- Lacamas Creek Loop Hike (OregonHikers.org)
A forest oasis in a rapidly developing suburban setting, Lacamas Regional Park offers a fascinating sampling of landforms and habitats. At the end of the last Ice Age, over 12,000 years ago, a series of massive floods (the Missoula or Bretz Floods) swept down the Columbia River and scoured the landscape, creating exposed rock scablands and shallow depressions. This small park boasts no fewer than three waterfalls, including the pockmarked bench at the Potholes, a couple of lakes, scablands supporting oaks and camas lilies, and a deep forest dominated by maple and Douglas-fir. This loop begins on 3rd Avenue, but you can also start at Round Lake and include the Round Lake Loop Hike in the excursion. The itinerary includes a diversion to seasonal Woodburn Falls, which becomes dry during the summer but which is also best avoided when trails are extremely muddy.
- Round Lake Loop Hike (OregonHikers.org)
Round Lake, like its larger neighbor Lacamas Lake, is a child of the Missoula Floods, a depression carved when ice dams collapsed somewhere in northern Montana over 12,000 years ago and swept down through the Columbia River valley. The floods were not a single event but occurred at least 40 times over a period of 2,000 years. A “Missoula boulder,” perhaps rafted down the cataclysmic spate on a floe of ice, sits at the south end of Round Lake…
- There are two parking lots that connect to the Round Lake Loop trails. The main parking lot is on the northwest side of the lake along NE Everett Street (S.R. 500). From this parking lot you can head north to go clockwise around the lake, or head south to go counterclockwise around the lake.