Peninsula Crossing Trail

Here are a couple of photos from North Portland's Peninsula Crossing Trail, which parallels the Portsmouth Cut (the big artificial canyon for the BNSF railroad) between Willamette & Columbia Boulevards, and then continues north all the way to Marine Drive. I only walked the segment between Columbia and Fessenden; I parked at Northgate Park, took photos of the bridge on Fessenden St, and then followed the trail to Columbia to check that bridge off the list too. The trail winds along in a bit of forest between the cut on one side and various apartment complexes on the other. You don't see the cut from the trail, at least on this segment. Which is probably fine, since it's really not that scenic unless you're into trainspotting, and I imagine the trees reduce the train noise for the surrounding neighborhood a bit.

The trail's pleasant but not that exciting on its own, but it provides a key connection in a larger network of trails around the city. At its northern end, it connects to a segment of the Marine Drive trail, near the Oregon Slough railroad bridge. It also kinda-sorta connects to the Columbia Slough trail at Columbia Blvd., near the giant sewer plant, although getting across Columbia there is kind of dodgy. On the south end, the trail's supposed to eventually connect to a new segment of Willamette Greenway trail (according to Metro's regional trails plan), although it's likely to be years before that trail's constructed, since an underfunded Superfund cleanup has to happen first. In any case, my understanding is that this trail is primarily supposed to be a bike commuter route, and maybe it is one during prime commute hours. When I dropped by, though, most of the people I saw on the trail were walking dogs or pushing strollers.