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"If I had known I was going to live this long I'd have taken better care of myself" - anon

Cool photos, Don! I remember that fire well. Few people realize how close it came to burning Multnomah Falls Lodge. At the time, I was working in Gresham, and went down to the Troutdale airport during my lunch hour to watch the fire retardant planes take off from that tiny runway, into the smoky Gorge. It was very dramatic!

Tom

The Predition Trail had the stairs burned out in the 1991 Falls Fire and after $200,000 was spent putting in concrete stairs in the high water of 1995 came through and took a new course down where the new stairs were and took them out. 

Keep asking the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area to replace the stairs with a ships ladder and re-open this trail.  We get a lot of questions at the Multnomah Falls Visitor Center about this shorter 3 mile loop.  This would give people another alternative of a hike in the Gorge.

Ron 

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Ron

Just hiked the Wahkeena trail 2 weeks ago, so "they" felt the $ would be best spent on paving that section!?!?!?!

Thanks for showing the pics of this section of trail.  I think I've hiked to Fairy Falls about 15x over the past ten years and never have ventured off of the usual path. 

This path should/could be reopened with the right minded people appropriating funds where they should go....

markesc:

Just hiked the Wahkeena trail 2 weeks ago, so "they" felt the $ would be best spent on paving that section!?!?!?!

Thanks for showing the pics of this section of trail.  I think I've hiked to Fairy Falls about 15x over the past ten years and never have ventured off of the usual path. 

This path should/could be reopened with the right minded people appropriating funds where they should go....

We had a pretty lively discussion back in July when the paving was going on, as you can imagine!  In the long run, they probably figured it was cheaper to pave the thing then continue to maintain the way it was, considering how much traffic that gets.  Nearby Latourell, Bridal Veil and Multnomah Falls have paved trails, and I can't believe it'll be much longer before Horsetail (up to Ponytail) will be as well.  Time will tell.

I've never seen for myself, but it seems to me looking at the photos that it would be a pretty significant expense to try to reopen Perdition - and keep it "safe" enough for hikers.  Too bad.  What a cool vantage point of Multnomah from up there!  So for the foreseeable future, only the "mice" will be able to enjoy it!

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Jeff - Site Admin

Someday you'll take me home to live forever....up on the mountain
S. Chapman

I am duplicating Ron Goodwin's post here from the  Mist_Falls_1_5_08_thread , as it sounds like he encourages discussion and inquiries * * on the closed Perdition Trail.

 

" Mist Falls Lodge was at the base of the Falls and must have been built in the late teens as one of the many lodges & restraunts built along the Columbia River Gorge Highway which was built and paved in 1916.  Mist Falls Lodge was also called Multnomah Falls Inn by some and  was damaged in 1921 in a snowfall.  It was rebuilt and then burned in 1929.  Most of the lodges and restraunts met the same fate along the CRG Highway. 

It would be nice Mist Falls was the highest year round falls in the U.S.  We have Multnomah Falls as the second highest counting both falls and the 10' drop between the two.  It is exactly 100' from the Benson Bridge to the base of the lower Falls.  The USFS lists Fairy Falls on the south side of Mt. Rainer as the highest year round falls at 700' but there is no trail to it now and it is not visible from ground location.

I have never done the trail above Mist Falls without some water flowing.  Many times the wind does keep it from hitting the ground.  I really liked the picture from Cape Horn showing the two falls. 

 * * Many people are still hiking the Multnomah Falls - Wahkeen Loop but it would be nice if everyone would e-mail, call 541-308-1700 or write the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area in Hood River asking that the Predition Trail be re-opened.  Would give an alternative to the longer hike, move people out of the parking lot earlier and give another perspective to the Lodge below.  

Friends of Multnomah Falls

Ron "

 

(here are websites for The Friends of Multnomah Falls : http://friendsofmultnomahfalls.org/events.html ,

and Columbia River Gorge Natl. Scenic Area: http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/columbia/ )

 

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Jane Garbisch - Site Sherpa

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"We are here on the planet only once.... might as well get a feel for the place."
- Annie Dillard

Thanks, Jane, for looking this one up! I suspect it took you a while! It certainly deserves to be resurrected! I'm moving my post from the "Mist Falls" thread to here, although I discovered that I pretty much repeated there what I said on this thread a year and a half ago.

Ron, I'm not too sold on your idea of a ladder as you wrote in this thread. I'm sure my dog (without whom I will not hike) couldn't manage it, and climbing ladders is a bit too much for me at my age, too! I'm not the only senior/"wise person" who plans to keep hiking as long as I can manage to put one foot in front of another and who would want to use the Perdition Trail.

My own opinion is that a set of wooden stairs, such as were on the original pre-1991 trail, are quite do-able. Unlike those concrete thingys, they could be built and maintained by volunteers. I'm sure I'd be happy to spend lots of time hammering my thumbs on such an endeavor! Do we have any carpenters in the fledgling Trails Association of Oregon? This would be a worthy and high-profile/big publicity project to get us off the ground!

Getting rid of the concrete monstrosities, though, would have to be a USFS project. Any anonymous mouse who wants to sneak up there with some sticks of dynamite would run a high risk being sent to Guantanamo as a terrorist. We could certainly help pack the pieces out, though. If anyone else here is old enough to remember the "Golden Fleece" awards for federal government mis-spending, those concrete stairs (which, I believe, lasted less than a year) certainly qualified!

I'd dearly love to be able once again to hike the Wahkeena-Multnomah Loop without having to cope with the crowds on the Multnomah Falls trail.

Ron, I'll send an email tomorrow (oops, today!) and I hope everyone else will, too!

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May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.--E.Abbey

Great thread and photos of the Perdition trail!  I've hiked the trail a few times (luckily without being spotted!).  It's a pretty neat trail, but was build for the viewpoints.  There is actually a gully behind the overgrown wooden stairs (which follow a slight ridge along the gorge) through which a trail could very easily be re-built.  I suspect the most difficult area of the trail to re-open would be the first quarter mile from the intersection with the Mult falls trail.  The slope is unstable and was not well-placed in the first place - they should have placed the trail above the bluffs directly above that section of trail.  This is probably the reason that the trail is not being considered for re-opening.  That area could become extremely dangerous given some small natural disasters (mud-slides or rock-slides).

I think that sending emails, letters, and making calls to the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area is a good start in working to get the Perdition Trail re-opened however it is my opinion that this effort alone will be insufficient if we expect the governing body to take this project on themselves.  If they were serious about doing so this trail would already be open again.  I expect that the real reason comes down to resources and competing priorities.  I am new to the endevor to re-open this trail and do not know the history of what avenues have been previously explored with regard to the volunteer route to re-opening this trail and what the responses were to such inquires; perhaps someone here with that knowledge could enlighten me?  From my perspective, if we really want to get this trail re-opened, it will take more than vocal support, it will take volunteer lead action.  The first step is to determine what will be required to repair/reroute the damaged sections of trail.  Does anyone know if a recent assesment exists?  I would guess not a recent one, therefore a new one will need to be conducted.  Does anyone know a contact with the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area to get started?  I would assume of course that any volunteer help or donations of materials/skilled labor would not be too difficult to come by considering the high profile area that this trail is in and the PR it would generate.

I'm hoping that the fledgling Trails Association of Oregon will sign on to this cause!

What the Forest Service does not have is any funding for studies, much less actual construction! A lot of roads and trails are being abandoned everywhere simply because there is no funding. This will require congressional action which means individuals contacting their representatives. It's really a shame that infrastructure built over the course of many years is being abandoned right and left. You might be interested in this article from the Washington Trails Association.

It appears that any reconstruction will have to be done by volunteers.

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May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.--E.Abbey

Grannyhiker:

I'm hoping that the fledgling Trails Association of Oregon will sign on to this cause! What the Forest Service does not have is any funding for studies, much less actual construction! A lot of roads and trails are being abandoned everywhere simply because there is no funding. This will require congressional action which means individuals contacting their representatives. It's really a shame that infrastructure built over the course of many years is being abandoned right and left. You might be interested in this article from the Washington Trails Association. It appears that any reconstruction will have to be done by volunteers.

 

I agree, this is something the Trails Association would have to push/do.  I can't imagine the FS would want to reopen a trail if they don't have budget or resources to maintain the ones that are already open....But it is a worthy trail.  I do have to admit though that the Perdition Trail wouldn't have the mistique it has if not for the name and the fact it's closed!

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Jeff - Site Admin

Someday you'll take me home to live forever....up on the mountain
S. Chapman

The only real problem in reopening the Perdition Trail is the stairs. The rest of the trail just needs a few logs cut out and some TLC. The stairs have fallen this way and that on top of each other in a narrow defile and since they're concrete, there's really no way a volunteer group can move, repair or remove them.

I wonder if there's anyway to reroute the trail so it doesn't need that narrow draw.

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What do you suppose is around that next bend?

Steve,

     That trail could very easily be re-routed.  I checked it out about a year ago, and there are several variations that would make a lot of sense (for instance - running the trail up the small drainage, rather than on the ridge spine (where the wooden stairs are) would be very simple, and would only take a trail crew a day to complete.  Avoiding the stairs would be fairly easy as well.  My main concern on that trail however, is not that area, but the 1/4 mile before Multnomah falls.  That section is not well placed.  It should be run up above the slope (current burn area), for a trail that will last longer, and be safer.

   It is a terrible blunder they made with that stupid staircase.  We now can see the dilema they created - a big mound of trash that would require blasting and a lot of hard work to remove!  I'm afraid early Gorge trail-builders were not ecologically minded in their planning.

-Zach

chameleon:

   It is a terrible blunder they made with that stupid staircase.  We now can see the dilema they created - a big mound of trash that would require blasting and a lot of hard work to remove!  I'm afraid early Gorge trail-builders were not ecologically minded in their planning.

Even sadder is the fact that those concrate stairs were built by people in the 1990s that should have known better!

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What do you suppose is around that next bend?