Category: hike reports

 

Hello Hikers!

 

Monday Feb 12

This was an extra hike for us  —  I scheduled it in a mistaken belief Feb 12 was a national holiday

Yellow Barn SF, Freeville  —  snowmobile trails

Normally a snowmobile trail makes for an excellent walking surface when snow conditions are otherwise bad, but not this time.  The surface was frozen solid and treacherously slippery, and full of little ruts and bumps; there were even frozen deep horse hoofprints.

The group was very fragmented by the end.  Several people turned back early and others fell behind.  We came upon this beautiful dark pine woods almost back at the cars and I couldn’t resist trying a group shot, even if the group was small.

Official head count:  14H, four D

 

Wed Feb 14

Shindagin Hollow SF, Braley Hill Road  —  snowmobile trail heading west  —  followed by Valentine’s party at Steve and Diane’s in Ellis Hollow

The snowmobile trail was much more walkable two days later, softer on top and not so bumpy  —  we spent the whole walk in the thick woods  —  the scenery was slightly monotonous and bland, but very atmospheric

Here’s what passed for excitement:

I sent Gopi into the snow to get a shot of how deep it was  —  she began ragging on me and the hikers found it amusing

We detoured onto an active logging road for a while in hopes of seeing the site of the logging operation itself  —  this road surface was much worse  —   it turned into a bit of a grind so we turned back without reaching our goal.

One mishap  —  Vicki suddenly broke through the snow without any warning  —  she went sprawling but I didn’t choose to get a photo of that  —  here she is demonstrating the depth of the hole  —  probably could have hurt herself if she’d been unlucky

Nice walk, very low key and relaxed

Official hike head count:  16H, three D

We had a delightful Valentine’s party  —  I ate a very weird mix of things  —  my stomach was griping ominously after I got home

Toward the end of the get-together, there was an announcement that one of the couples was about to mark their 50th wedding anniversary.  Everyone knew about this beforehand except the couple, who’d been kept uninformed.

PJ, who loves to bake, made a huge commemorative fudge (in a cake pan), and the hikers gave the couple a $300 gift card raised from the group.

This is the long-enduring couple:

Those in the know may recognize Tiger (and that’s her mom).

Thanks so much to all the hikers who put money into the gift  —  it was much too generous.  We were very very touched

Official head count at the party:  22

 

 

 

Saturday Feb 17

Road walk  —  Hosenfeld Road and Carley Road, Odessa, Schuyler County

Official head count:  20H, three D

More photos:

Jack V

 

Sunday Feb 18

Farm road walk  —  Fairfield Road and Barden Road, Candor, Tioga County

We didn’t manage to escape slippery walking conditions after all.  The road at the meet-up hadn’t been plowed clean of the overnight snow  —  the Candor town crew threw down cinders instead of salt  —  there were lots of slick spots  —  one hiker who got a knee replacement in the fall turned back immediately out of caution  —  another hiker fell, but in a slow, controlled and graceful way and there was no damage

Bleak atmospherics but quite beautiful IMO

When we got back to the cars I walked into the woods for a pit stop  —  there was a solid sheet of ice with about two inches of soft powder on top  —  didn’t feel very stable

Later in the day I saw an e-mail on the nordic ski list-serv  —  near Kennedy SF in Virgil, one of our best hikes, there was 2″-4″ of new snow on top of 4″-6″ old snow  —  we’ll need to see a lot of melting this week before we can get back out into the deep woods.

Official head count:  22H, eight D

More photos:

Jack V

 

Hello Hikers!

 

Thu Feb 8

Upper Lick Brook to Upper Buttermilk at Yaple Road on the spur trail, Danby

Official head count:  13H, three D

More photos:

Jack V

 

Sat Feb 10

Bald Hill Road and upper Abbott Loop to The Pinnacles look-out, Danby SF

I was taken by surprise this time  —  I just assumed someone would have come in and broken a trail in the three days since the heavy snow fell  —  but we immediately hit deep and slick conditions that were really tiring

I suggested we could change our plan and do a plowed road walk down Station Road instead but everyone wanted to keep going toward The Pinnacles, a much more exciting hike

By the time we reached the look-out, the group had shrunk  —  one hiker turned back with a knee problem, another had to turn back because his dog was having a problem, and a number of people had fallen far behind

The look-out had gotten badly obscured by overgrowth in recent years but the state sent a crew in last fall and did extensive cutting and pruning  —  the result was a dramatic improvement

Some of us were wearing microspikes  —  these developed big uncomfortable ice balls toward the end so it was like having a club foot must be  —  you can see an ice ball on Tiger’s spike right next to her left ankle

On the last leg, we were able to walk in the track we’d laid down on the outbound walk, but the snow was bumpy and this caused twisting in my ankles and knees that was very unpleasant

I found out later that the hikers who initially fell behind also made it up to the look-out, in two groups  —  here’s the larger bunch, who got a group shot

Sorry, this is an iPhone 5 shot by Nancy L and I don’t know how to get it to display properly  —   but you can twist your head and make it out

Official head count:  18H, five D

This was our most tiring hike in quite a while

 

Sunday Feb 11

I was very happy that only a couple of hikers failed to get my last-second hike cancellation notice and drove out to the trail head  —  I didn’t like waiting so long to make a final call, but I kept expecting the temperature would rise above freezing like it was predicted to do  —  in fact, it ended up still being 32 at 11 am at the airport, where the Ithaca weather readings are taken.

I now realize Feb 12 is not a holiday as I claimed yesterday, so I’ll include our Feb 12 hike in next week’s hike report

 

 

Hello Hikers!

 

Wed Jan 30

Farm-road walk  —  Hill Road and Curtis Road, South Danby

There are places around town where, if I stand in the right spot on a snowy day, I can photograph the hikers in an all-white setting like this  —  I really enjoy the effect  —  for some reason, makes me think of a group of the elect heading up into paradise  —  especially when there’s a bright glow in the sky like here.

Below is the same view from the other direction  —  nice scene but doesn’t look like paradise ….

We tried to walk on part of Curtis that’s not maintained  –  too icy

This is Hill Road, on a section that’s plowed ….

If you’re paying attention, you should notice this photo is blue.  And this one:

Here’s what happened:

I have an extremely small camera  —  including small buttons used to change settings  —  when it’s cold (it was in the low teens), I work the buttons wearing gloves  —  this is very clumsy and I inadvertently changed the settings so all the photos came out blue  —  without realizing it

Even though the color is weird, you can still appreciate the beautiful scenery, I think

Official head count:  NineH, three D

We now have a new Google Group that I use to send out details of our midweek hikes  —  out of the blue, Cornell blocked 13 hikers who have Cornell e-mail accounts from receiving this hike announcement  —  probably reduced the turnout a bit

More photos:

Jack V

 

Saturday Feb 3

Layen Road to Bruce Hill Road, Jersey Hill, Danby

Not everyone made it on time for the obligatory group shot at the start of the huge field

Eckhart thought this might be the largest oak tree in the county  —  he brought a cord to measure the trunk  —  17 feet 9 inches around about five feet up from the ground

Two scenes from the quarry:

Steve S (top photo) regards this as our best hike  —  though he’s not as wild about the quarry itself as I am

Official head count:  21H, seven D

More photos:

Jack V

 

Sunday Feb 4

Monkey Run Natural Area, north side of Fall Creek

Official head count:  19H, five D

More photos:

Jack V

 

 

Hello Hikers!

 

Wed Jan 24

Chestnut Lean-to, Danby SF  —  preliminary hike to collect firewood for our Sat cook-out

A bit of a grim day  —  snowing, cold and slippery  —  but we had a lot of fun

Official head count:  17H, three D

More photos:

Jack V

 

Sat Jan 27

Hot dog cook-out, Chestnut Lean-to, Danby SF

For once, a forecast of nice weather made a week ahead of time actually proved correct, and we had a gorgeous morning for our event  —  it was 50 by noon.  But it was still pretty snowy, and the trail in was more slippery than on Wednesday

As promised, we had two great fires  —  Eckhart (extreme left in this shot) walked in an hour early and had everything roaring ahead of time  —  as you can see, things were a little smoky from time to time

This is the second fire  —  burning much cleaner than the one gushing smoke on the front side of the lean-to

We had a second hot dog cook this year in addition to Tiger, Annamarie, who has some commercial kitchen experience

The combination of mild temperature and snowy scenery was really pleasing, and the get-together took on a very relaxed and laid-back feeling

The smokier fire in front of the lean-to died down after a while, and more of the action shifted to the back fire

By coincidence, a group of hikers from Cayuga Trails Club had a scheduled hike right past the lean-to, and they dropped by.  The hike was being led by David P, who runs CTC’s trail maintenance operation  —  I was delighted to meet David (red jacket and backpack in the center of the shot) and to thank him publicly for all the great work he does that directly benefits our group.  I’ll take this opportunity to urge you to join CTC  —  they do great work for hiking here.

Official head count:  33H, nine D

More photos:

Jack V

 

Sunday Jan 28

Monkey Run natural area, south side of Fall Creek

It was surprisingly icy  —  the last stretch of the walk, along Fall Creek, was so bad most of the hikers bailed out a half hour early

Official head count:  23H, nine D

More photos:

Jack V

 

 

Hello Hikers!

 

Wed Jan 17

Lower Buttermilk Falls SP  —  camping and cabins area and Larch Meadow Trail

We walked in two areas of lower Buttermilk where we haven’t come as a group in years

The cabins and camping area was surprisingly picturesque, thanks to the snow and an interesting underlying terrain

The roads up to this area are closed for the winter but they’re plowed  —  this was very helpful because the snow quality in general wasn’t great for walking

I suspect not too many hikers regularly walk in the area across lower Sand Bank Road from the main lower Buttermilk entrance  —  there’s a wooded trail that circles several ball fields.  The trail runs parallel to Route 13 for about 10-15 minutes and it’s a little noisy  —  and the woods are a bit dull  —  there was some griping from our regulars  —  but then we turned away from the highway and came out into the ball fields and it was very pretty in the pale sunlight.

Official head count:  16H, six D

 

Saturday Jan 20

Road walk  —  Fisher Settlement Road, South Danby

I tried to get the hikers to follow me into the deep snow alongside the road to demonstrate how deep it was  —  no one would budge off the plowed part

This is one of the darker pine woods we encounter  —  Scott was somehow left out of this group photo

We had a bit of pickup traffic heading south in the early part of the hike  —  couldn’t figure where they were going since this is pretty much a road to nowhere  —  after a while, the traffic really dropped off

My definition of a good country road walk is one where we can spread across the whole width without worrying we’ll be hit

We counted 16 horses living here

Official head count:  15H, four D

 

Special hiker event  —  Group trip to the Seneca Falls women’s march

March report by Mark and Ellie

On Saturday, January 20, 10 “Ithaca Hikers” met at Mark and Ellie’s house to carpool up to the Women March in Seneca Falls. There we joined other “hikers”, Ithacans, and thousands of others to protest at the site of the first women’s rights convention (held in 1948). It was a beautiful day, great location, and great camaraderie.

Photos by Mark and Lori W

 

Sunday Jan 21

Snowmobile trail from the Slaterville Springs post office north

These cows and steers seemed really energized by our group  —  when we came into view they began to run back and forth and dart around in a very lively manner  —  several hikers thought they were preparing to break through the fence and charge us, but I didn’t think so

Brian and his wife Ann used to hike with us regularly in 2008 and 2009  —  it was really fun to see them pop back up on the trail after so many years  —  they don’t look any older.  Brian was the only one willing to pose with this dead cow  —  there’s a long story attached to the carcass I won’t get into

Official head count:  25H, nine D