A city view in hiking boots

Monday, 26 September 2011 16:59

Written by Diana Nelson Jones

emeraldviewscene

Another mile of Emerald View Park has been completed, and you can tour it tomorrow between 5:30p and 6:20p.

Register with Ilyssa Manspeizer, the director of park managamenet and conservation for the Mount Washington Community Development Corp. Her contact information is 412.481.3220 x204 and This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Trail tours will depart from Lizardi Way by Skookum Field every 10 minutes between 5:30 and 6:20p. The grassy area just west of the Point of View statue off Grandview Avenue will be the party site, with light refreshments and live music from 6p, with brief remarks and a ribbon cutting at 7p.

Ilyssa took me on a tour of the newest mile this morning. It was amazing as we headed west down the slope from the Point of View. The trail at the outset is bordered in red fescue grass that looks like lush long green hair.

Soon we were into deep woods, up then down, in switchbacks that afforded little pieces of view of the Heinz Field seats, the casino, parked cars that looked like rows of coffins.

We came into a wider clearing and saw the boats tied along the Ohio River and a barge.

The photo above is of an outcropping that reminded me of remote places throughout Appalachia that are far from cities. But the rocks were there first; they predate anything we've done. The photo below is of the trail as it departs from the grassy area near the Point of View statue.

So here we were, way up high, looking down from a trail that a group of young guys used hand tools to carve into the hillside, which looks too steep and unuseable when you are looking up from, say, Fort Pitt Boulevard.

People are already starting to use the trails, the first four-plus miles that are completed. (The others are in Grandview Park, Mount Washington Park and on land the Allegheny Land Trust bought in Duquesne Heights.) You can learn more about the trails here. trailheadtwo

About 150 people are registered for tomorrow night’s event to celebrate this portion of trail.

It was built by a crew of young men who were trained in green job skills and trail construction at classes sponsored by the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, Student Conservation Association, GTECH-Strategies and the MWCDC. The construction began in mid-May and was completed early last week.

I wrote about the trail crew on this blog several months ago. You can read that post here.

Ilyssa and I came out of the woods at the trail head on Lizardi Way and met Bob and his dog Rusty. Bob grew up “in that house over there,” he said pointing behind him, and he and Rusty walk in the woods a lot.

“It amazes me that those guys got all that done in such a short time,” he said. “I can’t believe they stuck it out. This is not even their neighborhood. But they came on the bus every day and worked with hand tools.”

Bob said he and Rusty would walk to where the trail crews had finished for the day, “and I’d wait three or four days later and go on the trail and it was amazing how much they got done.”

Trail construction was funded by the Pittsburgh Partnership / City of Pittsburgh Department of Personnel, Birmingham Foundation, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, and the Joella P. Bane Trust Fund through the PNC Charitable Trust Grant Review Committee.