Forest Park Guide: The Best Bikes

Download a printable version of a map of Forest Park and a guide to all the hikes, runs, and bikes.

Heroes And Villains

HERO: Fed Nilson

As city parks manager for 30 years, Nilson battled chronic budget cuts throughout the 1980s and ’90s and maintained Forest Park with a skeleton crew. Undeterred, Nilson reenergized the dormant Friends of Forest Park (now the Forest Park Conservancy) by rallying volunteer workers and expanding the famed Wildwood Trail by more than six miles, from Germantown Road to Newberry. An arboriculturalist by training, Nilson was also the first manager to declare war on nonnative plant species, creating the volunteer-based No Ivy League in 1993 to eliminate pesky English ivy and later ensuring that invasive species removal was a long-term priority in the park’s seminal 1995 Management Plan.

FIRELANE 5
Moderate/see map Q5/bike #6
The one legal patch of singletrack in Forest Park is found deep in the park’s ferny central interior. At just a third of a mile, it’s a short ride. But it packs a wallop. From Saltzman Road, Firelane 5 careens down a wide pathway, funneling riders to a lively jumble of rock- and root-laden curves. Check your speed on the final switchback, which requires a vertigo-inducing hairpin turn before plummeting to Leif Erikson. Bonus: this summer, the city is scoping out plans to narrow the upper portion of Firelane 5, lengthening singletrack cruises.

SUGGESTED ROUTE: From NW Germantown Road, head south on Leif Erikson and turn right up Saltzman Road. At the top of Saltzman descend Firelane 5 back to Leif Erikson. (Round trip: 10 miles)

FIRELANE 3 LOOP
Moderate/see map G7/bike #7
Ferns and firs morph into a green whir on Firelane 3’s near mile-long roller-coaster descent from Skyline Boulevard to Leif Erikson. The hair-raising plunge at the half-mile mark is worth the ride alone. And like Firelane 5, this trail is being considered for enhanced singletrack work this summer.

SUGGESTED ROUTE: From Leif Erikson’s Thurman Street entrance, pedal to Saltzman Road and turn left. At Skyline Blvd turn left. Look for the top of Firelane 3 in the Thunder Crest neighborhood on the left, just past Skyline Memorial Gardens. Return via Leif Erikson. (Round trip: approximately 10 miles)

Park Inspirations: Marcy Cottrell Houle

Portland-based wildlife biologist and author of the guidebook One City’s Wilderness: Portland’s Forest Park

 It can be hard to wrap your mind around the park. But if you think about it as a habitat and a series of watersheds that are intertwined, it becomes so much more knowable. The Maple Trail is a treasure—you could just take it and drop it into wild sections of the Coast Range. The park teaches you to be an observer: you think, “What can I learn from this place? How can I enrich my life?” It’s really a place you can connect with the native habitat, and with who we are as Oregonians.
—As told to Rachel Ritchie 

Published in the The Ultimate Guide to Forest Park issue of Portland Monthly.