Today’s hike was to celebrate my first full day of being retired. Since I can go out mid week now, I thought the Riverside trail would be a great trail to hike. I had wanted to hike it since it was recently reopened after the 2020 fires and this seemed like a perfect opportunity.

Since I figured it would be a shorter hike and it was just Thor and I we headed out a bit later than usual. We got to the northern trailhead (I planned to hike it north to south). We got to the northern trailhead at the entrance to the Rainbow campground (which is closed for the season). We parked and headed down the road into the campground, looking for the trailhead. We found it at the south end of the campground:

We started down the trail and almost immediately we encountered the first of many very large trees that have been cut – hiking stick for scale:

As we proceeded, one thing I didn’t realize was that the north end of this trail follows the Oak Grove Fork, not the main stem of the Clackamas – I hadn’t remembered that – although the last time I hiked this trail (if my notes are correct) was back in 2012! As we were following the Oak Grove Fork, we came across this cool rock formation:

A little farther down was this view of the Oak Grove fork – kind of neat where it gets down really close to the river:

It wasn’t too long before we got to the main stem of the Clackamas – I think this was taken about the spot where we first saw it:

A little further down the trail, we encountered a boardwalk – I’m pretty sure this was not here before the fire – but it was very well built:

A little farther down the trail, there were the first of several interesting rock formations – I wonder if you could see these before the fires? The fires certainly opened up a lot of new views that were not possible before:


At some point, in a muddy area, I noticed a bunch of fresh deer prints on the trail:

And a bit further, another interesting rock formation – the trail snaked its way thru this formation:

We soon got to one of the viewpoints of the river (it is always not too far away, but only certain places where you can get a good view of it). Looking across the river, you could see the snow covered hills. I think this might be Fish Creek Mountain hiding in the clouds in the background:

As we continued south on the trail, the damage from the fires appeared to get worse – or maybe more trees were cut in this area – the trail goes right next to the road and soon gets up to where there used to be a Ranger station I think. There is also an old insulator where the phone line crossed the river from the old Cold Springs Trail:

This was the spot we got to last fall when we hiked a bit of the south end of the trail on the way home from another hike. I knew we were getting close to the south end. We continued heading south and soon encountered this really interesting tree – it is still alive after the fires and is holding on, leaning over the river:

It wasn’t too long before we got to the southern end and the Riverside Campground. We walked over to a campsite near the river and ate lunch at the picnic table. While we were there, I took a video of the river:

After eating lunch, we turned around and headed back. On the way back, I decided to try and count how many logs have been cut off the trail after the fire – I stopped counting at about 620 logs! There was SIGNIFICANT work done on this trail to restore it after the 2020 fire!

Just south of the mid point of the trail is an access point. There used to be a VERY large parking area with a sign for the trail. After the fire the parking area is probably a quarter to a third the size it used to be and there is no longer a sign there. We hiked the short connector trail over to the parking area and found a trailhead sign but not much else:

After looking around a bit, we headed back to the trail and continued our way north. At one spot where the river narrows (I think it might be near Austin Meadow), I took another video of the fast running river:

We continued north. On the way back, I didn’t really do any clearing of trail at all. On the way down, I cleaned up a few areas I could just to make for easier passage. Even though there has been a lot of cutting done on this trail after the fires, there were probably a dozen or so downed trees across the trail. It seems as though that will be the pattern for all the trails that were affected by the fires – lots of new downed trees for the foreseeable future.

We got back to the truck about 2:45 – it took about 2 hours each way. We did a bit more mileage than I was expecting but it was a fantastic day in the woods and we only saw two people all day long! We met them on the way down (they had started at the south end) and then again on the way back. I’m looking forward to more weekday hikes now that I’m retired!