Bluff Walk Baseball Bypass

Baseball Bypass (yellow). 

In our previous blog post, we showed how old the Bluff Walk is with a post card view from 1914, and mentioned that part of the path was buried under the two ballfields and the parking area for the basketball court.

Old route follows the back of this fence

When we set out to re-established the trail in the 1990's and mark it with white blazes, we weren't quite sure what to do when we got to that missing section, so we had the blazes directing people to walk directly behind the ballfield fences. It was never a good arrangement and the sunny route tended to become overgrown incredibly fast each summer. There's also lots and lots of poison ivy. 

Behind the War Memorial Building

Another issue was the staging area behind the War Memorial Building. Sometimes it was pretty clear, like in the above photo, but at other times there could be a huge pile of landscaping debris.

North end of the new bypass trail, looking South

So we set out to find a new way. In the photo above, looking south, the new route angles down the slope to the left. The former route simple followed the fence to the right.

The new trail, heading south

The new trail descends to a knoll with a seasonal view of the Shelton Canal. While working on the trail, a bald eagle glided over the length of the canal like an airliner coming in for a landing. 

Much of the trail needed benching 

Most of the new route had to be benched into the side of the slope. It's not a very long reroute, only about 500 feet, but it does re-establish more than half of the long-buried section of the Bluff Walk.

Continuing south, the trail rises to rejoin the original Bluff Walk 

We still have about 330 feet of lost trail, but there are no easy solutions for most of that. About 130 feet of that is hopeless due to the extremely steep slope and infestation of Japanese Knotweed, but the trail could be restored on either end if it's determined to be worth the effort.

1934 path routes shown on Google Earth

Where exactly did the old path used to go? There a series of aerials from 1934 that I was able to overlay perfectly onto Google Earth and trace the paths as new lines. After the 1934 aerial layer is turned off and the view tilted, we have the image above. The orange line is the heaviest path or drive. The yellow is the new reroute. The white lines are narrower paths, and match up with the existing Bluff Walk north of the basketball court.