Wildwood Trail - Pittock Mansion and Stone House loop

Wildwood Trail - Pittock Mansion and Stone House loop

We did this section of the trail in two goes. That was probably a good idea since we are just starting to tune up for spring adventures and not quite up to full hiking potential yet.

On the first day, we parked up at Pittock Mansion (lots of parking up in the lot there, at least today) and exited out of the top of the parking lot and started down the hill on Wildwood Trail. This section starts out pretty much smack on MP 3 (Mile Post 3).

The first thing you do is drop down a couple hundred feet through the woods on a steep set of switch backs. We are going to have to pay for those at the end of the hike. Once down we go along at a more or less flat run. The woods through here appear deep with few side trails. Well, until you realize that the wide area down there is a road and a big bridge. In fact, it is Cornell Road (running through Forest Park from Beaverton to Portland) and we are going to be crossing it right at Macleay Park, near the Audubon society Arboretum. There is a pretty big parking lot, here at Macleay Park, with a few picnic tables and a portable-pottie. Not many restroom facilities in Forest Park. Kinda strange seeing as they once had a high priority, as we will see once we get to the Stone House.

From the Parking lot, another steep set of switchbacks and then a bridge across Balch Creek. It looks like a new bridge is in the process of being built, right where Balch Creek exits the Audubon Society property. Now Balch Creek is a good story. It is named after, and was originally owned by the first man ever to be hung in Oregon. Seem like he was a business man of some success and he lived up on the property with his wife and many children. His oldest daughter got tired of that and ran off with the hired hand. Balch later saw the two of them whilst on a shopping trip into Portland and he pulled out his shotgun and killed his Son-in-Law. The native Portlanders didn't much like that and tried him and found him guilty of murder and hung him. His poor daughter lost a husband and a father. Though perhaps the father didn't bother her so much at that point.

Balch Creek

The Macleay trail goes from the upper Macleay parking lot to the lower Macleay parking lot. About half way between the two you get to the Stone House. There are a few different stories about what the Stone House is or how it came to be. Was it built as part of a public works effort by the old W.P.A.?  Was it part of the old Balch homestead and now haunted by his ghost (my personal favorite, but mainly because I just made it up). Or was it a trail-side restroom built by the city of Portland in the 1930s for the use of hikers out and about in forest park. Ok. That is the one. What it is physically is a two story (well perhaps one story with a sunlight basement) stone structure. Stone steps go up to a room with no ceiling. Perhaps 30 feet on a side. It was originally roofed and had running water and was a sort of nice looking place in the middle of the woods. But it got taken out by storms in the 60s and never repaired after that. Too Bad. The guy that built it hauled all of his rock down from the road on the cliff above (Cornell) by a pulley system. That must have been hard. Here are some pictures. Makes you think. Gee. We have a LOT more money and technology now. Having nice things like this out in the woods would be cheaper (per capita) now that it was in the 30's. Why don't we do this? Wouldn't it be nice to relieve yourself in a nice stone structure rather than a hot plastic port-a-potty? We would have to figure out a way to stop vandalism, but I am counting on our robot overlords to solve that little problem. Want to know more about Stone House? Try HERE.

At the Stone house, the trail branches and you can continue on down the hill to Lower Macleay parking (at be in the actual City of Portland with streets and such) or stay on Wildwood and start winding along the ridge. On the first day we stopped hiking soon after this and turned around and climbed back up to Pittock mansion. On our second attempt, we started at the upper Macleay parking and then continued on Wildwood. Wildwood skirts the top of the Portland residential area for a bit. Big houses that back onto the forest are visible through the trees. Then it takes a hard turn and climbs up the hill back to near the top of the ridge. Man, that was a hard climb. In this area there is a LOT of invasive English Ivy. Where did this stuff come from? It is all over the ground and climbing up all of the trees and really clogging up everything.  You can see several areas where people have been out working to try and stop this menace. Pulling the ivy and giving the trees the "ring of life" where the ivy is cut off at the base of the tree such that the part that is climbing (and choking) the tree dies and falls off. Some of these trees have had the work done recently. This season. The ivy is wilted, but still green. Other trees look like the work was done a few years ago. The ivy stalks can stay in the trees for a long time. A Decade or more if not pulled down.

Now we are hitting a number of cross trails. These are access trails that run from the streets on top of the ridge down to Leif Erikson. You park your car at the Trail Heads on the ridge or down in town and then hike up the access trail to get to the cross park trails (like Wildwood). You then use these trails to form the loop you want to hike with the distance and difficulty you would like. The city has many suggestions of loops and trails on their web page and in their trail maps. (Try Here). Today we hike until we get to the Dogwood Trail. We follow that down to Leif Erikson. Leif is essentially a gravel road that runs the length of the park. I had thought that it was perhaps the original road out to St. Helens or the other towns down river. But it was actually the road for a proposed housing project. Originally the entire ridge (that is now Forest Park) was going to be housing tracts and Leif was the road built to take people out to see all of the proposed plots of land. But, once again, a big storm wiped out the road and put and end to that plan. Still, you can follow Leif Erikson right down into town where it turns from a gravel road to a real road. For the hike today, we had to walk through a few blocks of a nice Portland residential area to get back to a connector trail and so back to our car. Big houses up on the hill with nice view of Mt. Hood and the city or Portland laid out below them. This loop was almost 8 miles. A long way. My knees hurt.

You walk the street for a bit. Nice houses

River Art