Powell Butte Nature Park

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Powell Butte is a fascinating Nature Park where you can hike on an extinct cinder cone volcano! Located between Portland and Gresham offers more than 611 acres and 10 miles of trails with expansive views and diverse landscapes.

As part of our plan to do and share more local hikes this summer, we are bringing one here to inspire you!

This week I visited for the second time this hiking paradise, Powell Butte Nature Park. I was waiting for clear skies to see my loved Mt. Hood from there as well as the other peaks.

Kids at Powell Butte Nature Park trail path

One of the things I love the most of this place beyond the views is that you have so many trails with different options in terms of landscape and activities. For instance, you can go and walk, ride your bike, or even your horse!

Activities

This park is a popular destination for running, walking, biking, and bird and wildlife watching.

As it was mentioned above, Powell Butte Nature Park offers 10 miles of trails.

Each of the paths is well signed, so you can know in which part of the park you are as well as if you can use that trail with your bike, horse, or just walking.

Similarly, as we tried in a previous park, we picked the combination of bike and walk. My daughter rode her bike while my son and I walked. Consequently, this time we only stayed on the trails that allowed that.

The hike

As can be seen in the trail map there are different starting points. However, in our case, we decided to start from the Visitor Center.

At the Visitor Center, you will find an accessible parking lot and restrooms, benches, and picnic tables. However, by the time of our visit, all of these amenities were closed, including the entrance gate (social distancing rules).

For the situation mentioned above, our hike started at the entrance gate after parking in the neighborhood closed to it. It was a challenging uphill walk (and I had to carry my daughter’s bike most of the time).

Kids at the entrance of Powell Butte Nature Park

After arriving at the Visitor Center, we found a large map and picked the paved mountain view trail; in that way, my daughter could ride her bike with no issues since she is just starting to do it without training wheels.

The Mountain view trail leads to the summit with amazing views. On days with a clear sky, you can observe from there Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, Mount Hood, and Mount Jefferson. We were lucky to view them all that day.