Eagle Fern Loop Hike
From Oregon Hikers Field Guide
- Start point: Eagle Fern Trailhead
- End point: Kitzmiller Road Trailhead
- Hike type: Two loops
- Distance: 3.4 miles
- Elevation gain: 645 feet
- High point: 870 feet
- Difficulty: Easy
- Seasons: All year
- Family Friendly: Yes
- Backpackable: No
- Crowded: in summer
Contents |
Hike Description
This gem of a Clackamas County Park is a great place to enjoy a quiet forest walk in the off season. You’ll marvel at massive old-growth Douglas-firs and western red-cedars, gaze at the mossy boughs of maples overhanging Eagle Creek, and pause at the 18 stops on an ADA-accessible nature trail, recently resigned. There are two loops in the main part of the park: a nature trail (also called Loop C or the Lower Loop) can be combined with the Upper Loop (Loop A), which is a rougher trail, sometimes steep and rooty; in addition, off of Kitzmiller Road on the North Fork Eagle Creek, there’s Loop D and a narrow rooty lollipop loop that winds south above Eagle Creek Road but doesn’t connect with the developed part of the park. Each of these two options is about the same length, 1.6 miles, with a short road walk in between.
After depositing your day-use fee at the pay station, look up to admire the huge Douglas-firs and cedars in the parking area that are dripping with Methuselah’s beard lichen. Then walk north past the restroom building and a kiosk with information on the Eagle Creek Watershed to find a suspension bridge leading over the creek. If there’s a brochure in the dispenser here, you can pick it up. (You can also get one online: Eagle Fern Park Trail Guide.) Maples extend mossy branches over the wide creek. Look for dippers bobbing and then disappearing into the current. You’ll come to a junction and can make a right to begin the numbered interpretive loop.
The numbered trail takes you to stations where the trail guide describes plants, birds, and habitat. Short spurs lead to Eagle Creek. Impressive Douglas-firs, cedars, and hemlocks tower overhead, but this area suffered much blowdown during the windstorm of January 2021. The lush understory supports vine maple, red huckleberry, salmonberry, sword fern, and lady fern. You can see back to the road bridge and the main creek's confluence with the North Fork Eagle Creek. At Station #8, there’s a massive rotting log in the final stages of decay. At Station #11, a huge Douglas-fir towers overhead. Reach a junction where a sign thanks Trailkeepers of Oregon for its work, and head right on the Upper Loop, or Loop A, up the slope.
Peeled log steps take you up a switchback, and you'll pass a junction with a connector trail leading left. Switchback again in an old-growth slope forest where trillium, violet, and oxalis bloom in the spring. At another switchback, a rough path leads right to another big tree. Then hike up four more switchbacks to a slope of alders and maples. You'll see the edge of a clearcut above on the park boundary. The trail begins to snake down through the sword ferns, making 15 more switchbacks to arrive near Eagle Creek. Across the stream, you can see the picnic area in the developed section of the park. You can stop to admire an atmospheric grotto before undulating along the steep slope at a bend in the creek. The trail then rises to a rocky viewpoint over the creek shaded by a mossy maple. To descend from here, you'll squeeze down a narrow defile. Next, keep right at a junction before you walk past small creekside beaches above the weir. Turn right at the junction near Station 16 to rejoin the nature trail and head back across the suspension bridge.
To do the second loop, turn left after crossing the bridge and hike out to Eagle Fern Road. Then hike up Kitzmiller Road, and walk about 200 yards before coming to a parking pullout on the left and a hiker sign on the right. You can take a short trail from the pullout down to the shore of the North Fork Eagle Creek. Loop D begins at the hiker sign. Turn right at a trail junction, and continue your walk past old-growth Douglas-firs and cedars. Heading up the slope, you pass between two massive Douglas-firs on the sword fern draped hillside. A total of nine switchbacks take you up to an unmarked trail junction.
Go right here if you’re interested in doing the lollipop loop and exhausting the park’s trail possibilities. This narrower less maintained trail switchbacks up a hemlock/Douglas-fir slope and traverses into a deeper forest before making eight more switchbacks to descend to a rather rickety footbridge with a partial rope “railing.” Make a rooty traverse of the slope, catching glimpses of Eagle Fern’s parking area and structures below. Then turn up the hill, switchbacking five times through the sword ferns before descending along a fallen hemlock. Several more switchbacks take you down to close the loop. Turn right, recross the footbridge, and return to the junction with Loop D.
This more maintained trail traverses the hillside and then drops steeply in eight short switchbacks. Another traverse takes you below a rocky outcropping and then to a switchback at three large cedars. Two more switchbacks take you down to river level and Kitzmiller Road.
Maps
Fees, Regulations, etc.
- $6 day-use fee; $8 on weekends May - September
- Dogs on leash
- Information kiosk, restrooms, picnic area, play area
- Open during daylight hours
Trip Reports
- Search Trip Reports for Eagle Fern Park
Related Discussions / Q&A
- Search Trail Q&A for Eagle Fern Park
Guidebooks that cover this hike
- Extraordinary Oregon! by Matt Reeder
- PDX Hiking 365 by Matt Reeder
- Discovering Portland Parks by Owen Wozniak
- Afoot & Afield: Portland/Vancouver by Douglas Lorain
- The Dog Lover’s Companion to Oregon by Val Mallinson
More Links
- Eagle Fern Park (Clackamas County Parks)
- Eagle Fern Park – Estacada, Oregon (Black Watch Sasquatch)
- Eagle-Fern County Park Loop Trail (All Trails)
- Eagle Fern Park Loop (Hiking Project)
- Explore Eagle Fern Park in Clackamas County (Explore Clackamas County)
- “Caretaker of the parks” (Estacada News)