Dogwood Trail

The Walk

From the shared trailhead (see the Wild Cherry entry for the split and the memorial marker there), Dogwood peels south and runs over a rounded hilltop near the ridge’s high point — about 900 feet — before the long switchbacks begin. This is the stretch that separates Dogwood from its busy twin: wide, patient turns easing you down through Douglas-fir and bigleaf maple, roughly 400 feet of descent spread over a mile so it rarely feels steep. Partway down you meet the Keil Trail at a T-junction; stay on Dogwood (Keil is a short 0.17-mile spur that ducks back toward NW 53rd Dr — handy if you’d rather close the loop up high than commit to the full descent). It’s worth knowing whose name that is: Bill Keil was a Forest Park forester who replanted this ground after the 1951 Bonny Slope burn, and just off the trail near the old “Inspiration Point” — a viewpoint the second-growth has quietly grown shut — stand the Port Orford cedars he set out in the 1950s, non-natives that give this pocket of forest a slightly different texture than the maple slopes around it.

About two-thirds of a mile down, Dogwood crosses the Wildwood Trail at its 8½-mile post — a small posted map marks the junction — and keeps dropping. The last third of the trail is the steep, boggy part: it loses the final couple hundred feet quickly and holds water at the bottom, delivering you onto Leif Erikson Drive around 500 feet, where the loop-back up Wild Cherry begins.

Listen for the Pacific wren In the dense, wet understory of Dogwood’s lower switchbacks, this is prime habitat for a tiny brown bird — barely bigger than a golf ball, tail cocked straight up — with an outsized song: a long, fast, silvery cascade of notes that seems physically impossible for its size. You’ll almost always hear it before you see it, low in the tangle near the ground. A year-round resident here (older checklists call it the “Winter Wren”), it’s loudest when the forest is otherwise quiet — which, on Dogwood, is most of the time.

Kid Quest Three jobs for the way down. Count the switchbacks — the big lazy turns that let the trail sneak downhill. In spring, find a trillium (three white petals over three broad leaves; look, don’t pick — they’re slow to recover). And find the puddle. There’s always a puddle on the boggy part; the trick is that the polite move is to walk straight through the middle, not around it, so the trail doesn’t get wider.

Runners have their own reason to know this side: because Dogwood is the less-trafficked half of the loop and it’s foot-only — no bikes, no horses — it makes a clean, quiet descent to fold into a longer Wildwood or Leif Erikson circuit. The switchbacks and wet footing mean it runs better as a controlled downhill than a place to open up; the bog will remind you.

Before you go

Mud is the whole seasonal story here. The lower-middle section is genuinely boggy from the first fall rains through spring, and it stays soft longer than the park’s gravel roads — so pick your footwear accordingly and, when you hit the wet patches, stay in the muddy center. Skirting the edges is how a trail slowly doubles in width and loses the roots holding the slope together.

The views are a winter-only bonus. The old “Inspiration Point” vista is mostly grown over now, and what partial glimpses of the city and hills remain are screened by leaves the rest of the year; if you want them, come when the bigleaf maples are bare.

And treat the descent as a one-way choice. Coming down Dogwood and back up Wild Cherry is the sensible loop; going the other way turns Dogwood into a boggy climb with no payoff waiting at the top. Save the mud for going down.

Stop for a moment where the switchbacks quiet everything down. This is the same forest as the popular trail a ridge away — the same firs, the same ferns — just with the people subtracted. That’s the entire offer, and on the right morning it’s plenty.