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.

Dry Creek falls round 2 and the Herman Creek Pinnacles

I've been here before, but it was a place I wanted to go back to and see a little more on a second go-round.

The trail is pretty straightforward, go up past the Bridge of the Gods (Recently seen playing a glorious role in the Oscar Bait movie Wild with Reese Witherspoon. It's a good enough movie and most of the final scenes were filmed in areas I have explored in this very blog). 

Up the trail for a mile to the powerlines, another mile through the quiet woods to the junction with the Dry Creek Falls road. Go up a quarter mile and boosh! Pretty little 70 foot falls. Also remains of an old dam system. There isn't much to do outside admire it from a few angles.

The first time we were here it was cold and we turned around and headed back. This time I wanted to explore a little more. The PCT continues to the east below the cliffs past Dry Creek, and it contains a linkup trail to the Herman Creek trailhead, which is the way I went to Indian Point. About halfway between Dry Creek Falls and Herman Creek Trailhead there is a quirky rock formation known as the Herman Creek Pinnacles.

Past Dry Creek falls the trail is mostly level with slight uphills and downhills. You travel mostly through open, lush forest with moss everywhere. At one point you cross the talus slope of an old and apparently mighty landslide. Near the back end of the exposed area you get a halfway decent view of Stevenson, WA across the river. If you know where to look you can even spot the Skamania Lodge.

It's about a half mile to go from here. Pass through more lush forest and turn into a large valley area, where you get faint views of large cliff walls through the trees to your left. You descend down a little bit, curve around and all of a sudden right in front of you pop the Pinnacles. They aren't really big, but they are big enough to admire. They are old basalt formations that nobody really knows how they formed and look like bit pointy rock eggs. There are 3 big notable ones, plenty of small ones around, and a large talus rock that you can climb up and get a sort of nice view of Washington again. 

Dave for Scale

In the valley of the Pinnacles

Landslide down the left side of the Pinnacles area

Girlfriend on the top of the climb-able rock

Pinnacle

The Pinnacles aren't really super impressive, but for a local who has seen the big gorge hits, it's nice to find a deep track and see something new. The hike is mostly level and the only challenge is distance (We did 8 miles), and it was easily a worthy goal. One day soon I plan on coming back via Herman Creek so I can link up my trails on the map like a geek. 

Council Crest from 23rd ave

Almost everything I've posted here so far has been about hikes outside of Portland, so I should talk about some things that are in PDX that I frequently do just during slow days. I live up in the Nob Hill/NW 23rd alphabet district of Portland, right under the west hills/tualatin mountains. Council Crest and Pittock Mansion are both up in the hills, and Council Crest is technically the highest point in Portland city limits at 1,073 feet. It's the site of a former amusement park and is now just a quiet round area at the top of the hill with a water tower and cell phone tower. It features some great views, mostly of North PDX towards Mt. St. Helens and Mt Hood, and even a view that manages to make Beaverton look nice. It's a popular destination for workout people as there are many trails leading to the top.

As stated, there are multiple routes to the top via trails or roads. My personal favorite takes me a sort of backway via the Wildwood trail, the 30 mile-long trail that starts at Council Crest and goes all the way to the tip of Forest Park.

I more or less start at the base of Washington Park near West Burnside. Washington Park is wonderful in it's own right, a nice big park with the International Rose Test garden, the famed Portland Japanese Gardens, some tennis courts, a soccer field, lots of meandering trails, and a train to the zoo. It has a mildly good view of downtown and is a great place to come pass some hours away in the sun during lazy summer days.

An old bathroom during SNOWACALYPSE 2014

Entrance to the Rose garden

View of downtown from Washington Park

Lone tree by the reservoir

If you go up to the Japanese Gardens at the top you can look for a small trail leading off from a parking area. This trail switchbacks a bit then hooks up with the trail system of Hoyt Arboretum, a massive park area with every tree labeled and a complete scattering of trails everywhere that are bound to confuse people not yet familiar with the area. The northern end of the park is mostly the tall trees, Redwoods and pines, plus several sections that are just beautiful when it's fall. There is a creek and a road in the middle of the Arboretum, and the southern side is mostly maple and smaller trees, plus an archery range. A visitor center sits in the middle. The trails zigzag and connect all the way through the area. If you need an idea of just how utterly insane it is, this map shows the mess pretty well. It's really convoluted but each area sort of eventually loops around to a few select chokepoints so a few trips into the zone will give you a good sense of how to get around.

ART

Japanese Gardens

roses

Artsy stuff in the Japanese gardens

I normally follow the blue line (Wildwood Trail) past the archery range to the Vietnam memorial and the zoo. The trail walks behind the zoo, goes down a short path to the overpass over highway 26, and walks the sidewalk over the overpass to the opposite side. From there you actually walk down the shoulder of the on-ramp to the highway to where the Wildwood shoots off into the hills and you begin the final ascent to Council Crest. There is a tough section of short switchbacks as you near the road, then the Wildwood trail ends and you end up on the road at an intersection. Cross the street and keep going up, you round a corner and see the northern entrance to the park. Walk up the paved path to the top and you're there. A view to the west shows the Coastal Mountains and Beaverton valley, a view to the East shows Mt Hood, perfectly framed between trees, and a view to the northeast shows Mt Adams, Mt. St. Helens, and on a clear day you can see Mt. Rainer popping up on St. Helen's shoulder.

The Fremont Bridge and Mt. Rainier over the shoulder of St. Helens

View of Mt. Hood and the Wells fargo center from the Japanese gardens

Beaverton under the fog with the coastal Mtns in the distance

Zoom on the Coastal Mountains with the fog

St. Helens and Mt. Rainier

Mt. Adams overlooking Northeast Portland. The river is covered in fog and the buildings seen in the bottom are in the Lloyd district

Mt Hood

Statue in the park on a less clear day

There are multiple ways up, this just happens to by my favorite. I'll describe some other paths and other Portland trails in a follow up blog post.

Frozen Waterfalls

So it's been a cold and busy couple of months and I haven't had time to get out much, but we found ourselves with a free Friday afternoon to start the new year so we decided to do a hike and go into the gorge since we hadn't been there for a while. Since it had been 30 degrees or lower for a week, I anticipated some frozen waterfalls. Last time we went out this time of year (to dry creek falls) we were treated to a nice frozen waterfall, so I was hoping we'd at least get something similar if we went to some other waterfalls. I was rewarded for my hunch.

The plan was to go to Triple falls. We'd only done that hike once, and that trail (if you start at horsetail falls) take you past 4 waterfalls so we'd have 4 chances to see some frozen fun. We realized this was absolutely going to happen when we took a quick stop at Multnomah falls, because Multnomah was frozen already.

When we got to horsetail falls, the sight was even better. The whole waterfall basin was frozen, the mist from the waterfall had added inches of ice to everything it touched. This was going to be good. We took some photos and headed up the trail to Ponytail falls.

Ponytail falls wasn't quite as frozen, but there were lots of icicles hanging down from the cliff overhang. The mist from the falls however had completely frozen the left side of the trail and a short section past the falls was a sheet of ice, with a long slide down into the freezing water. You can see it in the wideshot image below, behind the falls. That white stretch was inch thick ice.

I didn't particularly want to climb it but Keeley was already halfway up, crawling on her hands and knees up the ice. Since we weren't going to be forced to come home this way home due to the other trails, up I climbed. It took 10 minutes to get about 30 feet over the frozen section, and much relief was to be had. We'd go to triple falls and walk home on the Oneonta trail to avoid coming back across the ice. We made it to the bridge, climbed another small section of ice, and headed past the junction up towards Triple falls. Sadly, it was not to be, a landslide had taken out the trail shortly past the junction and we'd already endangered out lives once so we turned around. Went back via the Oneonta trailhead with the slight overlooking Archer Mountain, walked along the highway to our car with only 3 miles under our belt.

Archer Mountain from the Oneonta trail

Gorge

We didn't want to end our day so early, so I looked up something I wanted to see but never had a reason to visit by itself. Oxbow regional park. It's a small, tucked away valley park along a couple of big bends in the Sandy river just outside Troutdale near the Sandy river's confluence with the Columbia. It's quiet, and it's mostly a picnic park and in January it was empty. We just walked around for a bit and hung out at the river, then drove home. All in all, a good winter day. We've resolved to go on more winter hikes this year, so hopefully I can keep updating with our travels.

A bird chillin on an island in the Sandy

The Sandy River

Neat sand plateau