41. Riverside Trail
Summary
Length 3.7 miles one way
Difficulty Easy to moderate
Season Early-spring to late-autumn
Elevation range 1,360 feet – 1,480 feet
Human imprint High (campgrounds, hikers, nearby highway)
Information Mt. Hood National Forest, Clackamas River Ranger District
Primary old growth features
Scattered old survivors of the Riverside Fire (2020); fire effects in old growth.
Description
The Riverside Trail (723), true to its name, remains close to the east bank of the Clackamas River for most of its length. Once renown for prime stands of lowland old growth and impressive western redcedar, the namesake Riverside Fire (2020) severely burned over the entire length of the trail, continuing downriver over twenty miles to the outskirts of Estacada. One of five massive, concurrent wildfires whipped by extraordinary east winds in the western Oregon Cascades, the Riverside Fire burned over 100,000 acres in the first 30 hours ultimately covering over 138,000 acres. Collectively, these and other smaller fires known as the 2020 Labor Day Fires burned over 1.2 million acres and destroyed thousands of homes and structures, mostly in the first 36 hours.
The Riverside Trail, designated as a National Recreation Trail in 1979, was one of the first trails burned by the Riverside Fire to be cleared and re-opened to the public four years after the 2020 Labor Day Fires. Though the forest has been completely transformed by the fire, I included it in the guide because it is an excellent and readily accessible example of fire effects in a former old-growth forest. Scattered old survivors remain along the trail, and the recovering forest is an important and beautiful ecosystem in its own right.
The trail is a standalone path stretching from Rainbow Campground in the north to the Riverside Campground at its southern terminus. From the trailhead in Rainbow Campground, the path initially parallels the Oak Grove Fork downriver but soon climbs to the top of a shoreline cliff with a sweeping view up the Clackamas River. The path alternately swings away from the river, then veers back to the rim of the riverside bluffs. A little farther south the trail curves away from the river, in places nearly abutting the main road in an area that was logged post-fire to remove hazardous roadside snags. The trail then swerves riverward and dead ends in Riverside Campground. On our last visit, we shared the forest and river with a family of six bald eagles near the campground.
The finest stands of old forest were located near each end of the trail on rich, riparian flats tucked inside bends in the river, and this where some of the largest survivors and snags still stand. Individual and small patches of large, live Douglas-fir are scattered along much of the trail, but small trees and other tree species are essentially all dead. Most of the older Douglas-fir also succumbed under the extreme burning conditions of the inferno. The spatial pattern of survivors appears fairly random, but from the perspective of the larger landscape there are more survivors near the river than upslope. Consumption of the organic soil and litter layers exposed mineral soil and fried tree roots in many areas. Fire-killed snags are providing new homes for woodpeckers, fungi, insects and other forms of life.
30 years of change
Riverside Fire (2020) burned severely along the entire trail.
How to get there
From Estacada (southeast of Portland on State Highway 224), continue southeast on Highway 224 for almost 26 miles to where Highway 224 ends at the junction of Forest Roads 46 and 57. Stay on the main road (FR 46) to the right and turn right into Rainbow Campground 1/10 of a mile later. The southern trailhead is on the right in Riverside Campground another 2 ¾ miles up FR 46.
