Canemah Bluff Loop Hike

Overview

A network of trails threads through this Metro property above the volcanic bluffs of the Willamette River: these are formations of 15 million-year-old Wanapum Basalts overlain by two million-year-old Boring lava flows. Some of the routes date back to pre-settler and pioneer days as this was the main portage route around Willamette Falls for those traveling the river. Atop the Canemah Bluff, the oak savannahs bloom with colorful wildflowers in the spring, but the property also extends back into a slope forest of Douglas-fir, grand fir, red alder, and big-leaf maple. The Canemah Pioneer Cemetery contains graves dating back to the mid-19th century, including those of Canemah’s founding family, the Hedges. It should be noted that Metro's logging of Douglas-firs in the area in an attempt to "restore" oak savanna is controversial; some early settler accounts attest to the preponderance of Douglas-fir when Oregon Trail emigrants arrived. Walk past the restrooms in Canemah Children's Park to get a view down the river to Willamette Falls and the paper mill site. Continue around the fence line and pick up a trail at an interpretive sign informing about the Canemah portage, the bluff-top route that river travelers took to go around the falls before the locks were built. Other interpretive signs at the park tell about early settlers and the Clackamas tribe that called the area home. Entering Canemah Bluff Nature Park, you'll join the Camas Springs Trail, which parallels the top of the bluffs, following a grassy scabland with oaks, madrones, Douglas-firs, Oregon grape, and clumps of licorice fern. Spring wildflowers here include camas, rosy plectritis, checkermallow, and blue-eyed Mary. A railed viewpoint looks across to the layers of Columbia River basalts on the West Linn side of the river. You may spot ground squirrels and cottontail rabbits in the vicinity. The trail becomes a boardwalk across a dip and then switchbacks left, passing a boulder outcropping festooned with licorice fern to turn into a woodland of Dougla

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