Saturday December 2nd 2023 - Hike at Boyce Hill State Forest - Near Franklinville, NY - 6.8 miles, 865 feet elevation gain

I thought this was a trail we hadn't done before.  It turned out when we got there, it was someplace we had been and as we did the long rainy hike, we realized we've probably been twice before.  We drove nearly 2 hours to get to this hike because even as it was raining on us throughout the hike this afternoon, the weather forecast for Franklinville showed only early morning and after dark precipitation.  This did not remotely line up with what we experienced in the forest.

This was the wettest, most mucky and muddy hike we've done in years.  It was just slippery and wet almost all the way.  Sometimes the rain let up to a bare sprinkle and sometimes the ground was reasonably well drained.  Most of the time it was coming down at least a bit and much of the trail was puddled and splashy.  The only saving factor was that the leaves mostly covered up the mud which made it less messy.  I did fall once onto a knee and there were a few other close calls where I could have done a full body plant into the wet ground but we made it through.

After a few miles I kind of just started laughing because the trail just stayed bad or got worse over and over  This was a balloon hike and we thought the string part was dreadful until we got onto the looping part of the balloon and realized how good we had it. The balloon section wasn't well marked, was just as wet and was less maintained and cleared.

Overall we spent 3 long hours hiking here and it was good exercise but we were totally soaked and chilled by the time we got done. I'm filing it under 'training hike' in my mind.  It will make us appreciate a truly cold winter hike so much because at least then you can stay dry.