I used Stefana Young’s very helpful book “Portland’s Little Red Book of Stairs” to map out the location of a group of 11 staircases. My daughter, Susan, gave this book to me several years ago but this is the first time I’d really taken a close look at it and really mapped out some hikes using the information therein. Very interesting stuff!! Excellent in many regards (except the count of most of number of steps in the staircases is wrong but why quibble a minor point!).
I lived in the Irvington area growing up from age 7 to when I left home at 21 so for years rode all over the area on my bike. I loved riding the streets in the gentle hills of NE Portland and especially the Alameda area. I never took notice of the many staircases that give efficient pedestrian access between streets on Alameda Ridge but with the help of Young’s book and the incentive of the weather window and also limited time and increasingly costly fuel I took a look
I had about a three hour window of time this afternoon to get some exercise so that eliminated driving out to the gorge. I headed to the corner of NE 19th and Mason and tackled my first staircase of the day. After doing it twice I did it again to make sure and headed south and east for the next 10!: My intention wasn’t to do all these stairs twice but when I found that the very first set was off by 6 from the number cited in the book I had to do it again to make sure I was counting correctly. The next set was also off so I ended up doing all eleven staircases twice and a couple of them three times to make sure my count was right. Strangely, only three of the eleven were correct from what Young’s book stated. No big, deal, really, but I like to get things right!
Here is a map of the journey with my track in blue and the locations of the staircases marked with the number of steps in red. My route was exactly six miles and 1,296 vertical feet. You could shorten it only a little bit by taking a little more efficient track:
Here's one of the staircases:
Here's another - Every one is unique:
Part of the fun is seeing the wonderful old homes in the area - this one is right at the top of one of the staircases:
Here's one more staircase:
Most of the stairs in Portland are in clusters so I think I'll take a look at all of the areas. Stay tuned for more "urban hikes!"
-Don
