Near Portland, a new nature park: Scouters Mountain

Oregon’s volcanic Boring Lava Domes are sprinkled lightly throughout Portland’s city limits: Rocky Butte, Mount Tabor and Mount Sylvania are the best known. But away from town, these peaks increase in number, coalescing into a spectacular, undulating landscape of round tops and deep valleys. As you head southeast of Portland, nearing Boring, the lava domes fill the views with scenic hills rising to Mount Hood.

In 1952, the Boy Scouts of America Cascade Pacific Council bought 190 acres on a 932-foot-high lava dome, now known as Scouters Mountain, in Happy Valley. Campers worked on merit badges, slogged through mud and sang around campfires here from the 1950s to 2004. They overnighted in Chief Obie Lodge, a 22,000-square-foot stone and wood structure named for G.H. Oberteuffer, Portland’s Scout executive from 1925 to 1958. But by the 1990s, said Eugene Grant, a scoutmaster and former mayor of Happy Valley, the Scouts knew they did not have the funds to upgrade the aging lodge. “We were property rich but cash poor,” he said. With residential growth planned for Happy Valley, the Scouts decided to sell the property.

Metro and the City of Happy Valley and North Clackamas Parks and Recreation bought 70 acres from the Scouts and another 30 acres on the north side of the lava dome from the Rogers family.

The rest of the Boy Scouts land, 120 acres, is in the process of being sold to developers. Proceeds from these sales and the Metro sale will fund improvements at the Boy Scouts’ Meriwether and Clark camps on the Oregon Coast.

Trails here and nearby

The park’s 100 acres have about 1.5 miles of trails, in two loops. The larger, the Boomer Trail, is named for the resident aplondotia, or mountain beaver. You’ll probably never see this elusive creature, but you’ll likely see its burrows — large holes in the hillside, and sometimes even a pile of sword fern neatly stacked like cordwood outside the hole.

Trails wind around the mountain in a light-filled, open forest of fir and maple. Thinning of the firs in some places by Metro crews is bringing more light to the forest floor, allowing for growth of native understory plants. In other places, snags are left standing for wildlife.

At just 1.5 miles of trail, there’s not a lot of hiking opportunities yet, but Metro plans for a 34-mile loop that will connect two Boring Lava Domes — this one and Mount Scott with neighborhoods and places to eat, work and shop.

If you’re doing either the “Leach Botanical Garden to Willamette National Cemetery Loop” or the “Mounts Talbert and Scott Ramble” from Portland Hill Walks, swing by the park for another quick and beautiful outing.

Sit on this: art inspired by the little things

At last night’s opening, artist John Christensen gave a walking tour of the art in the park — not grand monuments, but five contemplation spots he said were designed to appeal to his latest target audience: his two granddaughters, ages three and six. Each is a bench milled of old growth Douglas fir salvaged from the lodge. While you sit, you share the bench with John’s interpretation of a tiny life form, scaled up to match the massive benches. John said, “I focused on small, often primitive growth – ferns, fungi, mosses, lichens — that create, like Douglas firs and humans, a dominant biotic cover for a give place, scale and set of conditions.

John writes, “The delightfully massive furniture recalls the often overbuilt and lovingly crafted park architecture of the CCC and WPA.” Indeed. The benches incite the same reaction you see at Timberline Lodge: a lot of smart phones in the air, recording hand-crafted beauty that fits the site, in this case a shady forest, with elegance and simplicity.

The art in the park was funded by several partners: the Stanley Morrow Memorial Fund (provided by Mike & Diane Morrow), Metro, the City of Happy Valley and North Clackamas Parks and Recreation District. Stan, a former Scout who had camped at Scouters Mountain, was killed in a car accident. The seed money provided by his parents via the fund sparked the first discussions of art in the park.

Metro’s Scouters Mountain Nature Park page contains details on hours, directions and other facts about the park.