August 24, 2019 hike - Letchworth Gorge State Park - 3 miles
Letchworth Gorge is the state park that has been mentioned or suggested the most since we arrived in NY. It's 'the Grand Canyon' of the East etc. PA has a park that makes the same claim so lets at least call Letchworth the Grand Canyon of New York.
I recently got the 50 Hikes in Western NY book by William P. Ehling. For whatever reason its still being sold in its original 1990 form. This was the first hike we tried from this book. Like the Central NY book by the same author, this book is a little wordy but the loops and trails it has are unique and come with a description and a map.
This hike started at an unassuming parking area on the side of NY 436 immediate before a very old and narrow bridge over the Genesee river. The hike almost immediately went onto a detour (which isn't very temporary since our 1990 book knew about it and it is still in effect). The detour was very make shift and steep as it went around an area of trail which has apparently sloughing off into the river gorge for 29 years.
Once the detour was over we were onto an old roadbed of the Genesee Valley Canal Railroad for a bit. There is an AMAZING new railroad bridge that crosses over the river and the old railbed. I don't know much about the bridge but it cost $75 million dollars and replaced a trestle from the 1800's. This new bridge is almost immediately over the first of 3 sets of beautiful waterfalls in the river. Though we were in Letchworth Park, we were on the Eastern side of the river which is primitive, lightly visited (we saw zero people on our side) and free. We could see a lot of people (not crazy crowded but dozens of people) on the other side of the river in the Western part of the park.
Parts of the trail were a little grown over and it seemed like more than the 250 vertical feet or whatever tiny amount the book said but it was a fantastic little hike.
I recently got the 50 Hikes in Western NY book by William P. Ehling. For whatever reason its still being sold in its original 1990 form. This was the first hike we tried from this book. Like the Central NY book by the same author, this book is a little wordy but the loops and trails it has are unique and come with a description and a map.
This hike started at an unassuming parking area on the side of NY 436 immediate before a very old and narrow bridge over the Genesee river. The hike almost immediately went onto a detour (which isn't very temporary since our 1990 book knew about it and it is still in effect). The detour was very make shift and steep as it went around an area of trail which has apparently sloughing off into the river gorge for 29 years.
Once the detour was over we were onto an old roadbed of the Genesee Valley Canal Railroad for a bit. There is an AMAZING new railroad bridge that crosses over the river and the old railbed. I don't know much about the bridge but it cost $75 million dollars and replaced a trestle from the 1800's. This new bridge is almost immediately over the first of 3 sets of beautiful waterfalls in the river. Though we were in Letchworth Park, we were on the Eastern side of the river which is primitive, lightly visited (we saw zero people on our side) and free. We could see a lot of people (not crazy crowded but dozens of people) on the other side of the river in the Western part of the park.
Parts of the trail were a little grown over and it seemed like more than the 250 vertical feet or whatever tiny amount the book said but it was a fantastic little hike.
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