Work on key part of Mountain trail underway

Hamilton area hikers may have a new 800-metrelong asphalt trail to try out near the Mountain brow off Pritchard Road by the end of the year.

Work began in mid-August on the second phase of the East Mountain Trail Loop that will take walkers and cyclists from the parking area at the top of the Red Hill Valley Trail at Mud Street and Pritchard to Arbour Road.

It’s all part of the multimillion-dollar plan to build an eight-kilometre accessible trail that loops around the east Mountain from the Paramount Drive and Felker’s Falls area of upper Stoney Creek, through part of the Red Hill Valley, across an area west of Pritchard and across the Red Hill Valley Parkway via a pedestrian bridge and then back around to the south of Highland Road West to the Eramosa Karst area.

Most of the trail loop has already been completed. Cynthia Graham, manager of landscape and architectural services for the city, said the $443,000 section now being laid will take hikers through grassy and wooded areas that had previously not been accessible.

“The idea is to bring people through nature,” she said. “The goal is to get most of the work done before freeze-up.”

Graham said final landscaping work may have to wait until the spring.

The final two sections of the trail south of Highland Road West between Pritchard and Mount Albion Road and off Highland across from the Eramosa Karst are expected to be built by the private sector as part of neighbourhood development.

“The concept of this trail goes back to 2007,” Coun. Tom Jackson noted. “Part of the condition of doing that was to compensate wards.”