The Dark Hollow Woods Trail in Oakmont, PA, runs fairly north and south, through a tall, narrow hill with drastic drop-offs. It leads behind a lot of neighborhood houses, down to Plum Creek and Penn Hills Community Park, then back up the hill as you turn and go north again.
The trail head starts on the north-west corner, right at a turnaround at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue. We started our way south from there on our second hike. There’s no trail entrance from the actual park, a convenient fact we discovered on our first trip. That time, we walked around a bit and decided to hop across Plum Creek onto the southern portion of the trail. There were some narrow spots with some rocky outcroppings that somewhat helped us along. I had on my trusty boots so I didn’t get any wet feet. Daughter of Jay was a different story.
The southern tip, where our path (in red) got a little squiggly was where the trail zig-zagged down the side of the hill. EDIT: This is called “switchback,” I’ve discovered, in hiking terms. Thanks to Kip from my critique group for writing about it:
Lots of pet walkers on there from the immediate residential areas, which baffles me a little since it’s extremely easy to get distracted and not notice how close you are to some steep edges. And sometimes (many times?) dogs have no sense of the dangers of elevation—doubly so when there’s plenty of leaves on the ground, obscuring the path. Not a pressing issue with leashed walking, but the trail allows for unleashed walking during certain times of the day.
These photos are from two times we walked the trail.
A few downhill shots. Hard to tell from these how steep it really is:
Tiny waterfalls, and a tiny outdoor loveseat:
I wish I got a better shot of this retaining wall you see here, because I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a bunch of fist-sized rocks in a chicken wire-type of cage. It doesn’t look like it should retain anything to me, or even hold on to the side of hill it’s supposedly retaining, but it seemed to work fine. Included a photo with Daughter of Jay standing on the wall (yes, it made me nervous) holding her chalice phone high, to show the scale.
Some more hill shots:
Facing the park:
The park, but at “ground level,” not atop the hill. Also, Plum Creek, obviously. This is the general area where we entered the part the first time:
A tributary leading into Plum Creek, the park, and an old timer taking a stroll. There was a loud baseball game in progress there:
A bridge. On our first trip, one of the slats was missing, now replaced since then. I’m sure I don’t have to point out which slat is the new one:
More poor quality photos of bridges, all on the eastern side of the trail. It was maybe 10 degrees cooler than everywhere else, as the trail coursed in the shadow of the hill:
This was at the northernmost tip, right as trail led back up the hill. Behind us would be the Pennsylvania Turnpike, not even 100 feet from the trail. This photo is facing south-southwest, right down at the gulley. Again, you can’t tell how deep the waters had cut in, but it was deep. Also, there’s a tree branch making a circle:
Last photo, also somewhere at the northern tip, also looking down into the gulley:
2 Comments
Those wire-baskets of rocks have become a very popular replacement for massive concrete blocks. As I understand, they are cheaper and more effective, because they are quite heavy, and only require a few pieces of tie-wire to keep them in place. They don’t take on a lean the way blocks do. Tremors don’t have much effect on them.
I’m grateful the Army taught me how to read those relief maps; I can predict rather well what I’ll see on the ground. We were hammered for several days on matching reality with the drawings. Thus, your photos make perfect sense to me.
I never had that training, so I don’t know nothin’.
Next time I want to get a few photos of that wall from the trail path below. I think the wall goes fairly far down the hill.