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Stevens Suspension Bridge, Forest Home, to the Varna cliffs along Fall Creek
Official head count: 25H, six D
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Layen Road to Bruce Hill Road, Danby
Official head count: 21H, four D
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Hammond Hill SF ski trails
Official head count: 23H, seven D
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Hello Hikers!
Road walk, Sirrine Road NW of Perry City
Official head count: 20H, four D
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Satterly Hill, Burdett
Lots of flowers, but none of them were fragrant this year.
Official head count: 12H, six D
You can see Annie’s photos here
Monkey Run, N side of Fall Creek at Hanshaw Road
Official head count: 13H, four D
You can see Jack V’s photos here
Hello Hikers!
Willseyville Creek, Caroline
Official head count: 19H, four D
You can see Jack V’s photos here
Jim Schug Trail, Dryden
It wasn’t supposed to rain, but there it was, coming down quite hard as we drove out Route 13 toward Dryden — luckily it wasn’t raining at the meet-up
We only do this trail once a year, during hunting season in late November — it never occurred to me it would be a stunning place to look at gorgeous spring scenery
The whole area southeast of Dryden along the Route 38 corridor has a wonderful pastoral feeling — scattered farms and gently rolling fields and hills — the Schug trail runs right through the heart of it
I’m sure a lot of our hikers are really sick of the cloudy wet cool days we’ve been having — but some of our regulars actually prefer these atmospherics — I’d be happy myself if it was always like this
Official head count: 17H, five D
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Shindagin Hollow Road to South Road on the FLT, Shindagin Hollow SF
Official head count: 35H, seven D
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Hello Hikers!
South Danby Road to the Tamarack Lean-to on the FLT
First hot-weather hike of the year — upper 70s when we shaped up, low 80s when we finished
With the return of bright sunny weather and the leaves now out on the trees, we’re into intense sun-and-shade effects in the woods
All of a sudden it clouded over for a few minutes and it seemed like it might rain — it’s interesting to see how drastically the cloudiness changes the lighting in the woods
I took a little poll of some people — were they feeling really hot or not? — half said they felt hot, the others not very hot
Official head count: 20H, two D
You can see Jack V’s photos here
Finger Lakes Trail and Abbott Loop between Bald Hill Road and Diane’s Crossing, Danby SF
Official head count: 22H, eight D
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Finger Lakes trail from Braley Hill Road to Shindagin Hollow Road, Shindagin Hollow SF
Official head count: 25H, eight D
We were swarmed by small flies whenever we stopped — not bad as long as we kept moving
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I want to remind you — or maybe you never knew it to begin with — that we have an online page with photos and names attached of the people who’ve hiked with us at least semi-regularly over some period in the last five years. This is a good place to ID someone you’ve talked to on the trail or seen in the photos but you don’t know their name. Here’s a direct link to the ID page — you can also reach it at any time by going to the Home page of the hikers web site and scrolling down. Speaking of ID photos — for those of you who complain I never use photos of myself in the hike reports — here’s a shot Tiger got of me on Saturday — I hope this will silence the complaints for a while
Hello Hikers!
Fillmore Glen, Moravia
For years I never scheduled a walk in this dramatic gorge on the grounds it was too far away (it’s 31 minutes from our house). Then about a year ago I abruptly realized it was ridiculous to ignore such a beautiful place because of an extra five minutes each way. Now I feel bad about how narrow my old thinking was. Anyway, Fillmore Glen is now in our hike rotation, and it’s definitely worth the trivial extra few miles driving.
There’s a typical CCC-era walkway along the stream for a good while — then the trail leaves the creek and becomes a rough narrow dirt path that zigzags up the wall of the gorge — dramatic, but too dark for photos. We do have a video from Norm that he made when we were trying to decide how to proceed — here
Rather than retrace our steps, we came down on a snowmobile trail — very pleasant —
We found a lovely old cemetery abutting the park grounds at the bottom — people buried there who were alive in the 1750s
Official head count: 17H, three D
Stevens Suspension Bridge to Cornell golf course and horse barns, Forest Home
Seemed like the early morning rain was fully over — then it started again just as we stepped off — but it ended for good a few minutes later and we had a great time — dark, damp, misty and 50 degrees — the best atmospherics for hiking IMO
The weather kept the golfers away — saw just two-three players and we didn’t have to worry at all about dodging stray balls or getting yelled at
Interesting to see how the lighting on the faces was affected by the color of the barn wall behind
Official head count: 14H, four D
You can see Jack V’s photos here
Hammond Hill SF — northeast trails with Jack V
Official head count: 33H, eight D
Jack was improvising our route through this unfamiliar part of the forest as we walked along, picking the next path to take from the confusing mishmash of trails based on how much time was left — somehow he managed to get us back to the cars in precisely two hours, almost to the second.
You can see his photos here