The Hollow Trail - Part 1: The Hiking Path

Panther Hollow Lake is an unpolished gem, the largest of three lakes (Lake Elizabeth, Lake Carnegie) we know of in the City. But equally impressive are Panther Hollow and Phipps Runs, the only "daylighted" (above ground) streams left in the 'Burgh aside from Frick Park's Nine Mile Run.

They're jewels in their own way. Both tumble down steep channels, cascading over stony beds between the trees until they meet in Hollow to feed PHL, a hiker and nature lover's dream splashing smack dab through the heart of the City.

If you enjoy a tranquil stroll through the woods beside a splashing stream, the Panther Hollow Run Trail is for you. The Run is fed from above Bartlett Street - you can see its headwaters as you cross the top Tufa Bridge - and several smaller streams that come down the Schenley Drive Ravine. It's a little rough, wet and narrow in spots, but it provides the best nature hike in the Park.

You get on from the Bartlett Street trail entrance. Hang a right on the main trail, cross the Tufa Bridge, and make a left a few yards later across from the Faloon Trail entrance, at a rock handily painted with an arrow. You'll cross another stone bridge, and there the trail begins to your right.

This section is a half mile or so long from that bridge to its crossover. It starts off flat and wide, but at points, the path twists with small but sharp rises and pinch points that only one person at a time can get by. As we say in da 'Burgh, some spots are slippy. But you'll have a sun-dappled creek crossed with fallen logs and stone beds running along side of you, a slice of nature seemingly out of place in the middle of the City.

The topper is that there are several magnificent stone bridges built by the WPA in 1939, zig-zagging across the stream, replacements for Edward Bigelow's 1908-09 wooden spans. You'll note a couple of more bridges above you on the main trail, and a number of aqueducts pouring ravine-fed streams into the Run on its way to PHL.

Though you're braced by the Upper and Lower Panther Hollow trails, both well-used park lanes, you'll be in a world of your own, surrounded by greenery and crevasse walls. While the isolation is an inspirational boon to the soul, the path is also well traveled by parents taking their children on a stroll, young couples and folk walking their pooches.

Finally, your reverie ends as you approach a set of steps that leads you to the trail crossover. Bear to the left from those steps across another small stone bridge, and you'll be on a wide path that's a straight shot to the lake.

That's the end of the road for the hiker's trek of the Hollow Trail, and now you're just a couple hundred yards away from the ultimate destination, Panther Hollow Lake. We'll lead you down that road in another post.

(photo credits: Rich Tenney & Ron Ieraci, FOPHL)