Sunday November 10, 2024 - Finger Lakes and other connecting trails, Shindagin Hollow State Forest - Brooktondale NY (Ithaca) - 7.2 miles, 860 feet elevation gain

The weather forecast wasn't great for today.  But the rain started later in the day the farther East we looked. So I looked at trails that were East of us.  This area, about 85 miles SE of our house, was someplace we'd never been.

When we arrived it was a very steep initial climb from the road up to the top of the ravine the road was in.  There was one other hefty climb in the first mile or 2 then a lot of ridge walking with less severe ups and downs.  In addition to being brutally steep at first going up the side of a hill, it then went sideways along a steep slope but lacked any sort of flat shelf for the trail so every step was uneven and challenging plus very rooty.  Thankfully, after the big initial climb which made up the stem of this balloon hike, conditions improved on the loop itself.  There was a good variety of environment from super deep crunchy fall leafy hardwood areas to pine needle covered pine tree areas.  There was also a fair amount of distance along a few creeks but like almost every small waterway in our region there was almost no water left because it's been quite dry this fall.

Despite seeming very isolated to us (a mile or so of dirt road to get to the trailhead and very quiet surroundings) this state forest has a well developed trail network.  That's what allowed the person who uploaded the Alltrails plot to come up with a loop while using the very linear Finger Lakes Trail for part of it.  Also, the trails other than the initial climb were all super maintained and clean.  Using the Alltrails maps we were able to avoid walking back on what would have been the stem (with the super steep section and uneven trailbed) and instead take a different route for the last mile or so and turn our walk into a perfect loop.

It was a really great hike.  And literally within 10 minutes of getting in the car it started raining pretty good so our timing was excellent.











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