Saturday May 16 - Bucktooth State Forest - Near Salamanaca NY - About 4 miles, Estimate700 feet elevation gain
Sometimes it takes a less than amazing destination to make you really appreciate how good you've had it. This hike came from the 50 Hikes in Western NY book. The description didn't really promise anything great and yet this destination failed to remotely meet our expectations. The location was appealing to me because it was a fairly long drive and I was starting to get tired of staying so close to home. So that part delivered. We were on the road nice and early and the drive was perfectly pleasant. The directions said to park at the trailhead directly across from barricaded Manley Road. There wasn't really a recognizable trailhead it was just a wide shoulder. I'm sure at some point it was barricaded and I'm sure at some point it was a road (it was shown on the car nav screen) but today it's barely a wide brush strewn track of slippery mess for the first few hundred feet... From there to the top of the not giant but steep hill it's a mess of lumpy barren earth tracks from what I'm guessing was last year's logging in the area.
Beyond the condition of the road/trail, there just wasn't any payoff for this hike. It was steep, it was a little buggy and slippery especially at the bottom and at the top it was, at best, a very nondescript piece of sparsely forested land. We also couldn't quite figure out if (at the top of the hill) we were supposed to go straight forward (which left the forest) or to the left (which didn't match the map in the book). We ended up trying both since the two options met back up again maybe 1/3 of a mile down the hill.
To put the best spin possible on the day, it was good exercise. And, unsurprisingly, we didn't see another soul.
Beyond the condition of the road/trail, there just wasn't any payoff for this hike. It was steep, it was a little buggy and slippery especially at the bottom and at the top it was, at best, a very nondescript piece of sparsely forested land. We also couldn't quite figure out if (at the top of the hill) we were supposed to go straight forward (which left the forest) or to the left (which didn't match the map in the book). We ended up trying both since the two options met back up again maybe 1/3 of a mile down the hill.
To put the best spin possible on the day, it was good exercise. And, unsurprisingly, we didn't see another soul.
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