Crystal Valley Outer Loop

 I had not been out to Crystal Valley for a long time. But I'm wanting to ramp up the miles I can hike in a day, and the outer loop of their ski trails is about 7.5. Cathy went with me. She didn't want to go that far, but with multiple loops, she could cut back to the car earlier.

It was a nice day to be out. No green yet except for moss and conifers, but that's OK.

Except for the bottom loop, the rest of the area is pretty hilly. This is out on Loop 5, the most difficult. I'd never even walked that because it was still in development the last time I hiked there. My favorite piece today was a connecting trail between Loops 4 and 5 that follows the top of a ridge.

My former adventure buddy, Ellen, is really involved with the group that maintains these trails, OCCSA (Oceana Cross Country Ski Association). Here's one serious piece of work they did.

I found a few little goodies. This is a jelly fungus, probably Exidia recisa, which can be black, brown or amber colored. It's sometimes called witches butter. I've showed you this in the past. It's really common.

This one is common too, but I may have an ID on it now. I think it's coral spot, Nectria cinnabarina. That said, I am NOT a fungus expert.

There are a few glacial erratic boulders out there. This was the biggest one I saw.

There are brand new ski trail blazes! I've never seen this style before. Pretty classy.

But the very best find of all was a bunch of these scattered on the trail. These are chestnuts! Now, I want to get really excited, but I can't tell if they are American (which would be a phenomenal find), or a hybrid (but how would one have gotten out there in the forest?). I don't know how to tell the seed pods apart, or if you even can tell them apart on the outside. I looked around for the tree, but didn't spot any bark that looked right. Later, I realized the tree might have been farther uphill and the "balls" had rolled down the trail. I also looked for leaves on the ground, but I think what I found were just large beech leaves. They didn't have pronounced enough spines. Anyway, I think I'm going to try to let someone know about this. The area is within the Manistee National Forest.

So, I pushed myself to do longer mileage. The loop was 7.9 miles, but I did extra and got 9.2 miles. I feel OK, just tired, and I did bang up a toe. I'll live.

Not much else got done. I decided that was OK for today.

Total miles hiked in 2024: 151.8 of which 45.4 is North Country Trail (none of today is NCT).

See Skiing at Crystal Valley

Crystal Hills 5 - Favorite Day

  This was our favorite day so far. Even the trail markers were making us happy.

Seriously though, the blazing was excellent, the trail was well laid out, and maintained, and all but the final mile of the day was in the woods.

It was hard to choose only a few pictures to show you. This was one of the nice views as we crossed a road. I'm not sure this hill has a name, but it might be Borden Hill.

We had lunch at our own waterfall site on Erwin Hollow Creek. A totally perfect lunch spot!

The patterns in the water-washed shale were intriguing.

There were too many interesting plants to show you. I'll settle for a few. This is Beechdrops, Epifagus virginiana. It's parasitic and grows on beech roots.

We found more Dead Man's Fingers, these ones are really weird- all black. The last ones I found were gray.

Best find of the day for me is Old Man of the Woods. I've never seen one of these before. It's actually a bolete. It has pores on the underside, not gills.

And this is the first marker we've seen for the Great Eastern Trail, which this is also a part of. The GET runs from Alabama to New York. We are on the most northern portion of it.

Today was logistically challenging. We had to break camp at the state park where we were. Then we had to spot the cars with the trailer in tow. Since one end of today's hike was in the middle of a state forest, that road wasn't too good. We scouted it in Marie's car and decided I could drive it if I went really slow, so I did and we made it with no problems. Well, except that I had no signal in the middle of the move to our next place to stay. I did a little seat-of-the-pants driving and got us where we were going.

The joke of the day was that the map warned us of two stream crossings where we would need to ford, one of them probably deep enough to get wet. So we carried sandals all day for this. We did not get our feet wet at 7 of the 2 crossings. Our sandals were still safely in our packs when we were done. There are no typos in this paragraph.

Crystal Hills Branch of the Finger Lakes Trail, Steuben County, NY. Kinsella Park to West Hill State Forest. 9.7 miles

See One Big Hill

Hike 100 Challenge- 78.3 and Walking

 
The weather is supposed to be great for the next couple of days. I thought about making another backpacking trip, but decided that the 14 hours of darkness in the tent is not all that much fun alone. And I didn't really have time to get three days of food prepared.

But day hikes work great- they just require more driving. And hiking both directions unless someone spots you. But for the Hike 100 Challenge the miles on the North Country Trail do not have to be different, so both directions count.

Today I did a section that I may have seen less often than some others. Or maybe not. I've hiked all of our chapter's miles multiple times.

These are just some of the good pictures from today. My favorite thing about this section of trail is the small lake known as McCarthy Lake. It's a beautiful gem tucked into the middle of nowhere. It can be reached by car, and those who know how to do that (unmarked two-track roads) fill the campsites each summer weekend. This afternoon there was only one man there, fishing.



Lots of people have been posting fungus and mushroom photos. With good reason- this has been a great year for them. Most are now past prime or have disappeared completely. But this polypore will march along dead logs all winter. I liked the leaf decoration.



I almost didn't see this little black fungus hiding in the leaves. I don't think it's a Chanterelle. It might be a tooth jelly. I've not seen them in black, but that doesn't mean anything. It could have been a different color when it was new. The shape is right, so I'll stick with my guess. I've seen these in some pretty amazing colors.



This was kind of fun. A Hawthorne (Thornapple) had dropped its load of tiny apples right in the trail. I sampled one. Sure enough they are really sour (as I had been told). One could eat them if very hungry. Historically, they were used for pies and jellies, and even medicine. If combined with some sweeter fruit they are fine.



Witch Hazel's funky fall blossoms were looking good.



And, as I entered the flood plain for the Big Sable River, the fall colors presented nice contrasts. The yellow tamarack against the pines with a maple in the foreground.



And this was my goal- my turnaround point- the NEW Vince Smith Bridge over the Big Sable River. This was a recent huge work project of the Forest Service and the local NCTA chapter. Unfortunately, I was working or sleeping every day they had volunteers helping, so I didn't do a darned thing. But today I got to see it. The Forest Service wanted a clear span bridge, with no footings in the river, so that's why it's so big.



The miles for the day were a couple more than I had desired, but I finished them with no problem. Total for the day, 12.8 miles. Total for the Hike 100 Challenge, 78.3 miles.

Yes, I'm going out again tomorrow.

North Country Trail Centerline Road to Big Sable River and back

	See similar Spirit of the Woods Hike
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