Column by Joe Hansen, Outdoors Editor

The pickup truck in the parking lot at the Humbug Mountain trailhead had a custom license plate that read “Cutey.”

Ooooh, I thought. It might have been worth driving south of Port Orford from Coos Bay for a solo Sunday afternoon hike after all.

Visions of a blossoming romance on the steep flanks of Humbug Mountain sprang into my mind. Cutey would be tan, with a nice smile. She wouldn’t mind that I was sweaty and grunting like a gorilla going up the hill.

“Is that your pickup there in the parking lot?” I’d ask, coolly leaning up against a tree. “You know, I drive a pickup too...”

The first half-mile of the trail was so awful I forgot all about Cutey.

I know it was a half-mile because it was right around the point I decided I must surely have gone more than a mile and climbed at least 1,000 feet, and I came across a sign that said I’d gone a half-mile and climbed 430 feet.

Those State Parks people sure are funny, putting up a sign like that.

But after that, the trail evened out nicely, cutting through classic Oregon forest clinging to the precipitous sides of Humbug Mountain.

I’d passed the trail a couple times before on my way to Gold Beach and had wanted to check it out ever since. It’s a 3-mile trail that ascends to a height of 1,756 feet, right on the ocean. Rarely do I see something I so obviously want to climb.

After about another half-mile of steady but manageable climbing, I came to an intersection. A sign said that the East Trail was 1.5 miles to the summit, and the West Trail was 2 miles to the top.

Hmmmm. Cutey would be hard-core, a real lover of hiking. She would take the long route, probably both ways. If I wanted to meet Cutey I should take the the longer trail.

I didn’t take the longer trail.

As Meatloaf once sang: “I will do anything for love. But I won’t do that.”

Never been much of a Meatloaf fan myself, but at that moment, standing there pouring sweat, I was fairly certain that the “that” he was speaking of was walking an extra mile round-trip.

The trail came up to a ridge with a nice breeze that cut through older forests with ancient Port Orford cedars and Douglas firs. Where the wind on the gusty ridge had felled large swaths of trees, there were occasional, spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean. A refreshing part of the trail.

Near the top, a young woman who surely must have been Cutey rounded the corner. With some guy. He was tan and fit. It didn’t look like the hike had even caused him to break a sweat. Grrrr. He was probably a surfer who moonlighted as a day trader, a wealthy risk-taker like Pierce Brosnan in just about every movie Pierce Brosnan’s ever been in.

They were both really nice, though. They said hi and smiled. They looked quite happy, those stinkers.

I hiked up the last portion of the trail, hoping for a great view from the top as consolation for my failed relationship with someone I didn’t know who may or may not have been Cutey.

The summit was quite nice. It opened into a sunny meadow and a vista of the Pacific Ocean stretching to the south, albeit one partially blocked by a row of younger-generation Douglas firs.

That’s the great thing about hiking: Even if you don’t find your mate — or you do and she happens to be with some svelt-looking man — you still get the view. And even if the view is partly blocked by trees, you still get the satisfaction.

As I returned to the parking lot afterward, Cutey’s truck was gone, replaced by a minivan with Texas plates.

Oh, well. Hiking isn’t the way to meet women anyway. As everybody knows, that comes from mountain biking.