10 Best Hiking & Trails in Portland (Costs & Tips, 2026)

Forest Park is the largest forested natural area within city limits in the entire country, and the Wildwood Trail runs over 30 miles through it without a single admission gate anywhere along the route. Free, and you genuinely forget you're inside a major American city within about ten minutes of walking in.

An extinct volcanic cinder cone rises to a summit meadow here with a clear line of sight to five different Cascade peaks on a good day — Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Rainier, and occasionally Jefferson. No fee, and the summit trail stays gentle enough that the reward-to-effort ratio is hard to beat anywhere else on this list.

One of the very few volcanoes located directly inside an American city's limits, close enough to downtown that this qualifies as an actual lunch-break hike for a lot of Portlanders. Free, with old reservoir basins near the summit that double as informal amphitheater seating for the sunset crowd.

This is Oregon's only state park located inside a metropolitan area, a genuinely rare designation that keeps its old-growth-adjacent forest and salmon-bearing creek protected despite sitting minutes from suburban streets. No entry fee, and the nature center at the trailhead runs junior-ranger programming most weekends.

At 1,073 feet, this is the highest point in the city, reached through Marquam Nature Park's forested trail rather than a road, so the summit view of downtown and the Cascades feels genuinely earned rather than driven up to. Free, connecting directly into the larger 40-Mile Loop trail network if you want to keep going.

The cliff-edge viewpoint at the top looks straight down the Columbia River Gorge in both directions, which is exactly why this is one of the most popular trailheads in the entire Gorge and fills its lot early on weekends. About $5 for a Northwest Forest Pass day permit, roughly 30 minutes east of downtown.

The trail climbs directly past the top of Multnomah Falls, the tallest waterfall in Oregon at 620 feet, which most visitors only ever see from the crowded viewing bridge far below. No hiking fee, though the parking lot itself requires a $2 timed-use permit for arrivals between 9am and 6pm from late May through early September — arrive outside that window and no permit is needed.

A cliffside trail blasted into solid rock in 1915, with a literal cable handhold bolted into the cliff face at the trail's narrowest, most exposed stretch — genuinely dramatic engineering, not just scenery. About $5 for a day permit; the trail has reopened after winter-storm damage closed it for several months, but this stretch of the Gorge sees weather-driven closures often enough that checking current status before heading out is always worth doing.

A short, steep climb up a cinder cone gets you a genuine 360-degree view of the city and Cascades in under an hour round trip, making this the pick for anyone who wants a real summit payoff without committing a full afternoon. No fee, and a road also reaches the top if you'd rather drive up and just walk the summit loop.

A two-tiered 350-foot waterfall sits at the end of a comparatively easy two-mile round trip, which makes this the Gorge hike to pick when Angel's Rest or Eagle Creek feel like too much commitment. About $5 for the day permit, and the payoff-to-effort ratio here is about as good as the Gorge gets.