Hello Hikers!
Wednesday Feb 10
Harford-Slaterville Road, FLT north into Hammond Hill SF
Another excellent hike we can do only on a weekday. The problem with this one is limited parking compounded by limited space to stand around waiting to start the hike — the shoulder is so narrow you can barely get the cars out of the travel lane, and then people tend to drift out onto the main pavement — this is a curvy 55 mph stretch of road — it’s clear from their reactions that the locals bombing around the curve don’t expect to see a bunch of hikers and dogs out in the road
We got a very picturesque snowfall a little before hike time. I usually like fresh snow better out in a country setting, but the new snow this time was very sticky and drapey and it looked more striking close to town, covering all the domestic landscape plantings along Route 79. The stretch of trail we did in HHSF has more of a bleak charm for much of the way.
There are some stretches of evergreens along the way to spice things up — I made Tiger pose for this shot — looks posed to me but it does show the atmospheric mood
Speaking of Tiger, she’s one of the hikers whose nose runs all the time and she finds it funny the way so many of us have this chronic winter condition …. like Steve
Official head count: 11 hikers, two dogs
You can see seven more shots by me online here
Monday Feb 15
Michigan Hollow Road SE to Hill Road, Danby SF
Great to be back out in the countryside and hiking after the super-cold weekend forced us to lay low. It was still borderline uncomfortable — 10 and breezy at the meet-up, 14 and a bit less windy when we wrapped up — and none of us was fully warm the whole time ….
but we had a great walk ….
and the woods looked fantastic
Nice amount of fluffy fresh snow, enough to make for a delightful effect but but not so deep it was hard to walk
Official head count: eight hikers and Yoda, who is a very rugged little dog
Here he is getting a coat adjustment — he’s a very cheerful companion and it’s always fun to have him along.
The temperatures at the trail head at the start and finish coincided almost exactly with the temperatures recorded at Cornell’s national-grid weather station out in the country in Harford — these temps are almost always lower than the Ithaca airport temps. Our hikers who live in Danby always say it’s usually colder there than in town.