Finger Lakes Trail, Downsville to DEC border

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
10/12/2019	8.1 miles	4 hours 39 minutes minutes	1,207'	1.7 mph	450.9

Map: NYNJTC Catskill Trails Map 144
Parking: Near Route 30/206 parking area next to covered bridge
Directions: Walk through covered bridge. Turn left on River Road. Yield right on Mink Road. Walk down private driveway (sign for house #'s). Follow blazes for Finger Lakes Trail. Hike to border of Delaware Wild Forest and private property

I decided to wait to neuter Krummholz until he was a year old. He got neutered the day after his 1 year birthday. But why did I schedule his neutering right during my favorite hiking season???? We missed 2 weekends of hiking while he was recovering. He's been going insane due to lack of exercise, and we have all been antsy to get out hiking! Today is our first hike since he's been neutered.

Another hike with an 18 lb pack to help with my training. We found a parking area in a small park right before the covered bridge. We crossed through the bridge, and turned left at the end of the road. We hiked for what seemed like a ways. Our NYNJTC map is missing some of the smaller roads in this section. So, we ended up hiking on the narrow shoulder of Route 30/206 which is a road with fast moving cars. It was not a good start of the day. We kept our eye out for a trail into the woods, but didn't see one. We passed a stream which I saw on the map, but no trail. Glen looked at our Gaia app which had more details, and showed a little side road, but didn't show our trail. I guess I needed to read up on this hike before heading out! There is a small side road (not visible on the NYNJTC map) called Mink Brook Road. The road starts and ends on the road we were walking on. We turned onto and walked back towards the direction we came, looking for the trail. We reached the stream without seeing the trail. There were a few long driveways for houses. Amazingly, I had cell service, so I googled and found a description to go down a private driveway to reach the trail. But which private driveway? I don't like wandering into people's yards searching around after all. Glen ended up finding it. He took the driveway for the house numbers marked 368 & 370, and at the end of the driveway is a tiny sign for the Finger Lakes Trail. After that, we were good. Well not quite. The trail started climbing, and was leaf covered loose mossy rocks. Slippery and tiring. I didn't take out my compass today, so I was maybe paying a little less attention to where I was going, though I did check the map a few times. We ended up missing a turn. The obvious path went straight, and we kept hiking until we reached a blowdown, and couldn't find a trail beyond it. So we hiked back quite a ways, until we saw a sign for a turn. Oops. We must have both been staring at our feet to avoid tripping, so we missed it. We hiked until we reached the intersection of Wild Forest Land and private property (marked by a sign). I started our lunch (a cold soak meal today), and started hiking back. On the easiest section of trail, I managed to take a bad fall, landing on one of my knees. I sat there for a while, not wanting to move. I decided that spot on the ground would be the best place for lunch, so I wouldn't have to get up for a while. We ate lunch, and continued back. And then I tripped and fell again. I do fall a lot, but today's all was particularly painful. I was quite hungry, so maybe I was tripping more due to low energy. Today's hike had no views, and I feel wouldn't be something I'd want to do again. I do like the trail east of where we were today a lot more.

It was cloudy out during our hike, but the sun came out on our way home. I learned about another navigation technique which I practiced while driving. First you imagine the hour hand of a clock pointing at the sun. Then you imagine where the hour hand would be if it was pointing at 12. If you split the difference, and imagine where the hour hand of a clock would be, that direction is south. For example if its 6pm, and you imagine the hour hand of the clock pointing that way, south is where the imaginary hour hand would be pointing to if it was 3pm. I didn't know this! Pretty clever.

So many ticks from this hike. We each found one crawling on our pants while hiking. Then I picked off a couple dozen ticks on the dogs in the evening & the next day :(

Fall foliage is at/just past peak. We saw a lot on our drive, but our hike itself didn't have views in the woods.

This is the point where we should have gotten off the main road in order to head to the driveway where the trail enters the woods. We didn't see this road on our NYNJTC map.

This is the driveway you walk down to reach the trail. There is a house on the left side & one on the right side. The trail enters the woods straight ahead between them.We didn't see any obvious sign from the road that this was the way to go.

We saw a variety of signs for the Finger Lakes Trail. Sometimes its a blaze saying FLT. Sometimes its these arrows. Sometimes it is faded white blazes (typically longer than an AT blaze).