Whether you run, roll, stroll or paddle, Portland's riverfront is the place to be

PORTLAND -- Somehow it isn't surprising when you see a bicyclist pedaling through downtown Portland with a canoe paddle and a life jacket affixed to his rack.


		MIKE KANE / P-I
	A biker makes his way across the Morrison Bridge in downtown Portland, known as one of the nation's top biker-friendly cities.

This is river city, after all, built around a gentle bend in the Willamette, just a day's swim by a chinook salmon upstream from the mighty Columbia. And there may not be a more outdoors-oriented city in America. It's perennially named the bicyclingest burg on the continent, most recently by Outside magazine -- no wait, that mag called Portland one of the top 10 places for an outdoors person to exist.

Mount Hood and its ski areas are a bit more than an hour away; hiking in the stunning Columbia River Gorge is even closer. The ocean is an hour and a half the other way. Fishing is huge, of course, with the Columbia and its salmon, steelhead and sturgeon just downstream. This city even has one of the largest urban forests anywhere in the trail-laced, 5,000-acre Forest Park.

But to know Portland the city, you have to stay downtown, on the water.

You see another biker with a paddle, and a pedestrian with a paddle, both headed the same direction, toward downtown's RiverPlace Marina. Here you find several dragonboats moored, awaiting crews.


		MIKE KANE / P-I
	Dragonboat crew members lean into their paddles during a workout on the Willamette River. Races are held each June.

"We have dragonboat races every June, and the crews go down to practice," explains Gretchen Heilshorn, a spokeswoman for the Portland Oregon Visitors Association and a bicyclist, snowboarder and hiker. "You see people walking in downtown Portland with paddles and lifejackets. The races are fun to watch. It's fast and furious."

RiverPlace is also at the corner of a remarkable 2.8-mile urban loop trail, open to pedestrians, skaters and bicyclists. The "Waterfront Loop," as it's called, curls around the heart of the city, crossing the river on two bridges, and here you get a real sense for the pulse of Portland. On a spring evening, the place is crazy with joggers, skaters, bikers, street people. On weekends, it's rampant with them.

"Yeah, it's really nice," says Portlander Jessica Scott, who is forced to take a break from her jog while the Steel Bridge's deck is raised for a passing boat.

Steel Bridge, one of 11 across the Willamette in Portland, has a deck for cyclists and pedestrians, one for trains, and one for cars and trucks. At times you can see all three levels in use. I, too, get stopped on the bridge while bicycling the loop. Scott and her husband, Justin Scott, say they come down every so often to run the Waterfront Loop from their home in northwest Portland near Forest Park, where they also run.


		MIKE KANE / P-I
	Spanning the Willamette River, the Hawthorne Bridge forms one end of the Waterfront Loop and is popular with crosstown bikers. It is just one of 11 bridges across the Willamette in Portland.

"Down farther, there's a cool area (RiverPlace) with shops, which is nice," she says of the loop. "They have a lot of public speakers in the park and parades and festivals down there. I've run some 5K races, so it is utilized a lot. It's wonderful."

The Waterfront Loop is one of several pedestrian routes through Portland. A larger waterfront loop, about 10 miles, is possible using part of the Springwater Corridor, an old rail line that's now complete for 20 miles and eventually will be a 40-mile pedestrian loop trail. Renovation of a neighborhood south of RiverPlace makes that larger waterfront loop tougher right now.

"When they're done, there will be a nature park and it will be a nice ride," says Karen Stiles, who operates Waterfront Bicycle Rentals at RiverPlace. "Probably 75 percent of the riders we get want to do the Waterfront Loop. A lot of the hotels send guests down and a fair amount of locals come in to ride the loop. Most of the reaction we get is very positive, that it's a great ride. It's diverse. You get a lot of the city. The Eastbank Esplanade has a great view of the city skyline."

The Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade is the newest portion of the loop, finished in 2001 and remarkably billed the longest floating pedestrian path in America. It is named after former Mayor Vera Katz, who supported its construction as central to the city's long-term vision for the downtown area, a major part of which calls for public access to the Willamette.


		MIKE KANE / P-I
	Students from a local grade school walk along the Eastbank Esplanade while on a city tour with their class.

At 1.5 miles, the esplanade forms the eastern reach of the Waterfront Loop, along the river's east bank between the Steel and Hawthorne bridges. It thus provides easy connections with the Central Eastside neighborhood and, just north, the Lloyd District, within which are the Oregon Convention Center, Rose Garden Arena and Memorial Coliseum.

"The Eastbank Esplanade is the best one to give you a sense of the city," says Jonathan Maus, a wheel-spinner who writes a bicycling blog at bikeportland.org. "I don't know of anyplace that you can ride (while) floating on pontoons along the river looking at the skyline and know it's dedicated to bikes and pedestrians. It's got real good energy and on any given day there's all kinds of people on it."

Twenty-two interpretive panels relate the city's river history -- about the bridges, floating shantytowns during the Depression, and the skyline.

Across the river, Tom McCall Waterfront Park curves along the west bank of the loop, the scene of concerts, festivals, fun runs and the Salmon Street Fountain. McCall Park's creation is perhaps instructional for Seattleites pondering the issue of the quake-frail Alaskan Way Viaduct, the concrete eyesore looming above this city's waterfront.

McCall Park, named after the visionary former Oregon governor, was created between 1974 and '78 by the removal of a four-lane freeway called Harbor Drive. McCall launched a task force in 1968 to study ways to reconnect residents to the waterfront; Harbor Drive was busted up and turned into the park.


		MIKE KANE / P-I
	Downtown Portland and the Willamette River form a picturesque backdrop to the Eastbank Esplanade, a 1.5-mile paved path between the Steel and Hawthorne bridges that forms the eastern reach of the Waterfront Loop. A portion of the esplanade is built on pontoons and actually floats on the river.

The west bank of the loop provides easy access to the Old Town/Chinatown area on the north end, the downtown core with the Portland Art Museum, Oregon Historical Society, Pioneer Place Shopping Center and the University District, home of Portland State University.

"I would say a great thing to do in summer would be to include a stop at the Portland Farmers Market on Saturdays," says the visitors association's Heilshorn. "Not only do they have produce, but also pastries."

You'll find the market, April through December, in the South Park Blocks at Portland State, an easy walk or ride about seven blocks west of RiverPlace.

An event for those with an eye for art is the First Thursday Gallery Walk, every first Thursday of the month in two locations, Old Town and the trendy Pearl District to the west, perhaps Portland's most happening locale. Galleries grouped in each area open generally from 6 to 9 p.m., offering music, wine and the chance to view new exhibits and meet artists. Word is that the event, especially in the Pearl, can get a bit boisterous, often morphing organically into an art walk/bar hop.

If you'd rather just walk, jog and ride the loop, that's cool too. The RiverPlace area features shops, a brewpub (Full Sail ales) and restaurant, bike and kayak rentals, and an ice cream shop.

"That's something a lot of families do: They'll ride the loop and then get ice cream," says bike shop owner Stiles. "They come back and say, 'Where's the ice cream shop?' That's become the big thing to do."

If 2.8 miles is not enough to get your engine burning hot -- and it is a lame bike ride energywise -- you can continue south down the esplanade and pick up the paved Springwater on the Willamette stretch. This departs the waterfront loop and passes the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and its signature submarine (the USS Blueback), moored on the river, before stretching into greenery and the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, a great urban birding area and home to herons and osprey.

The Springwater Corridor leaves the river at the old Sellwood Bridge (circa 1926) and stretches east through neighborhoods to the scintillating town of Boring.

But to stick to the water and make a larger loop, you can cross the Sellwood Bridge; it's traffic-busy and a bad one for cyclists, who are advised to walk their bikes across on the too-narrow pedestrian walkway. Once across, a pedestrian/bike path known as the Greenway follows the river north past Willamette Park back toward downtown. Remember, however, the neighborhood redevelopment may make the connection a bit dicey for the time being.

However, you can detour around it easily enough; the Portland bike map shows bike routes looping across the city like a pile of Christmas ribbons.

After all, you've got to get back and check out those paddle-powered bikes.

If you go

Lots of information on parks, trails and the bicycling program managed by Metro, the regional government in metropolitan Portland, can be found at www.metro-region.org/ You also can order bike trail maps there. Call 503-797-1700.

Descriptions of Portland city parks -- Forest Park, Oaks Bottom, Washington Park -- can be found at the Portland Parks and Recreation pages, www.portlandonline.com/parks/ Or call 503-823-7529.

Basic tourism information can be found at the Portland Oregon Visitors Association site, www.pova.org/, or 877-678-5263.

P-I reporter Greg Johnston can be reached at 206-448-8014 or gregjohnston@seattlepi.com.

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