Saturday July 10th - Bucks Brook State Forest - Near Ostelic NY - Finger Lakes Trail and road walk - 8 miles about 800 foot elevation gain

It had been a long time since we did a hike from one of the 50 Hikes in (Central/Western) NY Books.  This one was from the Central NY book.  The hikes from these books are sometimes a let down because a lot has changed in terms of reroutes and road changes since these book were published in the mid 90's.  My goal for our day was to just grab a book, quickly choose a hike and get on the road without getting mired in decision paralysis especially since we're not always able to seize the morning and be out on the road as early as we were this day.  

Getting to this hike was no great challenge but it was very remote with several miles of gravel roads.  We looked up the road (Ratville Road) on the car nav and it helped take us there very nicely.  Still, we came at the hike from the opposite end of Ratville road and the parking area wasn't really as described in the book so we weren't totally sure we were in the right spot.  Then the first few way points in the hike were not very accurate in terms of distances so we thought we might just end up walking out 4 miles on the Finger Lakes trail the coming back.  As we pressed onward though, we were certain we were in fact on the described path from the book even if the author's idea of .75 miles was actually over 1 mile etc.  At one point the Finger Lakes Trail popped out on a gravel road and the instructions said walk 25 yards to the right on this road before the trail ducks back into the woods.  Despite Brian and I both thinking we were intently looking, we didn't find the continuation of the trail. So we walked a good quarter mile down that road until it met another road we could see in the distance so we could confirm that we were in fact walking on Ridge road.  We were and when we walked back, there on the right side of the road was the continuing piece of trail we expected but didn't notice walking the other way.  

 

That second leg of the FLT had some pretty good climbs on it and then a steep descent into the gorge carved by 'Bucks Brook'.  The Brook was really lovely and it has been wet here recently so it had a nice flow to it.  That road walk along Bucks Brook Road actually took us back to the spot where we had gone to confirm the names of the roads.  Then we walked back up Ridge road expecting to go back on the little stem of the loop trail we came out on earlier but despite having just come out of that trail a few hours earlier we didn't notice it and ended up walking Ridge road until it met Ratville. Since we could see all of these roads on the map in the book we didn't stress about it and just went with the flow but it added up to quite a bit of road walking.  Although we saw about 8 houses (and about 15 abandoned houses, trailer homes and RV's) we saw zero cars or people of any kind except for 2 bicyclists on the part of Ratville road we wouldn't have gone on if we stayed on trail more diligently.  So it was a very isolated hike.

I could have done with less road walking but the weather was lovely (humid to be sure but not very warm at all) and the isolation and scenery were both much appreciated.  It was also the first really good long hike we'd been on in a few months.  The abandoned stuff was an interesting bonus at the end.