Fire Lane 2

The Climb

The work is front-loaded and short. From the orange gate on Leif Erikson Drive, the lane tips up in earnest — two steep pitches with a brief breather between them, then a final grind to the ridge — crossing the Wildwood Trail partway up before topping out at the Fire Lane 2 Trailhead on Skyline, some 550 feet higher than you started. It’s steep enough in both directions to be memorable and short enough to be over before you resent it. Coming down, expect loose, muddy footing on those same pitches; the tread that climbs fast also sheds you fast.

Forest Skill: why it’s called Berry Row Cut a straight, sunlit strip through a shaded forest and you get a very particular kind of comeback — not the tall firs of the deep woods but the low, fast, fruit-bearing shrubs that thrive on light and disturbance. That’s the fire-lane edge: thimbleberry, salmonberry, red huckleberry, snowberry, trailing blackberry, all elbowing for the open lane. It’s why the surveyors tagged this one “Berry Row,” and it’s a small lesson in how the park works — the same clearing that lets a crew reach a fire lets a berry patch reach the sun.

Runner’s note This is a tidy piece of vertical — around 550 feet packed into a hard, honest climb, with none of the exposure of Fire Lane 1’s powerline half. Run it as the up-leg of a Leif Erikson loop when you want the climb without the mileage, and mind the descent: the pitches are loose and greasy after rain, so save the fast downhill for a dry spell.

Before you go

Two things to keep straight. First, this one is foot-only — Fire Lane 2 isn’t on the bike or horse lists, so leave the wheels for the fire lanes that welcome them (it does cross bike-legal Leif Erikson Drive at the bottom, but that’s a crossing, not an invitation). Second, don’t plan to start or finish at the Leif Erikson gate: there’s no car access down there, which is exactly why Fire Lane 2 lives its real life inside a loop.

The obvious one is the big Fire Lane 1-to-Skyline circuit, which uses this as its main climb to the ridge; up and over, Fire Lane 2 pairs naturally with Fire Lane 3 a little way along Skyline for a ridge loop that goes up one and down the other. Either way, treat this stretch for what it is — the reliable connective tissue between the lower park and the ridge, doing its quiet, steep work so the better views can happen somewhere else.