It was a dark and stormy forecast but a day that surprised the 11of us with periods of sunshine. It even found us from time to time deep in the woods.
We explored a little used cut through on our way to Fairmount, then found the new trail head along Fairmount leading down a as yet unfinished trail (no gravel and very slick muddy going) dropping east down switchbacks through some nice second growth Fir and maples until we hit a major north south route that had some gravel on it. We turned north and passed over some very expensive possibly over engineered bridges til we got to the Marquam Trail-40 mile loop trail where we turned south toward Terwilliger over a graveled trail that no one slipped on. At Terwilliger we saw the Friends of Terwilliger and the County Community Service work crew pulling Ivy, and another walker joined us there. We took a tour of the BUHLER CUTOFF which is a 1000 ft trail running from Terwilliger to Barbur. We found this well graveled trail built by SWTrails in 2011 had not had the leaves blown off as had the earlier trails we traveled. We noted the BUHLER CUTOFF sign at Terwilliger faces only north so walkers coming from the south do not see it unless they look back as they pass it. Two of our walkers were particularly interested in this as they were on a bus that broke down on Barbur and had to walk up Capitol Hwy from Barbur, scary anytime but at night!!! They will use the cutoff next time.
We finished our walk with a short hike in Himes Park parallel to Terwilliger, then back to the Wilson Parking Lot.
SW Trails on Facebook
Comments are closed