Sunday May 19th - Trail between Spruce Pond and Labrodor Hollow Unique Area - Fabius NY - 8.3 miles, over 1600 feet elevation gain

We've been getting in a fair number of hikes all throughout the winter and early Spring but we are headed into summer and want to kick our activities up a notch.  So, today, we got up early and headed out with just a general idea of what we were doing. Usually we carefully read about every trail we might do and try to pick out something that is precisely a certain length and a certain, usually modest, amount of elevation gain.

I've been to Spruce pond 3 times I think, once with Brian, once with our friend Fred and then today.  The other times I've gone there we've done a 4.5 mile loop that goes up the side of a hill across the road from Spruce Pond, along a ridge then crosses the road the pond is on and comes in through a particularly charming stretch of deeply forested land with many little streams that converge and meander around before ending up on the far side of Spruce Pond and back to the car.

One thing I've wanted to do but until today, hadn't, was to hike the hill behind Spruce Pond and over to the Labrador Hollow Pond which isn't terribly far away but most people just drive to that pond directly.  The trail went quite steeply up for the first mile or so and then meandered along some sort of plateau at the top of the hill before coming to an amazing overlook of Labrador Hollow.  There aren't a ton of places we go where you can get an unobstructed view from a considerable height and this one was spectacular and probably a lot more than the picture can show.

From here the trail went along the side of the large hill we were on at the overlook before going decidedly downhill.  The downhill trail varied between steady and very steep and a lot of it was on a wide rough forest road but we opted for a quieter side trail for one section which helped get away from the surprising number of people and families with children that were out this morning.

The downhill run ends at about Labrador Hollow Pond level but pretty far South from the pond and even farther from what minimal development the Hollow area has which is, I believe, centered on the parking log you can see on the right edge of the photo above.  The Alltrails map made me think we'd be walking very near paved NY-91.  Sometimes those highway adjacent trails are not great. This one was an amazing mile long connector trail that the Department of Environment and Conservation is pretty proud of.  The signs posted at both ends of this connector trail are unusual for here.

The 1 mile trail between the signs was really wonderful with steep wooded slopes on one side and, considerably farther down the hill, NY-91 which didn't have very much traffic anyway.  By the time we got to the end of the connector we were across 91 from the Labrador Pond road which leads to the parking area.  We'd already walked 4 miles so, despite being so close to the pond that we've never explored, we turned back at that point. 

 On the way back up the steep hill section leading up from 91 we took a side trail that we thought was the same side trail we used before but after going down it briefly we realized this was actually the trail to the overlook for Tinker Falls.  There were a ton of cars parked along NY-91 and I imagine a lot of them were going to the falls but most people go to the bottom of the falls and we only saw 2 people at the top.

 We were able to connect from Tinker falls to the trail we thought we were on without going back to the steep forest road, not that our side trail was any less steep.  When we got back near the overlook for Labrador Hollow we were very excited because it meant that most of our climbing and almost all of the uphill was done.  From there it was just over a mile back to the car, mostly downhill, sometimes steeply.  There were a TON of little sections of wooden walkways helping to skip over some of the mud but there was still plenty of exposed mud.  Thankfully it looked worse that it was to actually walk through and we didn't get super mucky.

It was really satisfying feeling like we did a stiff long hike without agonizing or negotiating beforehand. It was a lot more free wheeling than we sometimes are and should make a great start to our efforts to tone up a bit before our July cruise.