Heading up the trail from the back of the parking area, the trees are blazed with both red and white for the first few hundred yards and then the red blazes go to the left up the Alligewi Rocks trail and the white continue uphill to the right on the Great Gorge/Valerie Falls trail. 

(Note: I called the Westmoreland County Parks office on the 5th to verify names of these trails and the guy there said he was unsure if they’d been properly named or not. As the only info I could find on them was on hikingproject.com and these were the names used there, I saw no reason to use any others.)

PS: I’m done with notes and will try not to interrupt again…

The sounds from busy route 30 below soon faded and the forest was fairly open offering some nice views into hollows and under the canopy. This helped with watching for wildlife although only chipmunks and birds were spotted this trip.

Neither of us is adequate at identifying birds as they seem to have only 3 categories: “pretty birds”, owls and “hawk-or-eagle”s but there was one particularly pretty one that stuck around long enough to get its picture taken.

The old logging trail had a switchback near the top to help ease the climb and I’m sure that the trail could be pretty muddy in spots during wetter weather (we’ve had very little rain in the past month and there were still spots that were pretty muddy). Additionally, runoff water seems to have adopted some sections of the trail as the preferred way down to the Loyalhanna Creek, so you might want to wait a day or so after heavy rains. 

We passed over a dry watercourse and a nice little spring as the trail started to level out then proceeded past a hunting shelter, some huge rocks just begging to be explored (a great place for Squatch to live, I’d bet) and finally came upon a small meadow with a large, white pipe sticking up in it. 

We started back down the trail and found it a little tougher to follow downhill. When  coming uphill, there are a couple of places where one skidder track intersects another but they’re reasonably obvious… this is not the case going down.

At one point, we were cruising right along the old logging trail, climbing under and over fallen trees when we came across a couple that neither of us seemed to remember. Looking around, we could not find any blazes either so we backtracked a bit and found that we had missed where the trail turned left. (GPS coordinates: 40.17108 -79.18242, right after climbing under this tree) 

Other than that, the return trip went well and we arrived back at the intersection of the two trails (GPS 40.286294 -79.312355) a little disappointed by the lack of waterfalls but with some energy left. 

We, therefore, turned uphill in search of the “beautiful views of the Loyalhanna Gorge” as described on the hiking project’s site. (in the site's defense, the description appears in a comment and beauty is, as always, in the eye of the beerholder)

This trail is listed as 0.7 miles and I won’t dispute that mileage either even though it seemed twice that. We found that the red blazes showed up much better and were easier to spot but it seemed that all one really had to do was look for a path directly up the hill and there would usually be a red blaze on a tree nearby.

Like the Valerie Falls trail, this one also had an abundance of fallen trees. They were often welcome, however, as the pictures do not clearly show the gradient and many of the logs were at nice heights to rest on or against. Trust me, we broke no speed records on this trail and rested often during the climb. 

The steepest part of the trail is found at GPS 40.288552 -79.313478 and, if you can make it through that climb, the worst is over (still uphill, mind you, but just not as steeply). 

The trail does eventually level out with a switchback and a bushwhack as the forest attempts to reclaim the trail

Near the top, there are some intersecting logging trails so watch carefully for blazes (it’s once again open in this part so they’re visible, you just have to look)

At 40.292858 -79.317020 there are 2 turns that could be problematic as there are roughly 5 trails that come together in just a few yards. Watch for red blazes to the right and head for the powerline.

When you get to that point, you’re almost there and we broke through onto the powerline to find a red-painted telephone pole, lots of young blackberry bushes and not much else. 

The view does not, in my opinion, inspire feelings of “wow, what a view”... you may feel differently and perhaps it would have been different with lower expectations.

(but I doubt it)

We, again, looked around just to be certain that the red phone pole was the end but the inspection was far less thorough than it was around the white pipe and we soon headed back toward the car. 

By this point, Cathy & I were both wishing that we’d brought more water (how much could we need for 2 miles, right?) but at least she was no longer saying “I’m going to kill you when we get to the car”.

Coming down, be careful around GPS 40.289644 -79.315743. There is a sharp left to make a switchback and we (very briefly) missed the turn and followed the logging trail past it.

There is a double blaze on a tree to the left but we managed to miss it. The trail is, however, blazed often enough that our error was soon obvious and we backtracked no more than 50 yards to the turn.

After that, it was, as they say, all downhill and neither of us was disappointed to see the car where, thankfully, she relented on her threats and decided not to kill me.  (honestly, why wait?  If she'd killed me near the top, she would have more water...)

Update 5/26/24:  Coming home from Ligonier, I usually cut up over Derry Ridge instead of traveling US30 but, as that route includes a few miles of gravel roads that are not motorcycle friendly, I opted to remain on 30 to Kingston today.  I am used to peeking through the trees to see if anyone is in the small parking area but, as I approached it today, I was shocked.  

The red patch on the guardrail is still there but the trees have been cleared, the parking lot has been expanded tremendously and there's now a large sign inviting people to stop.

The parking area is now large enough to hold a dozen or more cars although I'm sure I'd miss the shade in another month or so.

I stopped in to take today's pictures and met Tom who said that he had just hiked the better part of the Great Gorge/Valerie Falls trail. 

From his account, I'm led to believe that the Westmoreland County Parks office limited site improvements to the parking area and the trails are still pretty jammed with deadfalls.  It sounded to me like you'd still get a pretty solid workout here although the improved visibility will, most likely, decrease to likelihood of solitude.  In my opinion, that might not be a bad thing as these trails, like the hiking sections of the Six to Ten Trail, could probably stand a little more traffic to keep them open and useable.