Cape Horn Viewpoint

Next up, here are a few photos from the Cape Horn Viewpoint, right on SR14 on the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge. It's basically just a wide spot on SR14 with a nice unobstructed view to the south and east and an official sign. This is right around a blind corner on a busy state highway and there aren't any signs telling drivers it's coming up just ahead, so it's very easy to zoom right by and miss it. But then, the wide shoulder that passes for a parking lot is already as big as it can get, and it's quite often completely full, so doing anything that would attract more would-be visitors might be counterproductive. So visitation is on sort of an if-you-know-you-know basis. If you miss it and want to try again, the first good place to turn around is the Salmon Falls Park and Ride, which is maybe a mile past the viewpoint. There's nowhere safe to park on the other side of the highway, and if you could, crossing the road there isn't exactly a good idea either, so keep going and turn around a second time at Belle Center Road, another mile westbound from there, and try not to miss it this time.

Incidentally, there's a Belle Center Creek that runs sorta-parallel to Belle Center Rd. and becomes a rather tall waterfall south of the intersection with SR14. A handful of trip reports can be found online, but the land is not actually public property, and is probably not going to become public property anytime soon. It seems there's a long-running dispute going back to at least 2009, and still going as of 2023. The root cause seems to be the landowner's passion for, or obsession with, ziplines. More precisely, his interest in building and operating them without clearing it with the county or complying with the National Scenic Area's many, many rules and regulations. Even spent a brief period behind bars for noncompliance, early on. And unusually, I feel kind of sympathetic toward his efforts. Not in a "rules and regulations shouldn't exist" libertarian sort of way, more of a, this guy seems to genuinely feel this is his life's purpose, like he's sort of a Johnny Appleseed of building ziplines, and I bet that would be a fascinating TED talk. Was there a moment he realized this was his life's work, or was it more of a gradual thing? I am genuinely curious.

Anyway, one practical detail you ought to know: The Cape Horn area is also home to a Forest Service-run recreational area, which I covered in a Cape Horn Loop post back in 2020, which I think covers the surrounding area pretty well, or at least it's up to my usual standards. The important detail right now is that the viewpoint is not connected to that trail network in any way. This is not a trailhead, and there's just enough parking for people to stop, get a photo or two, and then get a move on. I think this is also true of the Ozone Crag rock climbing area and other similar spots to the west of here, meaning you can't park somewhere else and take one of the hiking trails to the climbing area.

I also have one historical tidbit to share about this stretch of the highway. If you stand near the railing and look north you might notice that the highway continues on a concrete viaduct for about 500 feet or so. This was not in the original design for the road, and exists thanks to a 1927 construction accident, where either the state transportation department or a contractor got the math wrong and used wayyy too much dynamite, which turned a nice stretch of freshly built scenic highway into a field of boulders and gravel a few hundred feet below. Incredibly, nobody was killed or seriously injured when this happened, so it's ok to point and laugh at Washington's hapless highway engineers. The nearly-complete highway was delayed in opening for another 3 years, so this was a much more consequential screw-up than Oregon's exploding whale incident of November 12th 1970, though the whale incident is still funnier. Bonus fun fact, Tonya Harding (the legendary/notorious figure skater) was born on the same exact day the state detonated that whale. As far as anybody knows this was just a weird coincidence and the two facts are otherwise unrelated.

Speaking of which, here's the trailer to a low-budget action film she co-starred in shortly after all that Nancy business.