4T Trail without the Tram

I had encouraged Emily throughout the week to plan something for the weekend.  She came up with us trying out the 4T trail in Portland.  Working downtown I see a lot of the city but with her out at Clatskanie she doesn’t get to explore the city much so we thought it would be a fun day.  Unfortunately, because the loop requires riding a Train, Trolley, Tram, Leo couldn’t join us, although we saw a lot of dogs on the Trail portion of the 4T.  Read on…

We started downtown stopping at a few stores before hoping onto the train up into the hills of Forest Park to the Zoo where we would start our trail hike.   We didn’t bother going into the zoo as it was already early afternoon and we had Chris Holm visiting us later in the evening.  We were blown away by the sheer number of flowers in bloom around the zoo in the middle of winter though!  This has truly been a wacky season in the US.  

It took us a few minutes to locate the 4T trail signs but once we did we were on our way across the busy Route 26 to the trail system that would take us 4 miles past Council Crest to the OHSU Tram.  We certainly weren’t alone on the well-maintained trail as it was a beautiful day to be out and about.  When we got to Council Crest, which is the highest point in Forest Park above the city, we were met with amazing views of Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, and Mt. St. Helens in the distance.  There were a lot of people at the top relaxing in the sun and road bikers celebrating at the end of their big climb from downtown.  

From Council Crest we continued down through the pleasant forest past massive, million dollar homes built into the steep hillsides of Marquam Gulch past the Nature Park and then up a steep hillside to OHSU.  At the nature park there were some pretty interesting historical signs talking about the history of Marquam Gulch and it being one of the first settlement areas of Portland.  

At OHSU we made our way through the massive hospital buildings and campus to the Tram only to find it out of order!  From what we heard this was the first day since it was opened over 5 years ago that it wasn’t in operation!  What luck!  We patiently waited for shuttle bus to bring us down to the lower tram station but I noticed a walking path down the hillside for us to take so we jumped off the bus and continued down on foot through some nice neighborhoods to the lower Tram Station at the south riverfront.  

From there we jumped on the Portland Street Car (Trolley) back to downtown.  So, I guess we ended up doing a Portland 3T trail instead of 4T and will have to go back another time, maybe with our parents to do the full trip.