Post date: Mar 09, 2017 5:35:26 PM
The feeling of cabin fever has set in among Portland area trail runners as the sweet hill climbing trails of the gorge, Cascade Mountains, and Tillamook Forest lay under snow or choked with winter blowdown. Many are already tired of Forest Park, but there are some antidotes right here in River City. There are a series of routes handed down from legendary trail runners that exploit the nasty climbs available in Forest Park. The so-called "North Nasty" is perhaps the most famous, but there are a total of four in the original series but their routes have been hard to find. One website named all four routes but you had to show up at some long-ago event to get routes. Three of the routes I was able to find on Strava, for the fourth I tracked down a long time trail runner in these parts that had a hand drawn map of the Flaming Nasty - thus completing the collection. So although the North Nasty has quite a following (based on hundreds of attempts in Strava), the South, Alphabet and Flaming have had less than a 10 attempts as of March 2017. If you are looking for a fresh challenging route, check out one of these routes. Be prepared, these are ridiculously nasty and don't let the relative security of nearby Forest Park suck you into a false sense of calm and easy. And please, watch out for cars if you go on one of the road sections - that's a hazard trail runners are not especially adept at heeding.
The Alphabet Nasty is currently officially closed due to Lower Macleay and Wildwood Trail closures, https://www.portlandoregon.gov/parks/article/422538.