie and I decided to go for it. Ducking down as low as my PFD would allow, I managed to just barely clear the underside of the bridge. We paddled a little farther up the creek before deciding to turn around. I haven’t heard of incidents on Beaver Creek about landowners shooting at paddlers, but those incidents have occurred elsewhere. We didn’t want to tempt fate by testing how far we could go before being shot at.
Stephanie told me the last time she got under the bridge a fence across the creek blocked her path farther. The fence had been removed by the time we ventured into that part of the creek., The landowner had obviously been ordered to remove it because it violated state law since Beaver Creek is designated as navigable water.
On the way back down the creek, we both spotted a young nutria just downstream from the earlier foot bridge. The ospreys that build their nest on the powerline poles each year were gone, the chicks having fledged by now. The only constant companions we had as we traveled the creek were mallards. Most of the other species of birds have left for the year, migrating to parts farther south.
Before heading back to the boat ramp, we made a quick trip down the south arm of Beaver Creek. Except for groups of ducks off in the side channels, we saw little else in the way of wildlife.
On our way down the creek, we finally encountered two paddlers near the old Bobby’s Cove fishing shack. Up to that point in our journey, we hadn’t seen any other paddlers. Strange for such a beautiful day to be out on the creek and not see anyone else. We saw only four other paddlers during our trip. In fact, we never spotted any of the paddlers from that paddling company we encountered back at the boat ramp earlier. It seemed eerily quiet on the creek during most of our paddle. I don’t think I had seen the creek so quiet since I started paddling it over 10 years ago before its popularity began to catch on.
We arrived back at the ramp, loaded up the boats, and headed back home, but not before stopping at Flashbacks in Newport to grab a couple of milkshakes to celebrate a glorious day on the water in what could only be described as the perfect day. We had been blessed with amazing weather.
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