Two Videos Show Different Angles on Near-Deadly Oregon Coast Wave

Published 01/05/26 at 7:45 a.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Pacific City, Oregon) – Talk about a close call. Two viral videos this week of the same incident are showing two perspectives on a nearly-deadly run-in that is leaving people agog.

One video shows a trio on top of Cape Kiwanda getting knocked over by a massive wave that towers about 100 feet above the ocean, and one nearly gets tossed into surf. Yet another video emerges shortly after, taken by the person that got hit with the wave, showing him getting enveloped by it and smacked hard.

It's got all the vibes of a Final Destination movie and then all the bumpy chaos of the Blair Witch Project.

It turns out, the incident isn't recent: it happened way back in 2021. It's just now making it out into the public. Still, it's a bunch of lessons learned all in 30 seconds.

The first footage was taken by Oregon resident Josie Trista Norwood, and the first-person terror vid was filmed by Logan Chapo, a Corvallis-area musician.

Norwood said she was out on Cape Kiwanda with some family and friends back in 2021, and at the time they hadn't seen any large waves come over the sides. They had gone out to that point but were beginning to notice smaller waves reaching there.

Video courtesy Josie Trista Norwood and Logan Chapo. There's a slow motion rendition at the end so you can see the melee.

“ I'm not trying to get wet so we walked back to the spot where I was videoing,” Norwood told Oregon Coast Beach Connection. “And then as we were walking back, Logan and his group were walking out there. So we were just watching and noticing like none of the waves were nearly that big. But I was like, something's gonna come over and it's gonna go a little bit over their head and drench them.”

Bigger waves were starting to come every couple of minutes, she said. She started thinking she was going to get video of this, but didn't imagine it was going to be that enormous.

Her part speaks for itself.

Norwood and her group made it back that way and met Logan and his friends – drenched and shaken - and eventually shared videos with each other. That was four years ago and no one posted any of it until she did this week – and it went crazy viral.

Chapo has lived in the state for awhile and definitely has experience with the Oregon coast. He admitted to Oregon Coast Explored he messed up.

“We were actually planning to leave that ledge right before that wave hit, but one of us wanted to see 'one more big one,' and it ended up being especially big,” Chapo told Oregon Coast Beach Connection. “We were all pretty shook up.”

He said his friend Kam saved him by yanking him down to the ground by his jacket, while Chapo grabbed the other friend by the wrist. But the wave hit and he lost contact with both of them, plunging down that slope, lucky that it flattened out and stopped his tumble.

“Yeah, that day we connected with nature in a different way than usual,” he said.

Chapo is alive and well, and in a rather remarkable psychedelic indie band called Glide Divine.

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