Fire Lane 13

The Walk

From the Skyline trailhead you first walk BPA Road — the powerline access road that runs the ridge dividing the Miller Creek and Newton Creek drainages — undulating out in the open for a bit over a mile until it reaches the Fire Lane 13 fork, the point where BPA’s own descent turns steep and drops away. (Fire Lane 12 branches off this same road a little higher up; it’s the adjacent far-north spur, worth its own trip.) Peel off onto Fire Lane 13 and the character changes: it’s the straightest, most no-nonsense fire lane in the park, running down the spine of the ridge toward the overlook, losing something like 400 feet in barely two-thirds of a mile. It is steep, and it is exposed — you’re under the transmission lines most of the way, out from under the canopy that shades the rest of Forest Park.

About halfway down, right in the powerline clearing, Fire Lane 13A splits off to the side — a separate little dead-end spur of its own. Stay straight; your table is just a hundred yards or so past that junction, where the fire lane ends in a small hilltop clearing ringed with blackberry. And there it is: the channel, the island, the three white cones on a clear day. On a gray one you’ll get the blackberry and the powerlines and not much else, which is exactly why the weather matters more here than the trail does.

Listen for The change in the soundscape when you leave the road. Out here in the open corridor, away from the deep-forest hush, you’re in edge habitat — sun-loving, scrubby, tangled with blackberry — and it draws a different, brushier cast of birds than the shaded interior: towhees rustling in the bramble, the buzz and chip of open-country species working the clearing. It’s a useful lesson in how much the powerline cut, for all that it’s an intrusion, has quietly become its own kind of habitat.

Runner’s note For a trail runner already looping the far north, this is a legitimate, quad-honest hill rep with a horizon at the top — steep enough down that you’ll want control, steep enough up that the return is the real work. It’s foot-only, so no bikes or horses to share the pitch with, and out here you’ll likely have the whole spur to yourself. Just remember there’s no thru-route: the climb back to BPA Road is the price of the view, every time.

Before you go

This is a dead-end, full stop — plan to retrace, and budget for the fact that the fast, steep descent to the table is a slow, steep grind on the way back up. Save the trip for a clear day; the volcano view is the point, and without it you’ve walked a long way to look at a powerline. There’s little shade in the corridor, so it bakes in summer sun and offers no cover in a downpour. And this is the genuinely remote end of Forest Park: you’re a long walk from your car and farther still from help, so tell someone your plan and turn back with daylight to spare.

If the clouds do close in and the horizon’s gone, don’t force it. Sit at the table anyway for a minute. Even without the volcanoes, it’s the quietest picnic spot in the park — and being this far out, with the wind moving through the powerlines and nobody else around, is its own small reason to have come.