Raptors and Rainstorms: Forest Park

Forest Park is a public municipal park in Portland. It is enormous. One of the largest city parks in the country. The park covers more than 5100 acres and contains over 70 miles of trails. York River State Park, where I worked last summer, is exactly half the size of this park at 2550 acres. So, this is a big park.

I parked at Pittock mansion atop of one of the tall hills in the park. I did not know this until I started research for this post, but Pittock mansion was originally built for Henry Pittock, the publisher of The Oregonian. It's an enormous house with a fantastic view of the city, but I did not go inside. I only looked at it after I'd been sweating my way up hills for several hours in the rain, and I thought I might feel a bit out of place touring the sitting room of a mansion and glancing past the harp to admire the view of the city.

As mentioned above, it was not the best day for hiking. In fact, the majority of the time I was in the park it was either actively raining, or I was hiking through a cloud. But, it was my last full day in Portland, so I had to check no choice but to brave the weather. Also, figuring I would encounter quite a bit of rain on this trip, I went to the Columbia outlet and purchased some high quality rain gear (and at great prices). This stuff is completely impermeable, it's fantastic. I think I could probably sit square in a mud puddle and not notice.

Anyways, I hiked down from Pittock Mansion on a few different trails until, a bit later, I ended up in someone's backyard. From there I turned around and hiked back up the hill, had a bit of lunch, took in the view of downtown Portland, and went home to dry off. All in all, I spent a couple hours hiking and had a good time. It is a gorgeous park, particularly to be attached directly to the downtown of a city.

Here are a few pictures of the park: