TRAILHEAD 4040 NW Skyline Boulevard, near Thunder Crest Drive
DISTANCE 4.5 miles round trip
DURATION Two hours and thirty minutes
ELEVATION A total change of 476 feet, with a low point of 661 feet and a high point of 1137 feet
CONDITIONS This hike is a steep grade, and slippery when wet, but beautiful in the fog.
FROM DOWNTOWN This hike begins 6.3 miles from West Burnside and Interstate 405. Drive west on NW Lovejoy Street until it turns into NW Cornell Road. Turn right onto NW Thompson Road and right again onto NW Skyline Boulevard. Proceed northward for 0.6 mile. Look for the entrance to the Thunder Crest development on Thunder Crest Drive, branching off to the right. Don’t park in the development, but park along Skyline Boulevard or across the street near the subdivision on the west side of Skyline.
This is among my favorite places to hike in the fog and rain. The trail is pretty good overall, and it is a relatively accessible, close-in walk, with little traffic on all but the Wildwood Trail segment. Amidst tall stands of Douglas fir, this trail affords mysterious glimpses down the slopes between the stately trunks and into the deep forest below. The portion of the Wildwood that heads south to Fire Lane 2 twists in and out of deep ravines with at least two really impressive older-growth Douglas firs standing alongside the trail, each with a diameter in excess of 6 feet! The Upper Maple Trail sports a beautiful mixed-conifer forest. Hemlock, cedar, Douglas fir, and vine maple present a brilliant panorama in the fall.
The sign at the entrance to the Thunder Crest development points out that it is a private road, but you may walk through it to reach the trailhead at the eastern side of the development.
Having walked the short distance down Thunder Crest Drive, you will see a park gate on the right. This is Fire Lane 3. This fire lane is basically a long, straight, steep drop into the park. It is pretty well maintained and hasn’t yet developed the characteristic V-shape that results from overuse by bicyclists.
At an elevation of 895 feet, Fire Lane 3 intersects with the Wildwood Trail before proceeding further down to Leif Erikson Drive. Here you will turn right, heading south on the Wildwood Trail.
A word of caution about the Wildwood Trail: On a sunny weekend expect to have to stand aside for long trains of huffing runners, as many as ten to fifteen in a row. You can hear them coming as the forest reverberates to their calls of “root,” “rock,” and “runner up” as the leader warns of obstacles ahead. If you’re walking a dog, I suggest pulling him off the trail to allow for smooth passage. Keep your puppies leashed, too, especially if they’re inclined to follow people, or you too will be joining the bobbing queue. On a nice day expect to encounter as many as ten or more trains of trotting runners between Fire Lane 3 and Fire Lane 2, most of them heading north.
Although this loop is designed to connect to the top of the Maple Trail, a shortcut is available about 100 yards along the Wildwood Trail. Here a short connector trail drops down from the Wildwood to the Maple Trail. This shortcut will abbreviate the walk by about a mile but will omit the old-growth trees and the upper portion of the Maple Trail.
Given that the hikes in this book are intended to avoid the traffic on the Wildwood Trail, you may wonder why this trail is included in the selection. Actually, the original trail descended into Forest Park on Fire Lane 2, but a private developer has since closed this access point.
Not only does this closure represent a significant loss for hikers in the park, it also poses some considerable public safety issues. Fire Lane 2 provides access to the exact location where one of the park’s worst fires was sparked. It was built after the infamous Bonny Slope fire burned over 1000 acres of forest in 1940, beginning in the park but quickly jumping over Skyline Boulevard and engulfing the western hillside down to the settlement of Bonny Slope. At that time the area was mostly lightly forested land with few residences. Today the area is part of Forest Heights and is thickly populated, with many expensive residences at risk.
It is worth noting that after the ineffective response by Portland fire teams, City Hall was assailed by a political “firestorm.” Eventually this led to the building of fire lanes across the park and annual forest fire training for Portland’s firefighters.
Loki on Fire Lane 3
The danger of a forest fire hasn’t fundamentally diminished since 1940; indeed, it may have grown in view of the increased fuel load (amount of potentially combustible material) in the park today. With summers becoming increasingly dry and more people entering the park, the risk that we might experience another conflagration like the Bonny Slope fire is not inconceivable. Without access to Fire Lane 2 the consequences could be dire.
If you ignore the shortcut and proceed along the Wildwood Trail for another 1.5 miles as it twists in and out of ravines, you will encounter a turnoff on the left that marks the beginning of the Maple Trail. Turn at this junction (which occurs just before Wildwood crosses Fire Lane 2) and proceed along the Maple Trail as it meanders down toward Leif Erikson Drive. About a quarter of a mile down the trail you’ll spot Leif Erikson below you. Close as it may seem, that isn’t where you’re going. The trail heads back up the draw and crosses Rockingchair Creek before heading north over the next ridge. Nearly a mile later the Maple Trail deposits you on Leif Erikson, well beyond the bend that was spotted previously.
After crossing Rockingchair Creek and climbing the hill to parallel Leif Erikson Drive, you will encounter the lower end of the shortcut mentioned earlier. This stretch of the Maple Trail along the south-facing side of the Rockingchair Creek valley is particularly scenic, a beautiful mixed-conifer forest with hemlock, cedar, and Douglas fir sharing the hillside. The ground cover is predominantly sword ferns and Oregon grape (Mahonia nervosa), which turns a brilliant red in late fall. Oregon grape is perhaps the most common ground cover to be found in the Oregon woods.
In western Oregon the dull variety of Oregon grape can be found in second-growth, closed-canopy Douglas fir forests. The tart purple berries of this plant were eaten by Indians, though not in great quantities. Frequently they were mixed with salal berries or some other sweeter fruit. The bark and berries were also used medicinally for liver, gallbladder, and eye problems, and the yellowish bark was used to color basket materials. Today, some people make wine from these berries, but more often they are used to make a jelly mixed with an equal portion of salal berries.
Arriving at Leif Erikson Drive, you now begin to ascend Fire Lane 3, which also intersects with Leif Erikson at this point. Although you will climb almost 500 feet in the next 2.15 miles, this fire lane has many gently rising slopes to break up the steep bits. The forest here is mostly hemlock and alder, and the trail is quite straight, giving the impression that you’re walking up a long sylvan corridor.
On these upper slopes, which are a relatively open conifer forest, you’re likely to see lots of mushrooms, including those belonging to the genus Tricholoma. The most common Tricholoma species that I’ve espied while traipsing these hills are the streaked tricholoma (T. portentosum) and sulphur tricholoma (T. sulphureum). Though both are common, neither is worth picking for dinner, especially since this genus includes other less palatable brethren. I stay away from genera of mushrooms with a mixed gastronomic heritage: the rewards of the few marginally edible varieties do not outweigh the indigestibility of the rest.
Lifting your gaze as you ascend this fire lane, you will see that you’re entering middle-aged Douglas fir stands that cover the upper hillsides on either side of this ridgetop road, affording intriguing glimpses deep into the forest.
In late March and early April, keep an eye open for the ubiquitous trillium with its telltale three white or pink petals. For me this iconic flower of the Northwest is the first harbinger of spring, its cheery white petals foretelling of some distant day when the rains will actually cease. The oft-repeated injunction about not picking trilliums because they may then take seven more years to reappear is a myth, although removing the seeds will certainly not help its propagation. In any case, resist the temptation to pick these flowers wherever you may find them, keeping in mind that as the population continues to grow in the Portland area it behooves us all to tread ever more lightly to retain the health and diversity of close-in wilderness areas.
The Indians cultivated an even less credible myth, but one more likely to occur. Pick a trillium, Quinault children were warned, and it will rain.
The trillium is noteworthy for yet another reason: it owes its existence to the messy habits of the ants who feed upon the gummy oil that encases its seeds. Once the seeds are stripped of this yummy covering, the ants ditch them along with the rest of their ant garbage, and presto, the trillium is distributed throughout the forest.
At the upper end of Fire Lane 3 you emerge from the forest and reenter the development on Thunder Crest Drive. At this point you’re at an elevation of nearly 1130 feet, and from the far side of Skyline Boulevard you can survey the entirety of the Forest Heights housing development on the western slope of the Tualatin Mountains.
As you contemplate the dense housing just over the crest and even along the top of the Tualatin Mountains, you might wish to mentally thank some of the farsighted individuals without whose dedication Forest Park would never have been preserved and protected.
In particular we should remember Thornton Munger, “Ding” Canon, and Bill Keil, who spearheaded the efforts to establish the park. Immediately after the formal establishment of Forest Park in 1948, Thornton and his conservation-minded colleagues formed the Committee of Fifty, a group dedicated to the park’s maintenance and preservation. For years the committee met in the famed Forestry Building, which sadly burned down in 1964. In 1983, when I first contacted the Committee of Fifty, the final dozen or so members were still meeting regularly at City Hall, carrying on the vision of a progressively managed urban forest. By the mid-1980s a new generation of urban environmentalists was serving as the stewards of Forest Park. In 1988 local activist Marcy Houle published One City’s Wilderness, which suggested that the vitality of Forest Park was due in large part to the existence of a wildlife corridor that sustained the species diversity in the park. Anecdotal evidence of large animals threading their way into Portland from the Coast Range seemed to support the existence of a kind of natural underground railroad that allowed populations of imperiled animals to avoid isolation and extinction.
At the same time a proposed freeway through the park galvanized legions of environmentally minded Portlanders to fund the Friends of Forest Park’s newly established campaign to purchase a threatened parcel of old-growth trees and various privately held parcels inside the park. No longer viewing the park as a laboratory for progressive forestry, the new leadership saw the park as a cultural treasure that required protection from the pressures of urbanization. The Friends of Forest Park continues to be a very active environmental group, helping to maintain this extraordinary treasure and supporting the expansion of protected green-spaces throughout the Portland area.