Urban Hiking Ideas

You may already know Matt Reeder and his Ruddy Hill Press. He loves hiking and probably has walked all of the trails within a couple of hours of Portland at least once. He turns this enjoyable activity into hiking guidebooks, such as PDX Hiking 365 and 101 Hikes in the Majestic Mount Jefferson Region. I recently stumbled upon his blog, Off The BeatenTrail PDX, where you will find a list of spring hikes of varying difficulty levels.

As we go through our daily routines, it’s easy to overlook some interesting bits of nature sprinkled here, there, and everywhere in and around Portland. Take, for example, Hidden Falls, in Clackamas county. For decades, Rock Creek was a gully, a little in the way of some plans for development. Deep in the overgrowth, mostly inaccessible, was a 22’ natural waterfall. Through a public/private partnership, all the details were sewed together to create a park, with a .8 mile path to Hidden Falls. The planners then extended the path across Rock Creek via a new timber bridge to connect with the larger trail system that leads to Oregon Trail Elementary School and Pioneer Park.

Get out there!

Illustration derived from a detail from Google Maps