OHSU Skybridge

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The ongoing bridge project makes another detour into Portland's West Hills, with a visit to the big pedestrian bridge up at Oregon Health Sciences University. The bridge provides a route between the main OHSU hospital and the Veterans Hospital that across a deep ravine from OHSU proper. Some sources insist this is the world's longest pedestrian suspension bridge, but I'm uncertain whether that's actually true or not. Structurae points out this is actually a cable-stayed bridge, not a suspension bridge; an engineering firm connected with the bridge's construction merely claims it's the longest bridge "of its type", whatever that means.

This had been on my bridge to-do list for quite some time, but I never had much of a reason to trek up to OHSU and wander around the hospital looking for the skybridge. But back in January, my mother was hospitalized at OHSU for a couple of weeks, and at one point I wandered out to go find bottled water on a Sunday afternoon, when just about everything at OHSU is closed for some reason. As I wandered around I finally saw a sign for the skybridge and figured, hey, I'll take a couple of extra minutes, and walk across (since the bridge project involves walking across whenever possible) & take some phone photos. It's a longer walk than you'd think; at 690 feet it's only a bit shorter than the Morrison Bridge (775'), so you walk and walk and the far side just doesn't get closer very quickly. Still, there were some interesting views from the bridge, and I've checked it off my list now, and it was certainly a nice break from hanging around the neurology ICU. I even found bottled water eventually (it turned out to be another seven stories down from the bridge level), and -- most importantly -- my mom's out of the hospital now and has made a great recovery.