Columbia Slough Trail

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Here's a slideshow from Portland's Columbia Slough Trail, which runs along the north shore levee of the Columbia Slough between N. Portland Road and Vancouver Avenue. I walked the length of the trail (minus a bit at the west end) one summer day, primarily as a way to get photos of a lot of the bridges over the slough, as well as the two islands in the middle of the slough that are technically Portland city parks (albeit inaccessible ones). After taking the trail I figured it merited a post of its own too. It's not precisely a nature trail, though; as it follows along the slough the trail passes the Heron Lakes golf course, Portland International Raceway, Portland Meadows (Oregon's sole surviving horse racing venue), and assorted industrial stuff. I dunno, I thought that was kind of interesting, or at least unusual. Your mileage may vary, obviously. (For what it's worth, it turns out that it's considered bad form to heckle the golfers, no matter how terrible they are, or how ugly their golf clothes look. You learn something every day, I guess.)

The stretch of trail between Portland Road & Denver Ave. is the original stretch of the trail, completed back in 2001, and planned back in the late 1990s. It connects with the north-south Peninsula Crossing Trail at the Inverness Force Main Bridge, the pedestrian bridge that's actually a bridge for a cleverly concealed giant sewer main. The original stretch of trail hasn't gotten proper upkeep in recent years and has developed potholes, which is probably not something you want on the top of your levee. More recently, the mile-long stretch between Denver & Vancouver Avenues just opened in January 2014, so it's in great shape, and the shiny new Vancouver Ave. bridge is designed to be bike friendly, for a change. Maybe the rest of the trail will get more attention now that it's becoming a through bike route and not just a weird disconnected stretch of trail in the middle of nowhere.

The bit between the old and new segments at Denver Ave. isn't so great right now. It's a busy street and your best bet is to take the Schmeer Rd. underpass under the street, and even then there isn't a sidewalk or bike lane, and you have to walk on the shoulder and look around for trouble. The city and ODOT want to redesign the intersection in the near-ish future, since the current intersection isn't great for cars and trucks either. The plan is to move the Schmeer Rd. intersection further north, with the current underpass becoming part of the trail.

The long term plan (or sorta-plan) is to eventually have a trail along the entire length of the slough, from Kelley Point Park all the way out to roughly Troutdale. I'm not sure about the eastern portion, but the stretch between the Willamette and the Peninsula Drainage Canal (near NE 33rd) should be doable, since it would involve building on top of existing levees, which are already publicly owned. Publicly owned & operated by the county's four obscure and seriously underfunded drainage districts, to be exact. But that's a whole other story.

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.

Waud Bluff Trail

Here are some photos from Portland's short, steep, and shiny new Waud Bluff Trail, which connects the north end of Swan Island to the residential area above, near the University of Portland. The trail's only about 1000 feet long, but with an average 10-13% grade, and at the bottom there's a footbridge over railroad tracks, and there are steep stairs on the other side of the tracks. (The footbridge gets a post of its own, because, um, them's the rules here.) There's a further 700 feet of flat trail between the footbridge and the dead-end street next to the Coast Guard base.

There's a nice in depth article about the trail at BikePortland; when I visited, nearly all of the other people there were biking up the hill. The article follows the trail downhill, in the opposite direction to all the cyclists I saw, who were doing the climb and looking very determined about it. I hope none of them were expecting cheering crowds or KOM points at the top.

So there's a nice view of Swan Island and downtown from along the trail, which is the main reason I visited. The city thoughtfully installed a couple of turnouts so you can stop for the view and not be in anyone's way, which is what I did. And if you're riding the hill, the turnouts are a chance to get off your bike and give up and wait for the team car to come pick you up. While all the other cyclists ride by and roll their eyes and giggle as they steamroller their way up the hill like it's nothing. At least you get to laugh last when they inevitably test positive for EPO or 'roids or something.

East Marine Drive Trail

Today's adventure takes us to the east end of the Marine Drive Trail, which runs along the south shore of the Columbia River much of the way between Gresham and industrial NE Portland, with gaps for a few marinas and houseboat communities. Other parts of the trail have appeared here before: Once for the west end of the trail, east of NE 33rd at Broughton Beach, and again for a disconnected segment further west near the Oregon Slough Railroad Bridge.

This area merits a separate post because a.) It's a nice scenic spot, well east of the other two locations, and b.) The stretch from NE 158th east to near 185th is owned by Metro instead of the Port of Portland. I don't think there's a sign or any sort of notice when you hit the boundary between the two areas, and they look basically the same, with the river on one side and Marine Drive on the other. It's possible I'm the only person who cares about this stuff, and even I only sort of care, but hey.

This stretch of shoreline was once part of the underfunded, mismanaged Multnomah County park system, until that system was divided up among Metro and the cities of Portland and Gresham back in 1994. (I located a list of those properties, or most of them, a while ago; it's posted on the Mason Hill Park post ). Back in circa-1994 the county listed it as the "Philippi Property". Which isn't a great name , but Metro's GIS system used it up until recently. That system now refers to it as "Columbia River Shoreline B", which isn't much of a name either, particularly since I looked all over the place & didn't see a Shoreline A. So I'm just going with "East Marine Drive Trail" because that's at least a reasonable description of the place

Oregon Slough Railroad Bridge

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As you might already know, a few years ago I sort of stumbled into a bridge project for this humble blog. It started out with the Morrison Bridge, then a couple of others, then I figured I'd go ahead and do all the Willamette River bridges in town. Then I decided to do Columbia River bridges, and somehow ended up doing Clackamas and Sandy River ones too. And now... I guess I'm not really sure what the scope of this thing is anymore. There have been a few trailing items out there, trailing because I haven't been able to get quality photos of them. With the Clackamas River Railroad Bridge, I finally threw up my hands and figured I'd just go with the subpar photos I had, and try to make up for that with a little extra history work. The Lewis & Clark Bridge at Longview is likely to get a similar treatment. I have exactly one blurry photo of it, but it's a long way to go just to take more bridge photos.

And then there's the subject of today's post, the Oregon Slough Railroad Bridge (aka BNSF Bridge 8.8) between Hayden Island and the south bank of the Columbia. The Vancouver Railroad Bridge carries trains the rest of the way, between Hayden Island and the Washington side of the river. It's similar to what the obscure North Portland Harbor Bridge is to the Interstate Bridge. The cool thing about it is that (like its Vancouver sibling) it's a swing span bridge, where part of the bridge pivots out of the way instead of raising when ships need to pass. Ok, I'm probably stretching the word "cool" to the breaking point here, but hey, I kind of specialize in that. Bridge 5.1 on the Willamette is on the same railroad line, and it used to be a swing span too until it was replaced in the 1980s.

I don't imagine this bridge has to open very often; there are a handful of commercial shipping businesses of some sort along the south side of the channel, but most of the channel is just houseboats. Still, I saw at least two people at the bridge's operator booth, possibly for a shift change. So I suppose it's always ready and able to open if the need arises, once in a blue moon. If you're ever doing pub trivia and they ask you to name all the Portland bridges that open, this is the bridge that will win you the contest, assuming you have a good trivia master. The others are, on the Willamette, doing downstream: Hawthorne, Morrison, Burnside, Steel, Broadway, and BNSF Bridge 5.1. Then on the Columbia, it's the Interstate, the Vancouver Railroad Bridge, and this one here. That's the whole list. Feel free to split your winnings with me, or at least leave a comment and say thanks, if you'd be so kind as to do that.

I've had a todo item for this bridge for quite a while. I drove by the bridge a several times but never could find anywhere to park. I had a couple of photos from the North Portland Harbor Bridge showing it way off in the distance, and I almost just went with those. Then I realized there was a segment of the Marine Drive Trail atop the levee from the Expo Center to the bridge, so I could just ride the MAX Yellow Line to the end and walk the rest of the way. This worked pretty well, and I got a bonus look at that weird bit of trail. It doesn't look like it gets a lot of use. I saw one other person there, and he was practically a speck off in the distance. He kept looking back, I guess to make sure I wasn't going to mug him or something. Then it started raining heavily. It could be my imagination, but the guy way up ahead seemed to relax when he realized I had an umbrella and wasn't just trudging along in a hoodie, like the umbrella was a badge of respectability and non-threatening-ness or something. I'm not sure how that works, to be honest.

Marine Drive Trail

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Here are a few photos from along Portland's Marine Drive Trail, on the south shore of the Columbia next to, well, Marine Drive. The trail extends along the river from just west of the airport all the way out to the area of Blue Lake Park, with a couple of gaps here and there. So it surprises me how little info there is about it on the interwebs. Part of this may be due to who owns it: Most of the stretch belongs to the Port of Portland (due I guess to being next to the airport), making it part of their hyper-obscure little park system (see also McCarthy Park and Stanley Park Blocks). The eastern stretch is the "Phiippi Property", another of the assorted park-like bits Metro inherited when they took over the Multnomah County park system back in the 90's. As far as I can tell, neither agency mentions the trail anywhere on their respective websites.

(I later realized there's third stretch of trail further west from these two, extending between the Expo Center and the Oregon Slough Railroad Bridge. Most of this stretch is privately owned, though Metro owns the piece closest to the Expo Center.)

There is an upside to this, though. Walking along the trail, you might note it really is just a trail. If the city had put it together, there'd be tedious interpretive signs and fair-to-middlin' quality public art every few feet, and the project would've been vastly more expensive. So it's a nice break, if you aren't in the mood to be lectured again about our collective mystical-yet-gastronomical love of salmon or some such thing.

One downside is that it also feels oddly remote, even though Marine Drive is right next door, on top of the levee. Maybe not the ideal place to be a lone jogger at night. I can't put my finger on why; that's just the vibe I got.

A few links, photos, etc., from across the series of tubes:

• A page including a map at Off-Street Paved Bike Paths in Oregon
• "marine drive bike path" at Mary Anne's Portland Oregon Travel Blog
• "Marine Drive Bike Ride", WierHere Blog
• "The Little List To the Right", Felt Up Tees
• "Sunset Clamshell, Sky Pano" on Flickr
• Apparently there's a Women's Triathlon every year that uses part of the trail.
• Oh, and the inevitable Urban Adventure League post, a few steps ahead of me as always. Bah, humbug.