Sunday January 17th - Niagara Gorge Trail loop from Artpark - near Lewiston NY - 8.5 miles, estimating 1200 feet elevation gain

 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.  The two directions of the parkway are doubled up on one side of the dual carriageway for a while to make this happen.  The parkway is well known for being a fairly quiet road and in some sections, VERY lightly used so the single lane section probably isn't an issue very often. 

After crossing the dam and going under the Niagara Power Vista we headed down several hundred stairs to walk along the river level trail again towards the whirlpool.  It was all muddy today but there weren't very many people to share the mud with and the weather was very reasonable for mid January.  After going as far as the Whirlpool (about 3 miles from where we went down to the bottom after crossing the dam) we backtracked part way and then took the other enormous set of stone stairs (over 300!) to get back up to the top and then walked all the way back to the car along the easy but very mucky rim trail.














After such an exhausting but tremendously enjoyable hike we headed to North Tonawanda for our traditional Buffalo area Mighty Taco visit. It was delicious and surprisingly we didn't go crazy getting too much food.  Then we did the peaceful but sometimes interminable seeming 70 mile drive back on NY-5 and US-20 mostly.  It was a wonderful day.


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