Sunday August 9th 2026 - Interloken trail - Burdett NY (near Watkins Glen) - 8.15 miles, 630 feet elevation gain

It's been warm this weekend with humid days, highs in the mid 80's.  My #1 goal if were going to do a hike was to do our best to beat the heat.  So I picked out a hike that wasn't tooooooooo far away and sounded like it wasn't super exposed.  This out and back hike in the southern part of the Finger Lakes National Forest was a different part of the Interloken trail that we've used a few times in a loop with the No-Tan-Tako in another part of the Finger Lakes National Forest.

The first mile or so of this hike had a lot off wet and muddy sections.  We've had rain showers for about 4 of the last 5 days.  There was almost no obvious climbing or descending on the whole 8 miles we did, just short little ups and downs that didn't seem very noticeable.   Some people on Alltrails said this was more of a solitude than a view hike and for the most part that seemed accurate.  There were 2 sections where to trail opened up enough to be in direct sun.  One was brushy and a little annoying but just a few hundred feel long.  The other had an amazing view dropping off the hillside down to (I'm guessing) Seneca Lake.  It was a beautiful breezy sunny break from the very forested and closed in feeling that made up most of the rest of the mileage.

After our hike we looked for anything we could eat on the way home without detouring.  The first place we were going to try looked kind of busy so we went farther north and saw a brewery called Grist Iron brewing.  This turned out to be an amazing pick.  The entire building is basically an indoor outdoor space with lots of roll up doors letting in a wonderful breeze today.  For food we had chicken tenders, mac and cheese and some chipotle corn.  It was all delicious.  I also had 2 mixed berry sour ales which hit the spot.  Brian drove us home after that.

 









 

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