The sad truth of living on a hill is that, for every giddy coast downhill, there’s the inevitable grind back up to the top.
This is doubly true when you use your bike to do a little shopping. An exercise in sustainable living turns into a symposium on curse words when you are slowly winching your way back up hill – now with 20 extra pounds of groceries and a 35 pound kid on the back. It’s enough to make you re-think those electric assist thingys.
I have spent five years trying to figure out the best way up Munjoy Hill and, I’m slightly embarrassed to say, it took Google Earth to help me visualize what is going on topographically. What an incredible program that is! It’s staggering to think that, for the princely sum of $0.00, you can get all the images shown below instantly sent to your home. We are truly living in a golden age.
As you have probably intuited, the Portland Peninsula is roughly “saddle-shaped”. The East End and West End neighborhoods sit on the high points. Congress Street runs the ridge from the East End to the West End. The trick then, is to get on the ridge line at the lowest point of the “saddle”. This makes for a gradual climb to a high point.
And so, I have a new geographical appreciation for Pearl Street. This little gem with a 3% grade will get you up onto Congress from Bayside. Conveniently, recent development has put a nice little pass from Marginal Way to the foot of Chestnut Street! But Google doesn’t know that…yet.
Can you guess the absolute steepest grade up Munjoy Hill?
Well…
The hardest way up to the top of Munjoy Hill is Fox Street to Walnut Street. This 9% grade is exaggerated below to show what it actually feels like.
For the adventurous, there is a second easy passage up the hill, but it requires a tricky (and slightly illegal) maneuver. This route takes advantage of Munjoy Hill’s classic drumlin shape, letting you climb from “tail” to “head” on an easy grade.
Cool post! I live on Washington Ave. between Fox St. and Gould St. and when I take my bike out for a ride down the hill I always dread coming back up it. I almost made it all the way up Gould St. (doesn’t connect to Washington Ave but just has a guardrail at the top, I assume it used to connect) once but had to give up about 10 feet from the top of it because I couldn’t move forward and almost flipped over backwards.
By: Corey on May 7, 2008
at 1:22 pm
I’m also a frequent user of Pearl Street. And in the West End, Congress Street was historically an indian path that follows the crest of the hill, then declines gradually to St. John – almost as though it were designed for easy cycling, even though the “street” was established hundreds of years before bikes.
By: C Neal on May 15, 2008
at 4:03 pm