Looking through our Hiking guide book for central New York I was at task for finding a good and challenging hike for the day. We wanted to be done by 5 pm at least so we could head to my sisters for a little 4th of July partying. Having looked to the area of last weeks hike ( Highland State Forest ) I still wanted to explore the valleys and deep forests there. Taylor Valley State forest was one of the few hikes in the guidebook that was a 2-day excursion. But looking closer at the details we could see that each day was separated into loops. One 9 mile loop and a smaller 4 mile loop to the north.Mike "Think we can do 9 miles and get back in time?"
Heather being the eternal optimist "Sure!"
We prepared ourselves in the usual way. Each time we have gone on our hikes, we have thought of different essentials that we will need. Our day packs are becoming packed with things that will allow us to be comfortable in most conditions along with making sure we are safe and prepared. The big addition this time? Toilet Paper.
Yup toilet paper has many uses beyond what the normal human uses it for. Lost? Wrap yourself in toilet paper, can see someone in pure white for miles. Cold? Great fire starter implement. Song writing? Some of the best songs have been written on toilet paper. Napkins, headbands, shelter building, yes I am officially removing "toilet" from the name and I am calling it "survival paper".
So we gathered our things and set out for the hike around 10:30 am. I loaded up the TomTom with the directions and we were off. The funny thing about the TomTom is that it actually has a voice personality. The current personality is of a woman in her late 40's who has probably never felt the touch of a man and tells it like it is. Heather and I have fun telling her "No" when she tries to bring us to a spot where we dont feel is right. However more often than not, this car GPS has saved our buts from getting lost on more than one occasion. Which leads to highway 600.
Highway 600 ( telephone road ) is a road that looks like a highway but is NOT a highway. When you share the road with 2 ladies on horseback you know you are off the regular roads. It was a blast though because the road was just wide enough for my Exterra and I had to kick it into 4 wheel drive t
o make it up the hill. Thanks again TomTom!
We arrived finally and set off for our hike. I setup a "Track" on my gps and I made Heather in charge of the compass. We were going to get a crash course in navigating today, whether we wanted to or not. The hike was a typical loop that would end with us on the Fingerlakes Trail system. Half of it was on numerous forest roads and the other half was full of blazes and the Fingerlakes Trail.
Heather and I have not finished going through our orienteering book so we are complete noobs at navigating via map and compass. All of our previous hikes have had well blazed trails and its been pretty much cake. This was another story. The first half started out fine and easy to navigate. We had to depend on the description in the book and the small map provided and took various compass readings when we were about to make a turn. Easy right? The problem was that the map only showed the route to take but didnt actually show every road. We were dependent upon the compass and a really crappy map. When we summited the first hill/mountain the road started to come to various intersections. We had to be very cautious using our compass to make sure we were going the correct way.
At each of these intersection I would make a waypoint on the gps and we als
o were being tracked. We really couldnt get lost because we could just backtrack via the gps. It continued for a while, the numerous roads and then the mud started. There were storms the previous day so we really saw the effects of this. Tons of mud and we had no choice but to traverse through it. The benefit to the mud was the tracks that we saw. Horse hooves, deer tracks, people tracks, truck tracks, big foot tracks, bear tracks. Yup, pretty sure we saw bear tracks and bigfoot tracks, or perhaps these were just distortions from the mud.Being depen
dent on the book the directions started out very detailed and soon became vague. This is where the problems started. We started questioning each turn we made and started becoming a bit nervous that we were further down the trail than we thought. After sitting and mulling over where we were, while checking my own gps it turned out that between the time the book was written and now a particular road name had changed. This alleviated our confusion and soon we were on our way down a busy highway till we saw the blazes for the Fingerlakes trail!Once on the trail it was easy to see the blazes on the trees and we were once again comfortable knowing where we were. The trail itself though is rather primitive. One thing that Heather and find is that through experience we are learning much about what we should and shouldnt be doing while hiking. We really need to wear pants, or at least bring some to slip on over our shorts. The trail was rather overgrown in spots and we were constantly pushing through some rather dense brush. We constantly checked ourselves for ticks, as this would be a prime spot for them to attach themselves to us. We do however douse ourselves in Deet before setting off. Perhaps this has been effective. At one point on the trail we saw some kind of bones sitting in the middle of the trail. We inspected them but Heather said "Maybe we should get out of here?". I agreed. Never took a pic of these.
When all was said and done somehow according to the tracking in the gps we managed to hike 10.8 miles. That is a personal record, and our muscles and joints were feeling it. One thing we learned is that we need to make sure we have proper maps on our next excursion. Also need to really concentrate and learn orienteering with map and compass. We also never got to use the toilet paper for the uses above. Maybe next time.
