Frick Park

I'd like to paint a picture for you. You are in the OLEA (Off Leash Exercise Area) at Frick Park in the East Burgh enjoying/sweating through a balmy Saturday and exercising your canine companion. His fur ripples in happy wind as he cavorts around the hilltop park, this fenced-in doggie haven. Maybe ten other dogs are running around, switching companions, smelling noses-then-butts. Joyful barking echoes over the trees. You're on the shaded end of the dog park, which in total is about the size of a pewee football field. It is completely fenced in with 10-foot high chain-link fencing, and there are some trees and undergrowth lining it on the inside, while just on the other side of the fence the Frick Forest takes over, with thick briars and copious trees beyond which you can barely see the far away river valley (think Fangorn). See, the OLEA is at the summit of Frick Park - supposedly to help the dog lungs grow strong as they run about in the thin air. It is rumored that the wind chill there at night reaches -50F. Anyway, back to you. You're watching your dog tumble and curl about in the grass (which really should be all lichen at this elevation) when all of a sudden there is a disturbance on the far side of the fence. It sounds like an arthritic bear is bashing its way up the hill, which is so steep and overgrown you can't see anything but the foliage right up against the chain-link. The dogs' gaits miss a beat. Other people turn. The crashing and threshing continue. All of a sudden - my god - it's a dog, bounding to the top covered in microscopic burrs and excited to see fellow beasts except to discover she is on the -whine- wrong side of the fence. You've just had the thought arise "I bet that dog would be soft, perhaps the softest dog in Shadyside, if she were not covered in microscopic burrs and foaming at the mouth," when all of a sudden two more figures emerge at the top of the hill, parting the jungle of plants behind the dog. You know the geography of the park. That informs your knowledge that these pair have inexplicably just climbed hand over foot up a precipice, through the brush, to an impenetrable fenced area when a path just about 50 yards to the left would have led them to the door of the dog park, sans burrs. The man stops instantly (he has no choice, hello, chain link) and the girl, who is further-ly inexplicably on a cell phone, looks at him in frustration. They both peer past the hot metal fence into the dog park, visibly registering their error, then throw their hands up at each other, turn around, and disappear back down over the precipice, calling their mangy beast after them.
Dogs have a short attention span. So do you - after all, it is the facebook era. They return to cavorting and slobbering. You think, huh, I wonder if Frick has started a mountain climbing club for challenged people, and flip the lid off of your tepid water bottle.

Yes, friend, if you figured out who the intrepid climbers were, you guessed right. Suffice it to say that on our first trip to Frick Park, not only did we find the OLEA, but we got the "unofficial" trail tour as well, including that climb, which was short compared to the one we took right before that which was exactly vertical necessitating us to pull ourselves up by roots, which was shortly after Olive wallowed in a mud pit that must have been a river at some point, before she found the burr-patch, and about 20 minutes after we were all nearly flattened by a mountain biker speeding around a corner through the wilderness we'd thought were foot paths...which was almost immediately before said "foot path" vanished. This because we wanted to get off the gravel path, proud to use the inner compass we've both developed so well since arriving in this topsy turvy city.

Came across some good views, though: