We took the opportunity to head out to Silver Falls State Park to check out the status of the Perimeter Trail. It seems that this trail has been closed, between the Rackett-Ridge and the Buck Mountain Loop Trails, for at least one year, due to storm damage. The parking lot is at the North Falls TH, located here:
and the TH sign stands out boldly.
We started out hiking over the bridge and making a an immediate right, at the fork, that leads under the road and toward the Upper North Falls. We hit another trail fork and took a right onto the Perimeter Trail.
There are plenty of wood boardwalks,
and several wood bridges that cross small streams!
The trail switchbacks up a gentle slope and then finally reaches a wider section that must have been an abandoned road. This wide section of the trail is fairly level and soon reaches a fire road just before turning sharply to the left. We continued, in a SE direction, along another fairly level portion of the trail. As I looked around there was a towel tied to a tree branch.
Is this a new type of trail marker.
As we walked along the trail gently ascended up toward the Rackett-Ridge Trail intersection. And then we finally arrived at this large intersection, that also contained a nice map of the Silver Falls Trail System (not shown).
Twice before we had reached this intersection, and both times there was a large sign (and ribbon across the trail) indicating the Perimeter Trail was closed. Not this time!
The Perimeter Trail, past the Rackett-Ridge Trail, descends gently and continues in a SE direction. We soon reached the area of the trail that was obstructed by a huge number of downed trees from storm damage. Sorry to let the cat out of the bag but we had scoped this out on a previous unpublished hike.
An excellent job had been done in clearing the damage we had seen (but not gone past) here previously! It was here that we started seeing snow on and off the trail, that was easily passable.
Continuing our descent the trail levelled off in what felt like wet muddy lowlands. We saw this very nice stream.
And we soon stopped, at a log across the trail, due to our designated turn around time.
On the way back we stopped to admire the amazing amount of moss on the vine maple branches!
The mood was definitely changing as the mist rolled in under the canopy.
After completing the Perimeter Trail we decided to visit the Upper North Falls. It was definitely worth the effort!
Turning around, to walk back to the car, my wife liked this view as we looked down the trail!
The beauty of this hike was that there were NO hikers/bikers on the Perimeter Trail, and the weather and scenery were fantastic.
The hike was 8.7 miles with an elevation gain of about 1250ft.
