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My Favorite Hike of 2022 Was The Oregon Coast Trail

From big views to big trees to big slugs, I found a lot to like on the OCT.

A father-and-son selfie on top of Cape Perpetua

With the end of the year coming up quickly, we took the opportunity to round up some of our favorite hikes of the year on Backpacker. My pick was easy: I've hiked a lot this year, but nothing came close to touching the Oregon Coast Trail for me.

I’ll start with the obvious reasons: This trail is stupid pretty. US 101, the highway that trace’s Oregon’s coastline, may be the most gorgeous drive in the United States, passing sea lion rookeries and wave-blasted sea stacks the entire way; the OCT, which largely traces the same route, is constantly leading you to immaculate views like those. The temperate rainforest is its own kind of impressive, especially if you’re from a more arid state like I am. By Colorado standards, the trees are massive.

The trail isn’t what you would call a wilderness experience; it’s usually less than a couple of miles from the aforementioned 101, sometimes only a few dozen yards away. It’s not all completed, and if you’re a thru-hiker, you’ll occasionally have to either bus or hitch past sections or hike on the shoulder. But there’s something charming about that too, in my opinion. We forget that, before it was anything else, hiking was a way of getting places, and you feel that on this trail, constantly passing through landmarks, campgrounds, and small, coastal towns. It’s the hiking equivalent of a roadtrip. My wife, who didn’t hike with us, would leapfrog us and grab us on most segments. (The exception was a section of the trail that I did as a 10-mile out-and-back dawn trail run from our hotel room in Cannon Beach, before anyone else woke up.)

We were faster than this, but not, like, by a lot

As per usual for me these days, I hiked with The Boy. At 3 years old, he’s big enough to walk for a good ways, but usually not focused enough to do so; I ended up carrying him most of the way. I used an Ergobaby Omni 360, which, besides being soft and packable, was the only carrier we owned still capable of holding his weight. I suspect his days of being toted by dad may be coming to an end, which is a bittersweet milestone, though one I know has to come eventually. I carried our gear in a Mountainsmith Trippin' Fanny Pack and a Patagonia shoulder bag, which worked okay. (I might break that system down in more detail on Backpacker at some point in the near future, so watch our site if you’d like to know more.)

I’ll add in a plug for Gaia GPS, which was incredibly useful on our trip. Outside owns Gaia, and I think sometimes that people think I’m just shilling when I promote it, but I promise, my love for it is genuine. Its snap-to route creation function works on mobile, which let me map out our daily segments the night before while lying in bed. (If you sign up for Outside+, you get Gaia premium for free, and some of that money probably goes towards Outside continuing to pay me, which I’ll be honest with you, I like a lot.)

Read about our hike in The 7 Best Hikes Backpacker’s Editors Did in 2022.