I walked out of Northwest Portland up to Washington Park and Forest Park. Near the Japanese Garden I pick up the Wildwood trail. This trail is 30 miles long through the length of the Park. The ten miles I saw most traverses hillside though beautiful forest. When it climbs and descends the grades are always gentle. Occasionally there are gently graded switchbacks. Forest Park has 20 trailheads and dozens of well maintained secondary trails so there are countless ways to to create your own hike. The signage is excellent, so it is easy to know what trail you are on, though it does take further investigation to figure out where they go. I eventually took a trail that dropped down to the Leif Erickson Dr Trail (once a road and now popular with bicyclists), and walked back into northwest Portland.

We chose the Forest Park Ridge Trail as an afternoon hike. We started from the NW Bridge Ave trailhead, and we were lucky to arrive just as another car was leaving--the parking area (holds 6-7 cars) was full. The actual trailhead is 0.14 mi up the road from the parking area. 

There were other hikers on the trail, but it was not too crowded. We could see the St. Johns Bridge clearly, with Mt. Adams and Mt. Saint Helens behind it. After the bridge peekaboos, there are not really any other grand vistas, though the interior forest flora and fauna are quite beautiful. We saw swallowtail butterflies, birds, and chipmunks. Thimbleberries, candy flower, and herb-Robert (geranium) are in bloom. Himalayan blackberries are not quite ripe, and blueberries have yet to emerge.

We traversed up to the Springville Road TH for a total one-way distance of 2.12 miles (We could have stopped where the Ridge Trail meets Firelane 7, which would have been 1.7 miles one-way). Total trip was 4.25 miles, with elevation gain of 982 feet. Most of the gain is in the first 2/3 of the trip up. Total time was just under 2 hours.

Tried out a different area of Forest Park for a short hike to get some movement in after lots of doughnuts.

We started at the Lower Macleay trailhead, which is right in the middle of a neighborhood. The trailhead area has a bathroom and large green space for picnics. The beginning is very flat and a babbling brook creates some lovely white noise. There were definitely lots of folks--families, dogs, trailrunners-- on this section up to the Stone House (which is where many of the families with kids stopped). We continued up where the trail gains a bit up some switchbacks before arriving at Upper Macleay Trailhead, which is where we had started from before. We continued up a bit, not wanting to go the entire way up to Pittock Mansion (definitely recommend, but we were short on time). We took a left at a fork with the intention of doing a loop but soon realized that that the trail was going to end (once we saw some houses...) so we turned around. This section of trail was rather quiet though! We then just headed all the way back down for a total of 3.5-4 miles! A nice (chilly) autumn walk in the woods.

We were spending the weekend in Portland and didn't want to travel too far to hike, so we opted to stay in the city. Forest Park is one of the largest urban parks in the country and with more than 80 miles of trails, we certainly had some options. There are trailheads on all sides of the park but we went for a new one on the southeast side of the park called Lower Saltzman. It is sort of in a strange park of town, and you drive up a random road to get there, but it does end in a dead-end parking area. 

We went up what ended up being the Firelane 4 and continued to gain up that rather steeply for some time before taking a right onto a flat, wide trail and continued on until we found a sign and then went up again and... honestly you get the point. It's a *massive* trail network. My word of advice is to pay attention to signs and maps and make sure you have an idea of where you're going because I can see how you could either 1. get lost or 2. end up at the wrong trailhead. That said, I got in some gain and about 6 miles and some pretty fall leaves and quiet in the city.