This is a beautiful, championship-length course. It is easy to navigate, almost completely shaded, with little undergrowth to lose discs in. The pads, baskets, and signs are all in great shape. It is nearly impossible for a non-open caliber player to shoot under par on due to its length.

Someone was near tee 1 selling discs for reasonable prices on the Saturday afternoon I stopped by. It was busy, but not insane. Everyone I met was pretty friendly.

The best part about this park is it is huge. The designers took advantage of this to make every hole pretty epic. There are no filler holes here. That said, you occasionally have to walk a bit between holes, especially from 18 back to the parking lot.

The locals tell me there will soon be 12 more holes added into the park next door and the two parks will be connected by a bridge. That would make for a sweet 30 hole golf tournament.

Not a lot of variation on hole length. Nearly every hole is 350-450. The "birdie holes" are 300 feet long and there aren't many.

There was also a strange phenomenon of a pile of beer cans and gatorade bottles next to every tee. There were no trash cans, but every one went to the trouble to put the cans in one big pile. There weren't any between tee pads, but every tee pad had a pile. It was like they were waiting for some homeless guy who comes by every afternoon to pick them up and recycle them or something. I cannot believe how much effort has gone into this course to not have a few trash cans on it.

I wouldn't miss this course if you pass within 100 miles of it. It is better than the best course in dozens of states. Add in trash cans and a little more variety in hole length and it would get the illusive perfect 5.

P.S. I only made it to first base on hole 19. Home plate would be an impressive drive.

Few cities can boast of having a serious dg course within city limits. Pier Park's proximity to civilization has not resulted in short gimmicky holes. Nor has the design been left to amateurs.
Many challenging holes offer problems for lefties and righties alike. There are good tee signs and tee pads. And though an occasional jogger or dog walker interlopes, they usually seem aware of the flying plastic.

Winter and mornings aren't crowded. Local players range from the homeless bottle collectors (yes they were playing) to former world champions. Everyone I've run into (in my four or five times here) was pleasant.

Most of the challenges of this course involve finding a route around a gigantic early tree(s). But what great trees they are!

Most of the hole lengths are similar (many around 320, or downhill but playing 320) and quite a few of the holes present the same problems. (3 and 4 for example. Or 17 and 18.)

There isn't really that much elevation/gain or loss despite what previous reviewers say. (visit Horning's Hideout, Stafford Lake, Lake Casitas, or Dela for a taste of elevation gain/loss). That said, the holes that involved elevation were fun.

All of the greens/basket areas are pretty easy. There's never really a price to pay for blowing by a basket. And there's never that one little annoying branch to alter your otherwise easy putt. (some may view this as a pro, i prefer the challenge.)

-Easy Parking

-good warmup/practice area

- donation box

- barely good enough bathroom.

Bring your A-Game! Good elevation changes, nice and long. IN THE TIMBER!!! Pick your alley and FLING IT! Threadin' needles and stuff. It's usually pretty good for not stacking up, but on those nice friday afternoons in the summer, it can. The fountain in the back (off hole 9 or 10, I think) is a friggin lifesaver on those summer afternoons, isn't it, Drew? Repeat after me: "I AM A LUMBERJACK!!!"

None, if you complain about the trees, they will kill you. Ask Marky Mark.

Play the "19th". At least see how far you can throw your discs. Make sure you aren't throwing over the top of the golfers approaching hole 2. See if you can hit home plate...I've seen it done. Probably 450 feet on the fly...ridiculous..? The thermals you get off the soccer field in the summer are, ridiculous.

Well designed; Nice Elevation on many holes; Good mix of short and long holes; Beautiful new signage (Thankyou Next Adventure!); Good community of Disc Golfers; Gorgeous Old Growth Doug Firs on every Hole; A nice mix of Sequoia and large Shade Trees- this course really puts you in touch with the PNW beauty. All Par Threes, but good opportunity for skill Dueces; nothing is luck at Pier so bring your "A" game- not a course for beginners.

Not many. The course can get crowded; this is a park so you will encounter children, walkers, joggers, etc- but rarely do they cause delay to play

I play this course every Saturday at first light with my fellow Discmen- and each and every Saturday, the weather and light change the apperance of the course, it is an amazing serene place. Please be a steward for the park and pack out anything you bring in, and even trash, bottles, etc that others leave behind- enjoy!

A picturesque course located in a park with 200ft Douglass trees. When you think of a course in Oregon, this course is what you would think of. This beautifully maintained course has a great mix of holes in length. You will need to bring all your shots out of the bag, because this course requires a little of everything when it comes to shots required. Overall this course is more technical than open with the thick trees throughout the course. Although there isn't much of an elevation change, the course allows for 80% of the holes to be challenging and really fun.
Newer baskets, concrete tee pads, and great tee signs makes for another great experience navigating the course. The park is very clean and well-maintained so make sure to keep your trash and dispose of it at the front of the park. At the front of the park there are also restrooms and running water with plenty of street parking.

It's really hard to put in too many cons for this course, but then again there's always something that can be improved on. There really isn't any elevation changes, which I think really can add to a difficulty of a course. Most of the holes were more technical, and the few that were open were very bland. Make sure to watch out for bikers.

The overall challenge of this course was about a 3.75/5. This is a must play course if you are in Portland or the area in general. I had the most fun on this course than I did at Milo or Hornets, not saying it is better but I had more fun. The locals were very friendly and fun to shoot with. A great course to really take in the feel of Oregon and the beauty of the outdoors.

This course is on a beautiful park that is mostly wooded, but has some holes in the meadow. Holes 1 - 6 are my favorite, they have great scenery, and a challenging yet fun layout. It's hard to loose a disc here because there isn't much underbrush.

You need a course map because the tees are poorly marked and you can get lost looking for the next tee. The course needs those signs at each tee that says what number it is and how many feet to the basket with a little diagram of the flight path.

You can play this course on a really hot, sunny day because its mostly shaded to keep you cool.

I love this course when I don't have enough time to get to any of the other great courses in the Portland area. The course is great in it's own right, and there are very challenging holes that IMO make me a better disc golfer. Every time I play this course I find new routes on some of the holes and types of throws to make.

New tee signs look great! Great job to everyone at stumptown and next adventure that worked on the course this summer!!

Can get kinda crowded sometimes. Just jump around on some of the holes in the middle of the course to pass up some of those 8-12+ people groups.

Hole six is one my favorite holes of all time. There is nothing better than letting a drive rip and watching the disc's flight down the hill towards the basket. Not a "top of the world" hole, but a great downhill shot for sure.

Fun, amazing course, and challenging in a good way. Seems to be well maintained, when I was there there was a large group of volunteers helping out. Disc golfers there seem to be friendly.

My hometown course just wont be the same, and I'm 5 hours away from PP. I already feel the itch to go back.

A good hike to the bathrooms if you are deep in the course.

Signs could have been a bit clearer.

I was able to play this course decently well with 3 months of experience.

Perhaps I was just lucky but there were no crowds when I was there around 3 on a Saturday.

Bring water, it's quite the course. Especially during Summer.

18 holes!
Challenging.
Wide variety of features.
Dog friendly (thus far).
Shady!
Fairly tough to lose discs!

It's easy to miss different baskets.
Hole 17 and 18 are not well maintained.

Bring a map!
Pack water!
Plan on spending at least two hours!
Prepare to hit a lot of trees!

It's a huge park with lots of different types of holes to test your different throws.
The scenery is beautiful and well kept.
The abundance of huge trees provide great shade in the summer and cut down on the wind.

There are a lot of trees which can be maddening sometimes.
A beginner may be a little intimidated by this course with long holes and a few blind ones too.
It's in a bad part of town. Stay out of there at night. I was shot at while hanging out there one night. No joke!
One can easily get lost trying to find some of the holes, and only some of the tee pads have numbers on them.

All in all, it's an awesome course! I've yet to meet any unfriendly players there.

**Updated 10/14/10

Great versatility with many different types of shots, uphill, downhill, tunnel, left, right. More I can't even think of, you get to be really creative with your shots here.

Not many short holes, I like that 75% of the holes require you to actually throw a driver, as opposed to Leverich and Glenwood in Vancouver that have many holes reachable with a mid or putter.

Super challenging and competitive course.

Impossible to lose a disc here.

Looong Tee pads that remain pretty uniform throughout the course.

Well maintained baskets as well as a practice basket before the first tee.

This Park is absolutely beautiful. The tall evergreens provide cool shade in the summer, and protect from the rain in the winter.

New signs from Stumptown DG and Deek and Bryan's. Not only do the signs feature footage and major obstacles but location of the alternate pin and it's footage as well. These signs are great.

This course is everything Pacific Northwest Disc Golf is all about. A rose of the Rose City.

Not for beginners, some intermediate players might find it challenging as well.

Gets really crowded on nice days and weekends, but don't let that turn you away, you should enjoy every second you get to spend on this course.

Minimal to moderate non-Frolfer traffic, but they keep to the various paths that twist throughout the park.

This is the best Disc Golf course in the Portland Metro Area, I'd even go as far to call it possibly one of the top-5 courses in the entire Northwest.

If your a hardcore Frolfer hit this place up immediately, if you're just getting into the game or you've been playing the shorter courses of the area and want to gauge your game come here.

Enough good things cannot be said about the layout and design of this course.

the trees make it hard but its fun still also. good tee pads and baskets and a couple of benches when its hilly. good mix of different shots for you to try and master

its hard to find your ways around with no tee signs so you have to play with people who know the course or you have to ask someone. can get frustrating

this is a great course to play and learn lots of shots and have fun

*The trees. Just take my work for it, the trees are phenomenal....
*Great design. Rights, lefts, low ceiling, high ceiling, open, tight.... every type of shot required.
*Good Flow
*Challenging, yet manageable.
*Good use of minor elevation changes...
*Did I mention the trees????

*No tee signs or hole maps
*Some of the tees/pins can be difficult to locate, 6 to 7 and 13 to 14 to 15 come to mind, so if its your first time, bring a map or join up with a local.
*It can be crowded, but all of the people I've run into have been way cool.
*The park is kind of a pain to find, and its a ways out there, so get good directions, and stick to them.
*The park isn't in the best of neighborhoods, I've never had any problems, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear otherwise...

This is one of my favorite courses. The course starts out with two semi-open holes, at least by Pier's standards. Hole three is where you enter the trees. For the rest of the course, you play through, or along the edges of a huge stand of MASSIVE fir trees. The cool thing, even though the trees make you feel you're in the forest, the underbrush is nonexistent, so losing a disc isn't a huge risk.

Even though there's no HUGE elevation changes, the course incorporates a fair amount of undulation, both in the fairways and on the greens...

Again, if its your first time, make sure you get solid directions to the park, and a map of the course, but if you've never been, and you have an afternoon to kill in Portland, check this course out.

There's just something special about this place, once you get into the trees, its easy to forget you're in a city park.

Location. Scenery. Salmon berries in the summer. Variety for righties and lefties. Close to home. Easy access. I've played this course about 100 times, never tire of it. Plenty of parking. The drive over St. Johns bridge is always a pleasure, coming and going. Friendly folks for the most part. I'm blessed to live near such an amenity. Great tees, the baskets are in very good shape. Little trash here and there, mostly a clean scene. Long drives, interesting technical challenges. I've only lost one disc in 100+ trips. The story here is trees. Little underbrush, you won't lose many discs here. If you're a Portlander, you know about our local gem. If you're visiting, you can't miss this one. Close to hotels or motels and good cheap eats, like the Mexi place on Lombard that shares the same bldg as the grocery. I thought DeLa Veaga was the bomb diggity....come on down and do Pier. Couple of plusses: Even when it's rainy and windy in P-town, for some reason the weather is better at Pier----less rain and wind I've discovered. Also, cooler on hot days.

Crowds!!! However, get there before 9:00 a.m and you'll have a leisurely time. The tokers and topers haven't got an idea yet at that time, so just go a little early and you'll be fine. Otherwise, it can be a time to try your patience. Pier is all about trees, lots o'trees; control those drives. I would say the course is basically intuitive to follow; there are a couple of tees that may be tough to find. I think there's a map of Pier somewhere...print it up if it's your first time. There is only one bathroom at the first tee----. Take some skeeter-fighter in summer, just in case---we got eaten up a couple of times.

I'll throw Pier 75% of the time. If you need a change, try Leverich in Vantuckey, close by off I-5. Or, a little further south, Timber in Estacada. Or Dabney in Troutdale. For a special treat, try North Bonneville across the Columbia River. But, Pier pretty much has it all. Once it started snowing there, and it was one of those times when the snow coming through the big firs, the whole scene could have been staged in a movie. GIve it up for the volunteers who helped get Pier in gear and keep it there.

This course is in its own little world , with the towering green giants with their dark brown bark with the darkgreen foliage in the background. It can be serene. I appreciated the large concrete tees,the large area where the practice basket is and the baseball fields to practice your drives. The wide paths are appreciated through out the park since joggers and dog walkers frequent the park which brings me to the great design of Pier Park. There isn't any holes that require you to WAIT for others to get out of the way. The layout challenges all shots in the bag too.
Starting with a roller on Hole #1 & #2
( its the only part of the course that has "lawn" take advantage of it.
Hole #5 is a elevation shot up to a blinded basket.
Hole #6 - Your mouth waters as you look down at drive in elevation.
Hole #13 - Will test your over-hand.
Holes #14 & 15 - Screams "down the middle" as the basket stares at you if you have a straight drive.
Hole #18 - A wide-open drive
The scenery is WoW! tall trees

Can get crowded during afternoons and weekends.

I came up to Portland for work and discovered Pier Park. I played here 6-9 times a week for two months I've been spoiled. I was there during the hours of 6am-noon weekdays, very nice and quite its a whole different atmosphere,INCREDIBLE!

UPDATE: New tee signs and some underbrush has been removed...overall Pier Park looks at its finest. Tee signs improved my rating!

1st tee is directly next to the parking circle. The grass was very well kept, there was a nice amount of trees and lots of long holes.

Pier DGC is located in a city park so it shares all the fine accommodations one could offer. Trash bins EVERYWHERE.

Drink and smoke appears to be kosher.

When I played it was pretty crowded with all kinds of people so I would go early
Had to dodge a few tennis courts.
Holes 6-9 made some confusing switch backs but I noticed what looked like the bed for a new concrete tee pad so that may have been why things where hectic around there.

This is my friends home course that I had the pleasure of playing last summer under perfect conditions.
I was really blown away coming from WA.

Huge course with big trees. Concrete tee-pads. Bring discs for all types of shots. Easy to navigate.

No cons from me here on this one I must say. This place kicked butt.

I could spend all day here. I'm from Seattle and will be back soon.

concrete tee pads are always a plus, all the days i've gone there was a guy by the first tee selling drinks and food, hole 12 with the dream catcher in the tree!! it's in a public park but it's laid out well enough that they don't interfer with your game.

not many except a few of the holes are blind, no am tees, and some of the hole are super long and still par 3's,

enjoyed the course very much, not to many chances for lost discs, lots of trees but still pretty open

-Very diverse (tight holes, long holes, short holes, long bombs, left shots, right shots)
-Well taken care of
-Big old growth trees
-No underbrush-- hard to lose discs
-Lots of shade, great for playing on hot summer days
-Hot dog vendor (whooo hoooo!!!!), also sells discs on site, on hole 1
-Beautiful park right on the edge of Portland
-Can see most pins from Tee pad.

-Beau

-Course map would be nice but there were lots of friendly people around to ask. Hole 10, 11, 13 and 14 are easy to miss unless you know where you are going.
-No Tee pad marking after hole 8.

This course has it ALL. Probably best course I've ever played.

I played Pier Park on a trip to Oregon to visit my brother. His best friend lives just up the street from the park, and while he had played disc golf before he didn't know about this course! Well, there are now 2 new avid players at Pier Park after my visit. I was well aware that this course had been home to some of the best players around, like the Jenkins family, and I heard rumors that some people thought it might be as on par with some of NorCal's best courses, which really had me excited. I wasn't let down.

The douglas firs that roof the majority of this course are wonderful, and they make for fantastic obstacles on most holes. Many of the holes play up and down a moderate degree of topography, and there are ravines that make up a couple fairways as well. Very very nice, and all the while beneath this huge canopy of trees.

The tees and baskets were well-maintained, and the fairways were mostly clear and uncluttered. All the grassy parts were well-kept and mowed. This course is obviously greatly loved by its benefactors, and I feel grateful for the opportunity to enjoy the fruit of their labor.

I'm not a pro by any means, but many of the holes were challenging enough and I was happy when I was making par (my first round was +1). There appeared to be a nice range of distances on the various holes, about in the range 250-500 ft. A couple were long enough to require long upshots for par (at least for me).

The railroad runs along one side of the park, and while we were playing a second round (we couldn't do just one!) a freight train was parked there along with all sorts of loud activity, machines, a huge diesel engine loping away on the engine, etc.. At first I thought this was kind of cool, but after a while I thought it could grow to become annoying.

I think it was around hole 7 or 8 that there is a weird jog in the course flow, where you have to cross several later holes to get to the next tee pad. But I'm not sure how I'd re-arrange this if I were in charge. Anyways, once you figure it out, its easy breezy.

I found myself eyeing the houses around the edge of the park, which is in a relatively poor neighborhood. This and a for-sale sign had me wondering how much it would cost to buy one, or whether a group purchase of a house in the neighborhood by a bunch of avid disc golfers might not be a bad idea. Kind of a disc golf time share, but informally organized. This kind of thing would not be affordable in Santa Cruz, where my favorite course-to-date can be found.