Hikers, bikers travel twisty new North Huntingdon trail

About 40 people went back and forth Sunday afternoon along a trail up a steep hillside in North Huntingdon’s Braddock’s Trail Park.

Hikers and mountain bikers were following the painted orange trail blazed from across the parking lot of the park on Robbins Station Road and up the 1¼-mile Switchboard Trail. The reward for all that uphill climbing was a view of the Youghiogheny River and a peek at the Great Allegheny Passage trail between Pittsburgh and Cumberland, Md.

Down below, youngsters playing soccer at the Turner Valley Complex on Turner Valley Road, could be heard, but not seen with leaves still on the trees.

“It’s beautiful,” said Lauren Mazzei of North Huntingdon, looking at the view from the hilltop lookout as she was with her hiking companion, Luca, an 11-year-old Maltese Yorkie.

“They did a good job, blazing the trail,” Mazzei said of Friends of the Norwin Trails Inc., the nonprofit that has been developing the trail at the park and marked it so users would not get lost.

The Friends of the Norwin Trails had been working in conjunction with the North Huntingdon Township parks and recreation in developing the trail at the 148-acre park since last November, said Daniel Korhnak, one of the founders of the friends group. About 80 volunteers devoted more than 400 hours of work to develop the trail, which has been in use since this summer as improvements were made, Korhnak said.

Korhnak said they named the trail Switchboard as a play on switchback, the term used when a path crosses back and forth across the face of a hill, so the ascent is not as steep.

“The response has been tremendous,” from hikers and bikers using the trail, Korhnak said.

And they are not done developing trails, Korhnak said.

“We’re looking for opportunities to do other hiking and biking trails,” Korhnak said.

Mountain biker David Lucas of Hempfield said the park needs what the Friends of the Norwin Trails is doing to develop the trails for mountain biking.

“This group is doing it,” Lucas said.

Korhnak said the Friends of the Norwin Trails is continuing to seek community and financial support for recreational trails. It has proposed a trail from Irwin to the village of Larimer in North Huntingdon and extending it along Brush Creek and past Larimer to Trafford, and connecting to the Westmoreland Heritage Trail. Another proposed path would run from Irwin, across Route 30 to businesses along Route 30.

The group has discussed an ambitious trail development that would link Irwin with the Youghiogheny River and the Great Allegheny Passage, along the abandoned former Youghiogheny Railroad route.

That railroad ran through Hahntown and Rillton to the Youghiogheny River in the Sewickley Township village of Gratztown. Users could connect to the Great Allegheny Passage at either West Newton or across the river from Sutersville.