Saturday August 15th 2026 - Finger Lakes and School House trails - Alpine NY (Between Watkins Glen and Ithaca) - 6.1 miles, 970 feet elevation gain

The name I used for this post is what Alltrails called this particular loop.  We've been to this same trailhead multiple times and I've always called in Connecticut Hill since it's in a Wildlife Management Area by that name.  Though the trailhead was the same one we've used before and the start of the hike was super familiar, the majority of this walk somehow was different than what we've done before.  There were some really nice stacked granite type landscapes and a beautiful stretch of tinkling babbling steam in a scenic little ravine.  The last mile (which we usually actually do first) was a nearly flat walk elevated above a scenic creek. It was almost certainly and old road for cars at one point but now it's a lovely stroll with a very steep hillside on one side and another but less severe hill on the other side of the creek, complete with some minor streams flowing down the hill to join the bigger one. All that said, this wasn't a super fun hike.  We thought we'd be clever and get the steep road walk (and much of the elevation gain) over as soon as we got there which worked.  Unfortunately, of the 6 miles we hiked, about 4.5 of them seemed to have some combination of mud, insects, humidity or unstable annoying footing such as eroded or exposed tree roots.  We did our best to enjoy what we could but as drove off and compared grades for the hike (something we often do), we agreed this was like a C- or something.  Just not great.  More of a mystery is how this hike from Alltrails that absolutely starts and ends at the same place as our previous hikes was somehow such a very different routing and experience than the others.  There are NOT a ton of obvious junctions and choices to be made in this lightly developed and lightly used wildlife management area.

Next time we go we'll be more selective about what weather day we do this hike on and I'll find the original version of this hike we liked better in one of my old books.