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Monday, September 6, 2021

Crystal Hills 6 - Complete

  Marie and I have now hiked all 49.7 miles of the Crystal Hills Branch of the Finger Lakes Trail. We also had to do 1.4 miles of the main FLT to access a parking area. Total FLT miles this year is thus 51.1 miles, and we qualify for this year's Hike 50 patch!
Crystal Hills Trail sign


As I have mentioned, this is also part of the Mid-State Trail (we would have to hike 275 more miles to complete that). And if we were going to do all the Great Eastern Trail, we'd have to hike another 1550 to Alabama. Not this year! We were at the northern terminus of all those routes today. This is not at the terminus, but someone spent a significant amount of time to carve this into the rock. The word "trail" is down in the lower left corner. Great Eastern Trail sign

I guess this hill doesn't have a name, but it's between Mead's Creek and Dry Run (which was not dry). summer hill The route went through Watson Homestead, the site of the very first North Country Trail Conference I ever attended, in 1995. This is property that was in the famiy of Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM. This is the house where he grew up. Thomas Watson house

He attended this little one-room schoolhouse. Red School house

We had another beautiful lunch spot, this time in mature pines. clearing under mature pines

Partridgeberry was sparkling with water, and this one even had a berry. partridgeberry

And at the north end, the Moss Hill Lean-to was welcoming. Moss Hill Lean-to

Now for the truth of the tale. Today was really hard. We walked 10.1 miles, but it felt like a lot more. It was really tough. It rained for a couple of hours today, but the rain of the previous days has made an awful lot of mud, and the floods of 3 weeks ago have washed out a lot of places, exposing rocks and making gullies. It was also a really hilly day. Down, up, down, up, down, up.

But we made it. We always do!

Crystal Hills Branch of the Finger Lakes Trail, Woodcock Road to Moss Hill Road on the main FLT. 10.1 miles

See True Blue Gumby II

1 comment:

Ann said...

Way to go finishing the entire branch. I imagine that the mud did make for some difficult walking.