Maple Trail

The Walk

Down from the Wildwood

Most people don’t drive to Maple so much as drop onto it. Because it runs point-to-point — from the Wildwood near mile 13 down to Saltzman Road — and allows no bikes, it’s almost always walked as part of a loop, usually stitched to the Wildwood. The cleanest way to meet it on its best terms is from the top: take the Wildwood out toward mile 13 and turn onto Maple where it begins at a big fir. (If you’d rather start low, the Lower Saltzman gate is the nearest trailhead — a steep, narrow road up from St. Helens Road to a few roadside spots — and you’ll simply walk the trail in reverse, climbing toward the giants instead of descending to them.)

From the Wildwood junction, the trail opens through a carpet of sword fern and makes a level traverse around a ridge nose — the one genuinely easy stretch — before the rolling begins.

The Munger Creek giants

It drops on switchbacks into the Munger Creek gully, and this is where you slow down.

Forest Skill: read the old survivors Most of Forest Park is second-growth — forest that grew back after the saws came through a century ago. The Munger Creek firs are different. These are the ones the early loggers passed over, and they wear their age plainly: trunks too wide to wrap your arms around, bark furrowed into deep vertical canyons, crowns broken and rebuilt by a hundred winters into something lumpier and more complicated than a young tree’s clean spire. Stand at the base of one and look up until you lose the top. That’s a few centuries of staying put.

Across Leif Erikson to Saltzman

Past the big trees the trail crosses Leif Erikson Drive — the wide, smooth gravel road that shadows Maple the whole way, staying high and even while Maple does the honest work down in the folds. East of the crossing it dips again to Saltzman Creek, climbs out under a powerline through a thicket of thimbleberry, passes above a mossy bowl, and finally drops to Saltzman Road. The bigleaf maples that give the trail its name are scattered along the way; come in October and the gully floors go gold and rust where their fallen leaves pile up.

Runner’s note This is one of the better long, foot-only runs in the park — rolling rather than relentless, quiet, and shaded. The footing is real trail, not road: roots, the occasional rocky pitch, and slick mud at the two creek crossings after rain. Run it as the wild half of a loop with smooth, fast Leif Erikson and you get the best of both — singletrack on the way out, a runnable gravel cruise back.

If you’ve come up from the Lower Saltzman gate, give the gate itself a minute before or after. On a clear day the view opens north and east across the industrial flats to a pair of distant volcanoes — Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier — which is a strange and excellent thing to find at the bottom of a forest trail.

Before you go

The catch on Maple is the stretch east of Leif Erikson, between the Koenig Trail and Firelane 4: it crosses a gully that has a long history of storm damage and bridge-out closures, and it’s been closed more than once. The forest doesn’t always announce when it’s open again. Check Portland Parks’ trail-closures page before you commit to the full traverse — and know the usual workaround if you find it shut, which is to detour up the Koenig Trail to Leif Erikson, follow the road to Firelane 4, and rejoin Maple there.

Mud is the wet-season tax, and Maple collects it. The Munger and Saltzman creek crossings turn to muck from the first serious rains of fall through spring; wear shoes you don’t love and stay in the center of the tread, even when the center is the messy part. Skirting the puddles is how a trail quietly doubles in width.

Parking is thin and the access road is steep — this is a trail that rewards arriving by loop rather than by car. And because it’s foot-only, keep dogs leashed and leave the wheels at home; the quiet is half the reason to come.

Stop once in the Munger gully on your way through, where the big firs are, and just stand there for a moment without reaching for your phone. The rest of the park is mostly forest that grew back. This is forest that never left.