276

276 lives in the woods between the highway and the creek

Tucked between a small urban stream and one of Pittsburgh's busiest highways is a cowboy hat-shaped swath of land that for decades received very few visitors and no attention. At the bottom is a 12-foot embankment dropping into a swampy marsh and at the top is a fence bordering the highway. The land is roughly 3/4 of a mile long and has a maximum width of about 100 yards. In places there's only 30 feet between the highway and the creek.

In the spring of 2009, I discovered a roughly cut mountain bike trail there and rode it for the first time. It was in the early stages of being transformed into a mountain bike playground, and for over two years rogue trail builders have spent countless hours digging and building on wet days, and then riding it on dry days. Those of us who now ride the trail call it 276.

To ride 276, one must first cross a waterway known to be polluted with urban runoff. Portions of the trail travel inches away from a chain-link fence installed to prevent animals from meandering onto the highway. The noise of the highway can be deafening and the air can be dirty with smog, especially on hot summer days. Old broken concrete, manhole covers, and lumber discarded from highway and public works projects litter the land alongside broken glass and plastic bags.

Because of the undesirability of this area, it is terribly overgrown with invasive species and thick shrubs. Fallen trees and their stumps sit to rot away and vines canvas the woods. However, it turns out that it is the perfect site for a mountain bike trail in a city park, partially because nobody else wants to go there. Hikers and dog walkers are in a perpetual struggle with bikes in other parts of the park, but they never meet on 276. And, after a big rain, when mountain bikers ought not ride and rut the soggy trails, the creek is too swollen to cross and so nobody can ride it, anyway.

And so it went mostly unnoticed for at least two years, and it just keeps getting better.

276 is a distinctive mountain bike trail with lots of obstacles. These obstacles will excite most cyclists, though some may provoke some anxiety. Single speed riders will probably grumble over the initial climb and perhaps one other short ascent, but by the time they splash across the creek at the trail's exit, they'll be grinning. 276 is a playground.

Personally, I rarely rode 276 for a long time after one day in 2009 when I completed the circuit -- creek crossing to creek crossing -- with no "dabs." Mountain bikers use this term for a foot touch to the ground, and a typical run of this trail includes many dabs. Crashes were plentiful and after one memorable incident when a tree branch rammed a hole through my helmet, grazing the back of my skull after I fell off a big log, I never rode that obstacle again. Gashed shins and elbows and poked eyes accompanied taco'ed wheels, broken derailleurs, and lots of flat tires. The trail was just not ridden frequently enough to prevent overgrowth and the path collected debris after each windy day.

Now that 276 has been packed down by higher traffic and the obstacles have been "sanitized," I make it part of my regular park loop.

Polluted, yet beautiful. Singletrack is hidden on the right.

Here's a blow-by-blow of 276 in its current layout. The trail builders seem to be working continuously on the trail, and so this may be outdated within a week.

The creek crossing: Riders can cross the creek in several different places. Once they are across, their handlebars turn upstream and they pedal the singletrack along the bank. This section is somewhat underdeveloped, probably because the trail builders are unwilling to maintain a stretch that is in full view of park employees and everyday users.
 
The big climb: After a switchback away from the creek, a long climb steadily ascends the entirety of the hillside, terminating at a second switchback at the top. A few small logpiles make it tougher, but in general most riders on geared bikes should be able to make this climb in dry conditions.

The fence ride: After the climb, 276 tightly follows the highway fence, about 30 feet above the highway. It's noisy, but riders may not notice because they are focused on winding between the small trees and the fence.

The Optional Loop's only obstacle

The optional loop:  A turn to the right adds some mileage to 276 and keeps riders against the fence. One A-frame between two trees comes just before this loops rejoins the main path in the same place it left.

The Split

The playground: After diverging from the fence, 276's features come one after another though a winding, bermed section. Riders first spin across half of a 12 foot hollow log (the groove). Then, the trail goes right between two big tree trunks growing from the same point (the split).  Immediately following, there is a dog-legged dirt ramp up and over a dead tree and a tunnel built between the root balls of two huge trees that fell in opposing directions. Trail builders cleverly capped the natural chasm with a roof of branches, and "paved" the ground with a rock garden. After the tunnel, an option to the right goes over 276's signature obstacle: a 45 foot long tree bridge (the logride). This 3 foot diameter tree is lying on its side and has lumber fixed to it, creating a bridge-like ride over thick brush. The left branch, or "chicken" line, boasts a simple bridge over a log jam and then launches the rider off several jumps before going over a high-speed skinny bridge that rattles as you fly over it. The playground is over, but there are more features ahead.

45 feet of lumbered log

276's infamous tunnel

A simple bridge

The cradles: Now at the bottom of the hillside, riders are pedaling along the edge of the embankment above the marsh. After a switchback to the right, two of 276's most unique obstacles, the rock cradles, take riders over two "roads" of big river rocks with "curbs" of thick branches.

LOGPILE!

The off-ramp: Climbing to the top of the hillside again, 276 rides along the highway fence once again. After 276's summit is achieved, the ground drops out for a fast descent that ends with a second option. A trail sign suggests that the right option is expert, and the left intermediate. Indeed, the right branch swings within a few feet of the highway, follows a steep fall-line, and then rides over a humungous log pile. The left branch is gentler, with a few humps and small log piles.

The flats: When the off-ramp branches converge, a small ford across a drainage ravine puts riders into the second half of 276. This section is reserved, perhaps awaiting the builders' attention, but it's fast and it flows. After the playground, cradles, and off-ramp, it's a nice breather.

Crossing the creek at the end, you're a quarter mile of flat, wide walking path from the beginning. Fire it up again, or hit the adjacent trailhead for the next section of rogue trail, about 20 yards to the right. This park's never been better for mountain biking!

Ford!

Git r dun

**  Credits: You may have seen the name of a very talented local photographer and mountain biker in the corners of some of the photos I used here. He has thousands and thousand more photos of Pittsburgh and its adjacent natural places. They can be found at http://www.jonpratt.com/

**  Outtakes from the early days on 276, sometime after discovering it (around April, 2009).

Smokehole

The "falls" in Pop's sea kayak (Cl. 2)

Somewhere in the span of ridges and valleys between US 220 and State Route 55 lies a deep and remote canyon through which the South Branch of the Potomac slowly drains some of the most beautiful parts of West Virginia's Grant and Pendleton Counties. They call this canyon Smokehole.

Looking ahead to his 40th birthday, my brother-in-law, Sam, decided that he wanted to celebrate the way he remembered celebrating as a kid: on the water. As he tells me, some mid-May weekend was always reserved as a weekend for an overnight canoe camping trip. And, he also tells me that it had been at least a decade since the most recent one. The responsibility was mine: find a river for us to paddle down. No wives, no kids, and no cell phones.

Camping Robinson Crusoe style

That was months ago, and since then Sam and I scoured print and online river guides to find what we hoped would be the perfect weekend trip. Several options had to be arranged, because there's no telling what the water levels would be like. Sometimes in mid-May the rivers are swollen torrents. In that case we'd paddle something high up in the watershed, a tight and narrow creek. In other years the spring rain is lighter and in that case we'd be looking for a larger stream down the valley. As it turned out, the weekend we picked provided us with options somewhere in the middle, and Smokehole Canyon stood out as the best thing going. I'd have never expected it to be what it was.

Running the "falls"

I try not to be a river snob, but for some reason I was under the illusion prior to this trip that in order to find scenery in the Eastern mountains like that of Smokehole Canyon, you need to be on heavy whitewater. It made sense to me -- the steeper rivers and creeks are in less inhabitable canyons and so people tend to not live there. But, Smokehole broke the mold. The steep canyon walls surrounding us as we paddled by were a thousand feet tall. Rocky crags punched through and terminated high in the sky with sharp, knuckled outcroppings. Eagles and Osprey circled and swooped. Tiny tributaries ended with tall cascading showers onto pebbled beaches. And, wildflowers in the thousands surrounded us on our flood-plain campsite. Shangri-la comes to mind, but isn't quite effective. Plus, Smokehole sounds way cooler.

A happy 40-year old

A damn good campsite

Where we put in, at Big Bend Campground, required a 10+ mile drive down a road that ends there and goes no further. Beyond that, Smokehole canyon has no roads. It has no hiking paths and only a few forgotten, broken cottages. One former lodge penetrates the serenity, a hulking log cabin with dozens of windows overlooking the South Branch, but it's empty and no longer kept up. Word has it that the drive into Smokehole Lodge was over an hour on rough roads, perhaps the reason it never turned a profit. Below the 10 miles of the deepest part of the canyon, the walls recede and civilization creeps back. First, some goats in a field run away from human strangers. Then, a small church. Finally, a road and some homes that look to be in current use. A decommissioned cable car hangs over the river, reminding those who pass under of the way things used to be.

The Royal Glen Dam (cl. 2)

In total, two class 2 rapids spice things up, but the class 1 rapids and fast flatwater come very continuously for over 20 miles. There are very few flat pools, and none of them are more than a few hundred yards long. Campsites are everywhere. We couldn't have asked for more.

Bailing after a near capsize

Pop's red jacket

Git r dun