The line then crosses the Lake Washington Ship Canal on the Salmon Bay Bridge and passes through the Ballard neighborhood.
The line passes through Golden Gardens Park in Ballard, which has been the site of several incidents involving pedestrians crossing the tracks.
After summiting the Cascade Range near Berne, the line starts a steep (2.2%) descent at a 2.2% grade, passing through the Gaynor Tunnel, and on to Merritt.
Up until the building of the Chumstick Cutoff and the current Cascade Tunnel, and the electrification of a majority of the subdivision in 1927–1929, Leavenworth was the division point.
The railroad follows the river through countless fruit groves and passes the communities of Peshastin, Dryden, Cashmere, and Monitor, before arriving in the Wenatchee area.
At Wenatchee, there is a small industrial base served by the railroad as well as a yard (Appleyard) used mainly during the fruit harvest season.
The King and Snohomish county governments constructed several pedestrian overpasses to provide access to public beaches and shorelands over the tracks.
The Washington State Department of Transportation, Sound Transit, and BNSF funded $16.1 million in improvements, including retaining walls, slope stabilization, and landslide detection, beginning in 2014.