Saturday November 7th - Artpark State Park - Niagara NY - 8 miles, estimated 750 feet elevation gain

 This (for the purposed of this blog) was a Chris only hike. Brian had to work so I joined the Foothills trail club for a lovely group hike along the Niagara River a few miles down from the falls.    It was a busy morning with some work tasks that had to be completed from the night before and started at a certain time in the morning.  I actually started one of them from a gas station parking lot about half way to Niagara.  The drives to and from the falls were both very peaceful and nice.

The hike started at Art Park which I'd never been to or heard of.  There were so many people for this beautiful summer like day that we had to split into 2 groups of about 12 people to avoid being too large of a mob.  The start of the hike was high above the river at the park.  We first took a trail down to river level then walked maybe 3/4 of a mile along the river before coming to a very steep switchback scramble that took us up to a section of the Niagara Scenic Parkway which is now only accessible to pedestrians and bicycles.  The parkway is mostly a dual carriageway semi-freeway type road but in this section they've stuck the two directions onto what used to have just 1 direction on it.  The road is very lightly traveled overall so I doubt it's a big traffic problem.  I'm not sure when the change was made but the downside right now is that little effort has been made to dress it up in any way and you certainly feel like you are walking on a highway.

After walking maybe one mile on that road walk we then walked down into Whirlpool State park and walked about 1.5 miles in that park including a very difficult rocky section before stopping for lunch or snacks on a wide exposed granite shelf next to where the river goes around a large bend.  The Niagara river is unlike any other river I've ever seen.  It should be a particularly wet or heavy flow time of the year but even now the river is a roiling boiling wave filled torrent of frightening power.  The slope from the bank into the river is very steep and I think anybody who was more than a few feet into the river channel would be pulled into a likely death.  The entire time you are looking at the Niagara river from NY you are of course looking at Canada.  It was thought provoking being at river level looking across a treacherous but not all that wide river at other hikers in Canada especially with the Lewiston bridge being almost overhead.  But right now with Covid travel restrcitions, there is a tremendous gulf between these two normally very intertwined parts of two generally culturally close countries.

The hike back took a very tiring 385 step staircase carved into the bluff back up to the top of the river bluff and then basically retraced our steps back to Artpark.