Road Trips and Hike Reports

I'm a little late posting this.  We were in Burlington visiting our friend Jim who just bought a new condo.  The weather wasn't great but we got out for this little leg stretcher with great views just a few miles from Jim's place.  It was refreshing seeing a lot of polite friendly off-leash dogs.  I usually think of Vermont as being highly regulated with lots of restrictions but on this trail off-leash dogs are totally allowed they are just supposed to be 'under voice control' as a sign says along the trail.  

This hike wasn’t super far away, about.1 hour each way.  I didn’t have an exact trail plan or even a map, I just found Rattlesnake Hill listed on a New York State website listing best NYS Winter hikes.  Luckily, once we got there I was able to download an ‘area map’ from AllTrails, a relatively new function in the app.  You used to only be able to download curated trail plots. Those downloads include  surrounding areas and other trails on the maps but now you can just zoom in on any piece of land and download the map even if there isn’t a trail plotted on AllTrails.   There is only 1 winter accessible trailhead for this WMA.  In fact, the road was plowed exactly up to the trailhead and from there, the 2 forest roads that went past that point were unplowed.  We even saw the plow driver from the town of Nunda come to where we parked and turn around. Initially I tried building a route based on looking at the map on the phone. Unfortunately, only 10 minute...

With an intense but short warm up period coming the next day, I thought Saturday would be a good day for a relatively far away winter hike before it all gets sloppy.  We headed out pretty early and had breakfast at Cracker Barrel before heading all the way south into Pennsylvania.  It was about 2 hours 45 minutes drive (not counting the drive to breakfast) but traffic was very light on this cold day in the middle of an extended weekend.  The roads in PA weren't as well plowed or salted as in NY but it wasn't too bad. This trail starts out from a trailhead off a very quiet PA-44 highway.  Most of North Central PA is  very  sparsely populated.  The main trail led through a seemingly unending and unchanging corridor of brush and trees.      While not unpleasant, the almost completely flat and unvarying scenery wasn't very exciting.  Thankfully, the Alltrails plot we were following led to not 1 or 2 but 3 scenic overlook spur trail...

Alltrails is our trusted digital companion that we use for almost every hike and have for years.  Usually it lists a lot of different trails and in areas with a dense trail network there are often multiple combinations that people have submitted that give you different lengths, routes and elevation gains.  At this trailhead, there is only 1 trail on AllTrails and it is the No-Tan-Tako trail.  I guess in isolation it’s an ok trail.  It mostly cuts through a long scrubby field, passing through a number of cattle gates and other agricultural looking land.  But the Interlaken trail starts at exactly the same trailhead (maybe 20 feet away from the No-Tan-Tako sign) and takes you to exactly  the same place as the other trail.  This makes it a matter of picking a favorite or, as we have done here, making a loop of the 2 trails.  I’m just surprised the No-Tan-Tako trail was the one chosed to put on AllTrails.  The Interlaken trail runs through an att...

This same trailhead has been the starting and ending point for at least 6 other documented hike on this blog.  This time we followed the 'Swedish Loop' instead of the 'Spanish Loop' we have done more frequently.  It was odd looking at Alltrails.  The Swedish trail loop and the Spanish loop trail look overwhelmingly the same on the overview pages.  Yet, as our hike went on (and on) we realized that this was a substantially different and somewhat longer and harder hike than any of our previous visits to this trail network.  The Swedish trail, in reality, only makes up a certain amount of the total hike.  The first mile or so on the way into the trail network is the main Finger Lakes Trail and then the Swedish trail branched off and gained more elevation than the other trail we normally take.  I believe we did at least part of the Swedish trail (with blue blazes) before but when we popped out onto a gravel road after a long gradual climb and then had to w...

Our friend Jim was in town visiting from Vermont.  Despite the lousy cold weather we did make it out for a little walk along the Ontario Pathway which runs along Flint Creek.  Not much to report, it was just a nice little leg stretcher.  

This was a bit longer than our earlier winter hikes.  We've visited this same trailhead about half a dozen times.  It's not a popular or well known place yet this one trailhead serves a wonderful network of different trails that combine in various combinations.  Several different itineraries are named after international locales such as the Spanish Loop, Swedish Loop, Ukrainian Loop and the Stockholm shortcut.  Most of the loops utilize the Finger Lakes Trail for part of their loop and then have some independent piece of trail going the other way of the loop. The trail was barely broken and it was challenging walking but otherwise conditions were good, it wasn't windy or icy.

Continuing with the theme, another beautiful and snowy short hike.  This one is at a gorgeous (pun or no pun, your choice) park in Quebec not far from Brian's parents.  I've gone a few times but it's never worked out for Brian and I to hike there together until this trip.  The park is very groomed and structured and it has a stiff 9 dollar per person fee but it's really a nice facility. There is 1 main trail that they maintain very specifically for winter hiking. Most of the park is snow shoeing or cross country skiing but this one 'mountain trail' is wonderful.  It makes beautiful nice switchbacks up a slope then goes through forest, first hardwood then mixed hardwoods and evergreens.  Over the course of the hike it goes along some ridge lines and eventually comes back down not far from where it started but it is a perfect loop with no tail.  There are several 'stations' to rest, some of which have interpretive displays.  This wasn't a challenging h...