Forest Park, the goals for this year and some hiking art

This past weekend proved to be extremely wet and ultimately my original plans got scrapped and me and Keeley had to improvise, so we instead took a 10 minute drive into central Forest Park and hiked there.

Forest Park is a giant 8-mile park that makes up most of the Tualatin Mountains on Portland's western border, and the park is mostly in the northern sections. The Wildwood trail is the main thoroughfare, and is roughly 30 miles long as it weaves around the hills through the whole thing. There is also a gravel road called Leif Erickson Drive that goes through about half of it. I biked it once, I was not in good enough shape and it was horrible. I'd imagine it's fun with the right bike though.

Linking the trail and the road are many, many other little offshoot trails and firelane roads, all accessible for walking. The Park proper starts on the North side of West Burnside, but it really begins at Pittock Mansion up that first hill. From here you can go all the way through the park and almost every trail in the bottom 3rd I've hiked at some point or another. If you start in Lower Mcleay park you can go see the "Stone House", which looks like this cool ruin but becomes funny when you google it and realize it was an outhouse. You can access Holman Lane, which is a steep half mile fire road from Forest Park to 53rd Ave, and it's a great way to test your fitness level as the incline is brutal but not impossible. If I can make it to the top without stopping, I know I'm doing alright.

There are so many possible loop options in the park it's hard to go wrong. Most of Forest park doesn't have a view, 99% of trails are just slightly muddy trails through heavy mossed trees and underbrush. Try and catch it on a foggy day, the park really earns it's atmosphere in those solitary moments with the sun trying to fight through the trees and fog.

A couple of times, including this past Sunday, me and Keeley have driven up to the halfway point and parked at the Germantown rd. trailhead. On Sunday we hiked from the trailhead down Firelane 10, up to the Wildwood, back across Germantown road, down the Waterline trail, and back to the trailhead on Leif Erickson drive. It was incredibly muddy but I guess that was to be expected after a very heavy rain on Saturday.

Here are some select pictures I've taken in my many trips into Forest Park

Sunrise from Pittock Mansion

Forest Park Atmosphere

Sunrise from Pittock Mansion

All the photographers taking photos

A good image of how the park looks on the average day

through the trees

So that's a short but accurate look at FP. It's never a bad thing to hike in Forest Park but since it's so close it tends to function as our backup plan on bad days that we feel we need to get out on anyway, which is most weekends. We've set some hiking goals for this year on our big hiking whiteboard. Last year our goal was Table Mountain, a tough but not completely arduous hike. It was more or less the local peak for casual hikers. This year, we decided we don't want to be casual hikers, we want to be serious hikers. That means we are going to go for longer, 6-7 hour day hikes of 10+ miles and 4k ft elevation changes. The gorge's less traveled hikes, the ones that locals who love being outdoors do. Ruckle Ridge. Nesmith Point. If we can do one of these tough, serious hikes once or twice a month from here on out (with our normal hikes in between)  we should be able to hit our two big goals, Eagle Cap and mt. St. Helens. Yes, that Mt. St. Helens.

Last year our August anniversary trip was up the Oregon Coast. This year, we are seeing the final "Wonder of Oregon" we haven't seen yet, the Wallowa Mountains and Hells Canyon. The highlight of the trip will be a 20 miles backpacking trip to Eagle Cap, a high point right in the middle of the range.

The other goal is Mt. St. Helens. Late August, Early September is the plan, after Eagle Cap. Mt. St. Helens actually isn't that long distance wise (only 10 miles round trip) and actually isn't as high as you'd expect. Sure, it's 8 thousand feet, but you only climb up 4600 feet of that. Mt. Defiance (The hardest hike in the Gorge and another goal for the year) is technically longer and harder. I figure if we can do Mt. Defiance and these other big gorge hikes, we can take the volcano. I want to stare down into the crater and say I did it.

On top of that, I've started producing some artwork to celebrate what hikes I've accomplished so far, aiming mostly to capture the most iconic bit to each hike. I'm only done 2 for the moment, but it'll add up as I want to print them out and hang them up next to our goal board to show just what we've done.