Road Trips and Hike Reports

 This was to be a repeat of the Spanish Loop trail we did last summer. Last time we went to this location it was exceptionally hot and we were pleased how shady and relatively mild it was on this segment of the Finger Lakes Trail.  Since it is quite snowy all over here this week we expected to deal with a lot of snow on this hike today but we didn't have any way to know that it would seem that zero people walked more than the first mile of this since most of the snow came down. So for the first maybe half a mile there were ski tracks and clearly 1 or 2 people had been through a few days earlier on foot.  After the half mile mark or so the lone set of faint boot prints went away but the skier went on for maybe another quarter of a mile.  Past that, there wasn't much evidence of ski tracks OR boot tracks and the hiking went from challenging to brutally challenging since we were also gaining altitude the whole way and the snow was getting deeper and deeper.  For the last mile we w

It's finally staying snowy here and cold enough to keep things from melting right away.  The other day I noticed a park I had never noticed before, Lower Falls Park.  It looked interesting since it was near a large waterfall I hadn't really been aware of.  I looked on Google Earth and it looked even more interesting because there is a dam and an abandoned bridge and some other interesting sites just South of the falls. Today was a good day for a close by and short walk.  The road to Lower Falls was actually closed but we were able to park across the street at the Maplewood Rose Garden .  The trail down towards the falls invoved a few dozen deeply snow covered steps that were a little treacherous.  Since the gorge is very deep downstream from the falls and the trail goes for a long ways (on both sides of the falls) the trail stays pretty high up above the river.  As we walked near the falls there were numerous different views of the river and the falls.  For whatever reason, des

 Weather forecasts in Rochester are, in my opinion, notoriously, unusually useless.  This hike was planned with a friend and as late as Friday afternoon I looked at the forecast and it was to be a cold but dry day after some modest snow Friday.  Cue waking up this morning to the sounds of a snow plow working its way through the apartment complex.  We probably got 3 inches cold fluffy easy to move around snow last night to go with the maybe 3 we had Friday.  Thankfully, to his credit, our friend Gene didn't even flinch or ask if we still wanted to do the hike.  He arrived a few minutes before us at the empty but very snowy trail head parking lot.  The roads close to Victor were mostly plowed well etc but NY-15A (which we were only on for 5 or 6 miles) was very snowy and icy.  I flung the car into the snowy lot relying on momentum to get through the 6 or 8 inches that were mounded up at the entry to the parking lot, probably accentuated by whatever trips the snow plows had made down

 We certainly made good on our promise to ourselves from yesterday that we would have a much more athletic hike today.  I had done this same series of trails with the Foothills trail club earlier this winter and it didn't disappoint today.  It was also snowing lightly at home and looked likely to snow more the further South or East we might go so I hoped that going North and West would be the opposite.  It worked and we even had brief sun breaks in the generally overcast day. This is quite an ambitious hike.  It starts on the high bluff over the Niagara river at Artpark then goes down to the river level before climbing an extremely steep set of rock and dirt stairs to go back up higher than the starting point then ambles along a plateau about 2/3 up the canyon walls before eventually going up again the last bit to be on top of the high bluff.  Then there is a substantial but flat road walk along what used to be 2 lanes of the Niagara Scenic Parkway but is now just for walking.  T