Ridgeline Trail Hike

Overview

Eugene’s National Recreation Trail, the Ridgeline Trail system, includes the city’s highest point, Spencer Butte. However, the most connected part of the network runs from Blanton Ridge to Mount Baldy. The Ridgeline system is a work in progress as other scattered greenspaces may be connected in the future. This description picks up at the Willamette Street Trailhead and continues through mostly viewless forest until you get vistas from the grassy summit of Mount Baldy, the second highest point in these south hills. This is secondary forest, but a few gnarly old Douglas-firs remain on Mount Baldy, in addition to some Willamette Valley ponderosa pines, madrones, and white oaks. You’ll be hiking around the headwaters of Spencer, Amazon, and Wild Hog Creeks, and an optional extension to the top of Spencer Butte, an extra 2.6 miles round-trip, is possible. Take the gravel trail past the kiosk, and hike across an oak savanna. Pass under powerlines as you walk between two Willamette Valley ponderosas. The trail enters an old orchard, and then threads along the verge of an oak wood. You’ll reach a small ponderosa plantation overgrown with blackberry before you enter a mixed forest at a large Douglas-fir. Rise to a crest, where a large ponderosa pine stands alongside the trail. Note a few madrones in the forest as you pass a spur out to Owl Road. The trail then passes through a white oak/Douglas-fir wood carpeted with invasive false-brome grass. Make three switchbacks up a sword fern slope, where you’ll find fawn lilies blooming in the spring. Traverse through vine maple, Oregon grape, and inside-out flower, passing under Douglas-firs and big-leaf maples dangling fronds of licorice fern. Cross a small footbridge, and come to the Ridgeline-Spencer Butte Tie Trail Junction. It’s 1.3 miles from here to the summit of Spencer Butte if you want to make the diversion. Continuing on the Ridgeline Trail, descend and switchback past a spur leading out to a street. Switchback again, and traverse a slope of sword fern and blackb

Trail Stats

Photos

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