Norwalk Scouts will make Oak Hills trail more user friendly

NORWALK, Conn. – About 20 Norwalk Boy Scouts are expected to renovate the Oak Hills Park nature trail in May.

They are being led by Brien McMahon High school sophomore Bradley Carrano, who approached the Oak Hills Park Authority in November with an idea for an Eagle Scout project.

“I recently walked the trail and noticed it could use a lot of improvements. So I have written up a proposal,” said Bradley, of Troop 2 in Rowayton.

Bradley was back in January to tell OHPA members that he had gone down into the woods behind the restaurant, adjacent to the second hole, to look at the trail. Authority members asked him to come up with a business-like proposal and get it approved by Park Executive Director Shelley Guyer and Superintendent Jim Schelling.

The resultant plan was unanimously approved by the authority at its last meeting. Bradley and his crew will begin work on May 5, OHPA member Ernie Desrochers said Saturday. The work is expected to be done on two consecutive Saturdays.

Bradley’s dad, Anthony Carrano, told members at their last meeting that they had used an app to make a satellite image of the trail as they walked it.

“The biggest challenge is the way the trail runs. If you follow it, you end up at Twin Ledge (Road),” he said. “We went that way and you come across this house that’s over there and it’s all confusing. At one time, the trail used to go to the right to take you back up to the parking lot. It’s really rough. The goal is to do all that clearing and remove the rocks, and to put the proper markings.”

Adults will handle the chain saws, he said.

The markers for the trail that are there now are “really, really sad,” he said, as “somebody went around with green spray paint.”

The Scouts will spray paint with official templates to make a standard marker system, he said. The trail will end at the parking lot.

Bradley has uploaded the image at right to alltrails.com. He describes the trail as being .45 mile long.