toIn an effort to get out and exercise away from people during the pandemic, my fiance and I decided to explore the trails on the side of Mount Washington, just a short walk from our West End neighborhood in Pittsburgh, PA. We never realized until recently that we had such a great trail, just a short walk from our house! The trail is on the side of "Coal Hill," once home to many of Pittsburgh's Coal miners during it's booming steel producing era in the 1700's. Along this challenging hiking trail, that winds it's way up the the side of Mount Washington and wraps around the hillside, you can find remnants of the miner's houses that used to fill the hillside. We accessed the trail from West End by going up Greenleaf Street up the side of Mount Washington and hiked around the side of the mountain until we eventually crossed the road at Shaler Street and continued the trail on the other side and eventually hiked back through the neighborhood on Mt. Washington and back down Shaler Street and back to West End on the streets. The trail does continue further on the other side from where we stopped and also has parking there, so we plan to explore the rest of the trail on another day. As a lesser known trail in the Pittsburgh area, I thought I'd share some of the highlights and scenery from it with a blog post. You can find more info about the trail here and here including parking info and access points. The second link here shows the park the trail connects to with the different parking and access points. It's worth noting that due to rennovations over recent years, the name of the trail seems to differ on some of the maps from the signs on the trail. While we did see a few runners out on the trail, it was quite a challenging trail with some steep accents and not the best footing in places, so I would recommend this more for hiking or more strength based, slower trail running. It can get quite muddy in places after it rains, so I would recommend wearing good hiking boots and going on a drier day. If you hike the other direction from where we started, the trail winds around the front side of Mount Washington with a great view of the city. Flip through the slide show below to see some views from the trail
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Megan Smith
Hi! I'm an athlete, coach, and outdoor enthusiast from Minnesota living in Pittsburgh, PA. I enjoy writing and photography, so I thought it would be fun to start a blog to share my all my amusing daily adventures and thoughts on life! Archives
July 2020
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