Linnton Trail

The Walk

From the bus shelter the trail heads up Linnton Canyon along the creek’s north bank and gets to work almost immediately — that ladder of switchbacks, a small creek, a footbridge, and a steady tilt upward that never really lets off. Underfoot it’s soft dirt, and from the first fall rains until the canyon dries out it holds mud the way a sponge holds water, so plan the footing.

The trees are the reason to climb slowly. Most of Forest Park is a Douglas-fir and bigleaf-maple world, but Linnton Canyon mixes in company you don’t often see together: Oregon white oak, western red cedar, and Pacific yew, alongside the firs and hemlock, over a carpet of Oregon grape as you near the crest. It’s a distinctive little pocket, and it rewards a naturalist who knows what they’re looking at.

Forest Skill: find the Pacific yew Among the big firs, look low for a smaller, scruffy-looking conifer with flat, soft needles and thin, papery reddish bark that peels in flakes. That’s Pacific yew — slow-growing, shade-loving, easy to walk right past, and the tree whose bark gave the world the cancer drug taxol. Then look for Oregon white oak, a genuine oddity here: oaks like it drier and sunnier than a fir forest, so finding one in the canyon tells you something about how this particular slope breathes.

You’re also climbing through history. The ground under your boots came into the park in pieces — parcels absorbed from the old town of Linnton, and higher up, part of the eighteen acres the Clark and Wilson Timber Company gave the park in 1927. (If you want to actually stand at the rock monument that marks that gift, it sits down at the bottom of Fire Lane 9, a ridge to the south — not on this trail.) It’s a small reminder that this forest didn’t survive by accident. People chose it, donated it, and stitched it together one gift at a time.

Runner’s note This is a steep, switchbacking half-mile with real mud in the wet months — not a rhythm climb so much as a grind you power up and then get to enjoy at the top. The smart move is to ride the 16 to the bottom and run up into the far-north network via Fire Lane 10, rather than an out-and-back that finishes with this canyon under tired legs after rain. It’s the runner’s key into a corner of the park that’s otherwise a long way from any trailhead.

At the top the trail simply ends at Fire Lane 10, and the network opens up: this is the hub that feeds Newton Road, the BPA line, the upper fire lanes, and the Wildwood beyond. Where you go from here is the whole reason you climbed.

Before you go

This is the far, quiet north, and it’s isolated in a way most of Forest Park isn’t — go prepared, in daylight, and don’t count on meeting anyone. The trailhead parking on Highway 30 is poor and has a real reputation for car break-ins, which is the honest case for arriving by bus: the 16 drops you right at the bottom, and you don’t spend the climb worrying about your windows.

Save it for the drier months if you can. From October into spring the canyon tread turns greasy, and steep switchbacks are exactly where wet dirt gets treacherous — when it is soft, stay in the muddy center of the tread rather than skirting the edges, which only widens the trail and speeds the erosion already working on this slope.

Stop once, partway up, where the switchbacks pause near the creek. Highway 30 and the river are still just below you, close enough to hear — and the forest is already closing over your head. That doubled feeling, city at your back and quiet ahead, is the whole point of coming in this way.