Skip to content
News
Link copied to clipboard

Along Wissahickon, saving the paths oft-taken

Undaunted by the heavy, wet snow and the Februarylike chill, Emily Southerton was outside in a soggy work yard learning how to check the engine oil on a walk-behind skid-loader used to build and maintain trails in the popular Wissahickon Valley Park.

Volunteer Emily Southern checks the oil on a "mini steers" machine as trainer Valerie Naylor, right, looks on.
Volunteer Emily Southern checks the oil on a "mini steers" machine as trainer Valerie Naylor, right, looks on.Read moreED HILLE / Staff Photographer

Undaunted by the heavy, wet snow and the Februarylike chill, Emily Southerton was outside in a soggy work yard learning how to check the engine oil on a walk-behind skid-loader used to build and maintain trails in the popular Wissahickon Valley Park.

The 28-year-old middle-school teacher from Roxborough was training Saturday to be a volunteer crew leader for the Friends of the Wissahickon, engaged in a multiyear effort to rebuild large portions of the heavily used trail system along the Wissahickon Creek, lest they turn into gutters that flush away hillsides when it rains.

Hikers, bikers, and runners tend to view the heavily used trail system - flanking the Wissahickon Creek from Lincoln Drive all the way to the city's northwest border in Roxborough - as a natural element of the park, said Dean Rosencranz, a Mount Airy resident who has been enjoying the park for 35 years.

Getting involved in trail work can be an eye-opener, said Rosencranz, who recently became a trail volunteer himself.

In her three years of volunteer trail work, led by others, Southerton has been captivated by working with rocks - using iron bars to painstakingly move them into position to fortify the edge of a trail or to build a retaining wall.

The slightly built woman said her goal was to lead her own all-women trail crews this summer.

"I thought it would be cool to pass that on to other young women," said Southerton, who was encouraged by a professional trail builder who assured her when she started that any person of any size could work with rocks.

After completing multiple training sessions, Southerton and the seven other volunteers who braved Saturday's inclement weather will be considered for chances to lead projects in the 1,800-acre park, part of the Fairmount Park System.

Friends of the Wissahickon does not accept just anyone for the training.

"You have to prove yourself as a volunteer before you can qualify for a lot of these higher-level opportunities," said Maura McCarthy, executive director of the tax-exempt group based in Chestnut Hill.

Volunteers are central to the work by the Friends, which a decade ago set out to reroute about half of the 50 miles of trails that run on both sides of the gorge, sometimes high above the popular Forbidden Drive.

As of last year, the Wissahickon group had built or restored more than 13 miles of trails and closed more than nine miles of old, familiar, but ecologically unsustainable trails.

The group supplements volunteer labor - 12,200 hours from 900 individuals last year - with professional trail builders and contractors with equipment to fill in massive gullies that formed from trails that went straight down hills.

Since 2007, the group has spent $5.5 million to $6 million on habitat, trail, and water restoration, McCarthy said. Contributors have included several Pennsylvania agencies, money from a 2009 Merck & Co. legal settlement, the William Penn Foundation, and other private donors.

The Philadelphia Water Department has spent an additional $10 million in the last decade on stream restoration, wetlands construction, and other projects designed to prevent sediment and other pollutants from washing into the creek, said Chris Crockett, deputy commissioner for planning and environmental services.

The William Penn Foundation has provided $2 million in grants to the Friends since 1996 as part of its efforts to protect water and build community.

Not all changes by the Water Department and Friends of the Wissahickon have been popular.

To reduce erosion and restore some significant wildlife-habitat areas, flat sections of trail had to be closed because they lead to steep gullies favored by mountain bikers.

"What you have to realize is that this is at heart almost a storm-water control project," McCarthy said. "We've got to do storm-water control because it's destroying water quality, it's destroying habitat, but how can we do it in a way that still maintains characteristics that people enjoy?"

"You're always trading off" among different goals for the trails - fun, safety, and sustainability, for example, Rosencranz said.

Fishtown resident Lance Lau, a mountain biker at Saturday's training, said one of his goals was to get the mountain-biking community reengaged in maintaining trails in the Wissahickon, but mostly he was there for himself.

"I've gotten so much enjoyment from the trails in the city that I feel an obligation to give back," he said.

hbrubaker@phillynews.com

215-854-4651 @InqBrubaker