Small risk taken, wonderful reward - beautiful hour on the water

Last week, I started rallying the folks at work to bring in their boats and do a quick trip on the Allegheny River near the office one night this week. That day turned out to be today. It was a great site to see a three kayaks and a canoe (mine) on vehicles in the company parking lot. One other set of friends with their canoe I don't work with intended to come as well. However, life decided to not cooperate with everyone's schedule. One guy was unable to go for personal reasons, another couldn't because he's a slave to the Company and worked late. The couple decided to call it off because the weather was pretty terrible all afternoon, and it was still raining steadily at 5pm when I talked to them.


Nonetheless, my coworker, Bruce, and I figured we had the boats on our cars already and that it wouldn't hurt to check out the water and maybe get out for a little bit. If it got bad, we'd not be far from the cars.


We put in the Allegheny at a nice launch in Lawrenceville, under the 40th Street bridge. It was raining, but not very hard. This was the small risk I spoke of in the title to this post. Within the first 15 minutes, though, it stopped raining and got progressively sunnier.


What started out as a marginal day for paddling became a beautiful experience out on the water. This was our wonderful reward for avoiding the gumption trap and getting on the river. The river's surface was smooth and calm. The lighting was great. There was a slight breeze. Pretty much perfect weather for paddling.


We came across a great blue heron in a tree near a factory.


I ended up disturbing it, and it flew upstream, allowing for more photographs in different locations.


We turned around near the 62nd St bridge.


Looking at downtown Pittsburgh in the distance. It's only four river miles to the buildings from where this picture was taken. This is one of my very favorite things about Pittsburgh.

Downtown kayak rentals (and canoes)

Venture Outdoors rents kayaks and canoes on the Allegheny River at the base of PNC Park. It's a wonderful way to see the city from an uncommon perspective. The rivers were the key to Pittsburgh's growth and persist as probably the coolest thing about the city (sorry, Steelers fans).

Evening run with the boys

Silas, Guthrie, and I went for a casual 5 mile run on the north side trail along the Allegheny River. Guthrie did some wading. The mother duck was very upset I let Guthrie into the river where she was paddling around with her two young ducklings. She quacked up a storm and put herself between him and the young ones. It was sweet, but I felt bad for causing her alarm. She didn't know Guthrie won't go any deeper than a half assed wade... We ran down past the stadiums (stadia?) and to the Science Center before turning around.


We had parked near the bridge to Washington's Landing (aka Herr's Island), so we jogged over to a nice vista point to look at the city. The sky was really nice and the city well lit.

While we were paddling...

Alongside the Youghiogheny River is the Great Allegheny Passage trail. The trail goes from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC. Maybe the latter part is called the C&O Towpath. Bethany, Silas, and Guthrie had a nice hike while Kevin and I were on the water.

Guthrie was actually pretty upset he wasn't in the canoe. Normally, he'd rather be out of the boat running on shore. This time, when he wasn't invited into the canoe, he wanted to be in it really badly. The first picture is at the put-in in Dawson. The second shot is of Guthrie sprinting back and forth on shore when we caught up to the three of them near the take-out.

Youghiogheny River day trip

On 22 March, Kevin and I did a nice section of the Youghiogheny River from Dawson to Whitset. It was a really nice spring day, despite how cold it looks in the GoogleEarth image of the route below.

Sunny spring, back to riding to the Point

Despite knowing that it would delay getting dinner cooked and served, I rode down to the Point to see how it's been. I haven't gotten much of a chance to get down there between the medical hiatus from the bike and the less than ideal cycling weather during the winter. People were enjoying the early evening outside everywhere I rode. It was nice to see so many so happy to be outdoors. There is/was a physics conference of some sort going on at the convention center. Maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see, but there were lovely physics geeks all over Point State Park. It was nice. Sorry, no pictures to document the experience. Just some of the city.

More trail repair. The work shown below is on the north shore of the Allegheny River in front of PNC Park. As I've mentioned before, I love the trails along the rivers in Pittsburgh. They've done a good job on them.

Mon Wharf trail work starts

The city has started work on the riverfront trail along the Mon Wharf parking area. This project is very exciting, as currently, there is no non-traffic connection between the Eliza Furnace Trail (lovingly called the Jail Trail locally) and Point State Park. The Eliza Furnace Trail (more info on the Three Rivers Heritage Trails) runs on the north side of the Monongahela River between Oakland and Downtown and connects via the Hot Metal Bridge to the Southside Works and the South Side Trail (Station Square to the Glenwood Bridge area).

The Mon Wharf is parking lot for the folks that work and visit downtown. It's a dodgy place to park in that the Monongahela River floods the outer edge of it when the river crests 18 feet, which is about any time it rains more than a drizzle. The work will remove some parking, but create a promenade that will allow bike and pedestrian use and green space.

I'm very excited about this, in that I frequently ride from work through Point State Park and then navigate my way through traffic up to the Eliza Furnace Trail to head back home. I'm comfortable riding in traffic, but there are many weekend riders of the Eliza Furnace Trail that would be well served with a safer route to the point. Many times, I've seen parents with small children on bikes fearfully making their way along Boulevard of the Allies (busy, arterial road) to get between the trails.

The Post Gazette article about the start of the work can be found here. Here is a picture I took of the Mon Wharf looking up the Monongahela River.

This last image, courtesy of the Post Gazette. Note that this is looking the opposite direction from my picture above and shows a different bridge.

Family hike and run

I wanted to go for a run today, but also wanted to spend time with everyone. So, we all went over to Millvale across the Allegheny River to enjoy the nice snowy day. Well, at least those of use that like to go that far. Max (our cat) stayed at home. Guthrie and I took off and ran while Bethany and Silas strolled around and enjoyed the scenery at a slower pace.

The picture above is looking upstream at the 40th Street Bridge. Below is looking south across at Lawrenceville.


Guthrie was so happy to get out. The city looked pretty in the misty distance.


Yes, wet and muddy.

Guthrie got wet and cold, but much of the mud came off. Not a bad trade off, as we were heading to the car.

And, we eventually caught back up with Bethany and Silas on their way back from Mr. Small's Skate Park.

Last of the canoe pics: Anuses of Pittsburgh

Some last photos from the river.

Spelunking by canoe

Kevin noticed a neat culvert or outlet into the river when we were out the other day. I couldn't pass up exploring it, despite the vague odor of sewage. It was a dry day and had been, so I was pretty sure we wouldn't be caught by any sudden deluges and flushed back out into the river.

It was a really neat experience. The acoustics were awesome. This was on the north side of the river, so the sun shone in for a little distance and reflected in further. There was a slight trickling sound of water far in. I got in far enough to see it, as shown below. Where the cross section changed from round to rectangular, it got too shallow to continue. The hips of my canoe were pretty close to touching both sides at that point, so it was pretty definitive. It was too narrow to turn the boats, so we had to backpedal to get out.

The photos are in chronological order, so go from the river inward.




Pretty much dark by this point. A little dim light. The pictures were only possible because of the flash. There was a weird sensation that just up ahead where it was dark, there was a huge pit and waterfall into somewhere much more subterranean. Of course, one would be able to hear such a thing, but that didn't stop the overactive imagination. It was kind of exciting.

Canoeing the Monongahela River pt. 3: More Walls

The river has such a crusty history. Some of the old hints at the riverbank's former 'usefulness' are really interesting. I have no idea how some of the things we saw fit into the bustle of industry that was once here, but I enjoy looking at them.

The photo above is one of the supports of the Hot Metal Bridge. The last photo of the strata that can be found along the river was particularly fun. The building is part of the Pittsburgh Technology Center.