Sunday, August 15th, Klipnocky State Forest, Near Arkport NY, About 7.5 miles, 800 feet elevation gain

I didn't recognize it when I picked it out last night but this was a repeat off a hike we tried and failed miserably to find once in the past.  Depsite looking through my blog carefully I can't find if I wrote anything from that prior attempt.  This is one of the hikes from the 50 hikes in Western NY book and the directions fail to mention that getting to Country Route 67 requires a brief jog on West Road off of the main highway.  Not sure why we didn't think of it last time but today I googled Steuben County Route 67 and that got us on the right road and from there the book directions worked relatively well.

This trail started off going up a truck trail or forest road.  The book called it a demanding climb but it didn't seem so bad.  After that we went on a good long piece of the Finger Lakes Trail which is so often part of our expeditions here.  This is a very quiet and underused part of the FLT.  We actually walked though some poison ivy or sumac or something on the overgrown start of the trail.  How I made it 45 years (46 tomorrow!) without having this experience I'll never know.  Brian had a lot of itching.  For me it was more of a stinging or burning sensation.  Thankfully it seemed to lessen as we got further  into the hike.

There were a number of interesting section on this hike.  There were several spots where the trail junctioned with a road and the book said to go right and walk .2 or .3 miles to see a pond or whatever then turn around and walk back the opposite way from the junction you just came from. This is a unique quirk that the author of this book employs very often but unlike our last hike where none of those tedious extra jaunts resulted in anything, one of these today took us to some really impressive ponds and wetlands which Brian got photos of.

Overall this was a very good hike. Zero other people, some interesting geography and a quiet easy drive both ways. And the weather was great.  A fine birthday weekend hike.
















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