Travel Guide for HARRISON HILLS PARK - Pittsburgh Purple Travel Guide
We tell you why you should visit HARRISON HILLS PARK in the Pittsburgh area and what you need to know.
Harrison Hills Park is an Allegheny County Park. If you plan on hiking here, I recommend downloading the Allegheny County Parks app and, within the app, downloading the map of this park for offline use.
Even though the app hangs at times and may need to be restarted, it shows you all the blazed trails and its GPS function shows you exactly where you are on the trail. The website with interactive maps, PDF maps and links to the app is here.
This 500 acre park, with 14 miles of blazed trains, sits in the north eastern corner of Allegheny County since 1971. Through strong support of the “Friends of Harrison Hills Park”, many improvements were made.
In the center of the park, by the Overlook Shelter are picnic pavilions, restrooms and a playground. One of the highlights of the park is the trail along the Allegheny River, which is part of the local Scouts Trail (red blaze symbol) and the 35.7 mile long Rachel Carson Trail (yellow blaze symbol) which meanders through Allegheny County.
The Scouts Trail is 5.3miles long and we decided to shorten this hike and make it more colorful – meaning we started with the red trail along the Allegheny River and after the trail went inland and crossed the Wetlands Trail (green blaze symbol) we followed that. When the Wetlands Trail hit the Woodlands Trail (purple blaze symbol), we followed that until we got back to the near where we started.
This abbreviated trail is a moderate to difficult hike. In summer, when the trees carry their leaves, you can see the beautiful river from a couple of vista points. If you come in spring or fall, then you have much better views, but I would not hike the trail when it is wet or icy.
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