DOUGLASS TRAIL
WHERE: From Portland take I-205 to highway 212 East and follow on to highway 26 east. About 1 mile outside of Sandy you will pass underneath a powerline grid crossing the highway: less than a block past the grid you will come to Firwood Road on your right. Follow the road to a stop sign where you will take a right. Follow this road to the next stop sign which is Wildcat Mountain Road (I think there is also a sign for the Douglass Trailhead but I cannot remember for sure). Follow this road for roughly ten miles and stay on the main fork of the road which becomes Forest Service Road 36 then road 3626 and finally road 150 which is a short but rough gravel road. If you keep following the signs for the Upper Douglass Trailhead you will be find and every fork has a sign pointing you in the right direction.
THE TRAIL: The trail starts at roughly 3500 feet and peaks near the 4500 foot mark in several spots. After .5 miles you are already in the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness area. There are also many spurs that can be taken such as McIntyre Ridge or Huckleberry Mountain. There are quite a few nice view points during the first 2.5 miles as the trail meets with Huckleberry Mountain trail. After about 1.5 miles there is a small trail to your right that takes you to the top of Wildcat Mountain which has a good, but not great, viewing spot as there are quit a few smaller trees there. If you go just a short ways past this spur you will come upon a much better viewpoint. There is one more really nice viewpoint if you take the Huckleberry Mountain Trail about .1 miles. Less than a mile later, on the Douglass Trail, you will reach a campsite called Coffman Camp which looks like it was formerly the home of a hunting shack or something based on the flat planks piled on the ground. There is also a Spring within a short downhill walk (during spring and early summer there is plenty of water but can get fairly dry later in the season). Keep a look out for Roosevelt Elk after passing this camp spot as there is a fairly large herd that I saw hanging out here. They didn't seem as timid as many Elk I have spotted since they didn't immediately flee and when they did scamper down the mountain it was only a short was before they began to graze again with me in semi-plain site. You can also hear the mothers bark if they are with calves: This is a sign that they are nervous at which point you should back off to prevent unnecessary stress on the Elk. You can keep following the trail to Sheepshead Rock which is roughly seven miles one way and makes for a relatively tame ridge hike.
The second time I did this hike I actual saw a Long-Tailed Weasel that had just died within the 2 hours it took me to pass a spot shortly after Coffman camp and get back again. It was a young Weasel and should no signs of attack by a predator, yet it was already rigid.