Cape Lookout (Oregon)
Geographical location
Cape Lookout is a rocky, high and rising steeply from the sea promontory on the Pacific coast in the northwest of the U.S. state of Oregon.
It is located in the southwest of Tillamook County, approximately 12 miles ( 19 km) south-west of Tillamook. The headland is, like many other islands and headlands on the north Oregon coast, from basalt, which cooled the flow into the ocean about 15 million years ago. It extends almost right angles to the main coastline more than 2 km to the west in the sea, is at its beginning about 900 m wide and tapers to its end, only about 300 m, with a rather large (300 x 400 m) bay halfway on its north side. Just north of the headland extends the Netarts Bay, a 2 km wide lagoon behind a 7 km long, running north still Spit, Netarts Spit the.
The almost completely forested headland, dominate the hemlock and Sitka spruce daunting, is part of the Cape Lookout State Park, which is also the Netarts Spit with includes and is part of the Siuslaw National Forest to the north itself.
A nearly four -kilometer-long high-level trail leads through the forest and occasionally directly at more than 120 m high cliff edge along to the tip of the headland, which also lies some 120 m above sea level. The path through the Pacific cloud forest is not easy, often wet and slippery, and secured to the worst places with planks in the form of a stick dam. From the Cape itself offers a wide view and to the west of the Pacific Ocean, north of Cape Meares and the Neahkahnie Mountain in Oswald West State Park and south to the Cape Kiwanda and the Cascade Head. This is also the best place - apart from a boat - the gray whales on their migration from Baja California to the Bering Sea and back to see, because they have to go around the far reaching beyond headland here. Up to 20,000 whales migrate each year from Alaska to Mexico, and on a good day you can see go by up to 30 in an hour on the Cape.
The north coast of Cape Lookout above the Netarts Spit is a hang-gliders and paragliders under very popular place.