Urban Hikes in Portland: SW Trails

A couple of months ago, I was looking for convenient urban hikes to do in the All Trails app. I found one that was around about a neighborhood in town. This was a rare find since most of the trails in that app are located in more natural settings. This Hillsdale to the River Trail was interesting because it had us walk between neighborhoods I would have never thought to go by foot. It also led us through some inner city parks I never knew existed. There was an odd patch where I felt like we might find some discarded body parts, but that’s neither here nor there and not the point of this story.

On this urban hike, we ended up following the “SW Trails 3” sign through much of it. Since I had previously lived in the neighborhood we were walking through, it was a familiar sight. However, I had never paid much attention to that sign before. So, after that hike, just like the dozens of times after I’d seen it before, I immediately forgot about it.

It wasn’t until my husband had been sitting in his car all day and remembered that hike, that he asked me to find another one like it. Since it was such an anomaly in the app, I wasn’t really sure where to look. But of course, Google came to the rescue.

Exploration begets discovery, and more often than not, in ways that you’d never expect.

SW Trails PDX

A simple search for “SW Trails” led me to learn about the non-profit group, SWTrails PDX. They build and maintain safe urban trails in SW Portland that has many areas without sidewalks and consists of hilly terrain. They work with the city which is how, I suppose, they have all these official road signs. So far, they have developed over 40 miles of these urban trails. The group leads two walks a month: one longer and one shorter with an easier pace.

There are 6 trails with a 7th one planned. The existing ones range between 3 and 10-ish miles one-way, with several that are about 6 miles long. On their website, you can see a map of all the trails and a short description of each.

Unsurprisingly, COVID put a halt to this groups’ urban hikes for all of 2020. (They are restarting in June of 2021). However, what was alternatively provided was a list of 30+ self-led urban hikes that can be enjoyed at your convenience. What’s great about these urban hikes is that most of them are loops vs. the out-and-back of the trails. The hike might hop onto a trail path for a while, or go past one along the way, but the two are separate entities.

The urban hikes are categorized them as easy, medium, hard, and really hard. Their classification is as follows:

Easy = Less than 3 miles
Medium = 3 to 5 miles
Hard = 5 to 7 miles
Really Hard = 7 to 15 miles

ArcGIS Explorer App

They also added their hikes to the app, ArcGIS Explorer. It shows the entire route on a map and marks your location in real time so you can see where you are and need to go next. This app has been critical for our hikes since there have been no designations on the route itself. While there are written instructions for the hikes on their respective description pages, I’ve found their usefulness to vary. In all honesty, they haven’t been useful at all. I believe they expect you to use the app so they don’t put much effort into the written guide. There was one where it seemed like the person verbally recorded the instructions while walking it, then just posted the direct transcription. It made very little sense at all.

So, definitely use the app. And make sure your battery won’t die because you might find yourself quickly lost. As we’ve walked a couple of these already, I would have to say that I’ve lost all my bearings about a quarter the way in. It’s hard to have any context to where you’re at. If you’re familiar with the SW neighborhoods, you might not have this problem. Heck, your home might even be along one of these routes. But considering the SW doesn’t quite have the logical grid system that other neighborhoods have, it might be be harder than you think. And like I’ve said, these hikes can bring you into areas you never knew existed before. .

Our Steps to Yours

Our plan is to walk as many of these urban hikes as we can this summer. They aren’t necessarily the prettiest; however, they are convenient to get to if you live in Portland proper. It’s been great to do these after work on a Friday or between events on a weekend just to get the limbs moving and some fresh air in the lungs.

They also aren’t packed with people like the trails out in the Gorge or in Washington Park. So, if you’re not a people person or you still want to keep some space between you and others while things with COVID become more predictable, these urban hikes might be ones you’ll want to explore yourself.

I’ll share our thoughts about the hikes we do and try to provide a better set of written instructions when they’re necessary. Happy urban hiking!