Another 7-mile-long beach challenge

WALDPORT — It is 6:03 a.m. on Sunday, June 14. And here I am again, beneath the Alsea Bay Bridge, not far from where I’ve parked my pickup.

In the last 60 years, this spot has been the starting or ending point for nearly a dozen 7-mile-long beach journeys, either to or from our family’s beach cabin in Yachats.

I have skimboarded the stretch as a kid, walked it, bicycled it, golfed it (twice) and, now, hope to hike it with trekking poles and a 37-pound backpack.

Permits allowing, I am five weeks away from another backpacking trek into the High Sierra — Mammoth Lakes north (80 miles) to Yosemite — and my confidence level, like the morning tide, is at low ebb. I have a balky knee. I’ve lost any High Sierra hutzpah I once had. And I can’t seem to convince myself to resume swimming at the Amazon Pool.

I need something to boost my confidence and I wonder if this journey might be it.

All is quiet, save the thrum of an occasional vehicle crossing the bridge. It is just me, a couple dozen clammers, a nervous heron and several harbor seals. The sun is just off stage, poised to make a grand entrance from above the Coast Range to the east.

I’ve chosen the north-to-south direction for two reasons:

First, though forecasters are predicting the warmest day of the year on the coast — even issuing a “Heat Advisory” (with the appropriate acronym of HA!) for the expected 75-degree temperatures — any breeze will be from the north. Thus, will my hike be blessedly wind-aided, an allowable advantage, I’ve decided, for a 72-year-old hiker.

Second, I beat She Who Usually Beats Me at Sequence the night before; this way, my reaching the cabin is 100 percent dependent on me, whereas a Yachats-to-Waldport attempt would mean trusting that the Sequence runner-up would fetch me at journey’s end. No guarantee of that.

Along the bay front, I pass rocks we used to sit on to watch fireworks on the Fourth of July back in the 1960s and ’70s. That, in turn, makes me think of Waldport’s Beachcomber Days and how we would always chide my 40-something mother to enter the Go-Go Boots Dance Contest.