Central & Western NY Outdoors
 March 2007 

     

 ~~~ IN THIS ISSUE ~~~                                 

Frosted Flakes 

Finger Lakes Trail Hike Series for 2007

Into the Stone Age

From Mountain Top, to Topping Cancer, to TV

Pioneering Route Blazes New Trail for Cyclists

Cheers for those plodding Chelonians

The Trails of Victor

 

Sure, it's easy to complain about the inches (or feet) of snow piling up outside. But did you ever take a really close look at the cold white stuff? Click the sights below for an in depth and interesting look at snow crystals and more.

 

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/

http://www.cienciateca.com/stssnow.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow#Electron_microscope_gallery

Have you ever wanted to hike the Finger Lakes Trail by day hikes but didn’t want to do it alone, or hassle with driving and spotting cars? Each year the Finger Lakes Trail Conference organizes a hike series where one Saturday a month, they hire a bus to shuttle people along the Finger Lakes Trail. This year the hikes will traverse Allegany County. 

The dates are now set for the 2007 county hike series, "Hiking West: Crossing the Genesee"

April 21
May 19
June 16
July 21
August 18
September 21

The hike coordinator is Pat Monahan, pmonahan@stny.rr.com. Pat has worked out the hike plot, picked the site for the picnic and is working on bus contracts. Details and registration form are on the FLTC web site: www.fingerlakestrail.org

Save the dates, sign up for the series, then go explore a segment of the Finger Lakes Trail with other outdoors loving folks.

 

For 30,000 years the Bushmen of Africa have lived the same lifestyle.  At a one time high population of maybe 10,000 they are reduced to under 1,000.  Of this number around 300 live at the edge of encroaching civilization.  

Here they allow travelers a small window into their lives such as going hunting with bows and arrows for birds, baboons, small antelope and monkeys. When they shoot one, they start a fire by spinning a stick with their hands and eat it.  Hunters eat first.  If there is any left over it goes to the women and children.  The women are mainly there to reproduce more hunters.  Often they are weak and hungry.  The coals from the fire are used to ignite tobacco and other leaves in a choking smoke from a stone pipe.

It is still possible to cross into this world for a brief time before both our worlds collide in ways that extinguish this traditional life.  For more pictures of adventurers in January ’07 who climbed Lengai (the mountain of God), watched dung beetles, hiked with Masaii warriors, crossed paths with wild Cape Buffalo go to Pack Paddle Ski Photo gallery. 

Don't wait to take an adventure. Check out other great trips. www.packpaddleski.com

If your life has been deeply touched (or would like to it to be) by a HUMBLING experience you have much to share.

Visualize a stream of people whose lives have been affected by cancer joining from all four directions on the highest point in Africa, Kilimanjaro, at sunrise. They are there to celebrate the struggles, the courage of spirit, and the sharing of community. They are there to spread hope to the world. They can not make this climb alone nor can we live on this planet isolated in our countries. The sharing of the climb with the Africans that assist us, the community at home supporting the climbers, and the climbers themselves step Out of Africa for at least a brief period to demonstrate what is possible in a world community. 

A dramatic and highly emotional event such as people from all sides of Kilimanjaro is but one component of this project. Local outdoor adventures and community groups are another. As is the process of many of us volunteering to create these projects. This project is about community, healthy lives, connection, beauty, hope, and celebration.

For more on this story of some of the 40 climbers attempting to raise money for Cancer Research and awareness click on www.journeysofinspiration.com For Jack and Jim’s story click this R-news link.

      Pioneering Route Blazes New Trails for Cyclists

After three years of research and planning, Adventure Cycling Association, North America’s largest bicycling organization, and the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Minority Health are pleased to unveil the newly completed 2,058-mile Underground Railroad Bicycle Route. A breakthrough in both historically-infused adventure travel and active-living outreach to the African-American community, the UGRR promises to introduce people of all cultural backgrounds to the adventure and health benefits of cycling and bicycle travel.

Adventure Cycling’s maps for the route steer cyclists along cycling-friendly, low-traffic roads, and feature elevation profiles, historical notes, and information on camping, lodging, and worthwhile historical sites along the way.

Starting in Mobile, Alabama, the route winds north through river valleys and wildlife refuges to Kentucky and Ohio, before reaching Lake Erie, Niagara Falls, and its end-point in Owen Sound, Ontario on Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay, the final destination for many freedom seekers. Besides the lush green scenery and the many small towns the route passes through, a host of museums, historic parks, and visitor centers bring the history of this remarkable period alive. Whether you embark on a day ride or the entire 2,058-mile trek, you're sure to enjoy a treat for both the mind and the senses.

"We’ve all heard the story of slaves who escaped to freedom," says Dennis Coello, a veteran photographer and writer who recently rode and photographed the route for Adventure Cycling, “but here’s a chance to feel that story — and to experience a continent along the way.”
For more information, visit http://www.adv-cycling.org/

In Florida, rampant development has meant the bull dosing of gopher tortoise habitat. This article uses the age-old tortoises as an example of how man is running rough sod over the Earth and all its creatures. Read on, for a poetic reflection on our current state of affairs:

In our fast-track world, few beings embody constancy like the Chelonian order of reptiles: turtles and tortoises. Sea turtles watched dinosaurs bloom and die and are still here to witness the technological wizardry of man -- a 150-million- year span. One must assume evolutionary success in an animal so long-lived. (We, by comparison, have managed a measly few thousand annuli).

That our gopher tortoise coexisted with mastodons -- its burrow sloped radically downward to forestall collapse by outsized pachyderms -- ought to at least fascinate us as raptly as the latest celebrity gossip.

Despite the crass ease with which land barons have bulldozed him, Gopherus polyphemus, the South's only native tortoise, is a messenger from Earth's past. In a time warp worthy of Jules Verne, this tortoise, whose forebears crawled with mammoths, today quietly crops roadside grass. It's a heady overlap between the Pleistocene and 2006, and in that light this modest-sized tortoise seems as miraculous and baffling as the dimetrodon that burst snarling onto that "Mysterious Island" beach.

Just because habit makes us take such living relics for granted doesn't mean every child shouldn't know that Testudines (the turtle taxonomic order) is an information superhighway back to our origins and beyond. Knowledge about what predates us may impinge upon what lies ahead, so we dismiss "outmoded" herps at our own risk. Even if the risk proves only to our intellectual sophistication, isn't it foolish to sacrifice cerebral refinement for the relatively puerile quick buck? Does anyone really think man exists solely to procreate and churn out houses? A silly premise (yet apparently operative in Florida ) that casts us as simpletons whose needs end with roof, job and plasma TV -- the bare minimum to sate the brain of the basest hominid.

For modern man to fulfill -- even make a stab at -- his role as "Crown of Creation," he surely must do more than crowd everything else out. After all, the Maya tried that -- consumed all of their resources at their demonstrable peril -- then died out. And they were pretty smart. So imagine us, Cro-Magnon in comparison, doltishly scraping life from Earth's epidermis, meanwhile thinking ourselves immune to a similar destruction.

That we're not may remain to be seen. If the Republican chokehold on both houses of Congress can vanish overnight, surely our mortality can be made clear by a Creator irked at his charges' wayward path. We were given choice -- the dimensions of a past and present so as to, if we're wise, ensure a future -- and it may take weighing history and prehistory and "lesser creatures' " helpful hints on evolutionary success to make the right one.

It isn't enough to gauge our progress from the onset of modernity -- technology, machines, gadgets that make us less human and real -- but also by tracing our steps back to man's dawn: to where we went wrong, or to what we did right; to the point where "civilization" devolved into excess from its initial wholesome apex. We've slipped back into barbarity without realizing it, behind veneers of wealth, technical precision and deadly complicated weaponry. We're as coarse as Australopithecus out to bash his neighbor, or a saber tooth tiger, on the head.

Tortoises, meanwhile, are harmless herbivores that wouldn't hurt a fly, yet have managed (barely) to survive. Marine turtles, unconcerned that man views himself king of the world, cruise the same seas with us that they did with school bus-sized plesiosaurs. What matters to them is that they endure. Man has yet to unlock these reptiles' ancient secrets. Aesop's "The Tortoise and the Hare" was a hint. But in our denseness, our species' answer -- always -- is more subdivisions, more tax money, more monster vehicles, more drugs, more technology, more artificial wealth. As if these solved the Riddle of the Sphinx or why we're here.

Ask a turtle. He hasn't yet told all he knows.

 

Perinton, with its Crescent Trail Association, was the Rochester area pioneer in beginning a neighborhood trail network. But, close on its heels was the town of Victor. In 1991 a group of volunteers met to form Victor Hiking Trails with the goal of building trails in Victor. Every year since then they have built, maintained, added to, and enhanced their trail network to achieve an impressive diversity of trails. The group still operates; still run by volunteers; still dedicated to trails, and has been joined in their efforts by the active Victor Parks Department.

  Victor’s wide range of trails are suited to various activities and physical abilities. Some, like the Auburn Trail, Lehigh Valley Trail, and Trolley Trail are former railroad beds. Their flat surfaces welcome walkers, skiers, and bikers of all abilities, families with babies in strollers, and persons in wheelchairs. The Auburn and Lehigh Valley Trails were graded and resurfaced with hard-packed stone dust over the past few years and now provide a trail experience free of the previous ballast stones and mud holes.

Avid mountain bikers can head to Dryer Road Park where they’re sure to find a challenge on the hillside trails. Twenty-three, mostly single-track trails wind on and off a plateau offering over 6 miles of adventure for intermediate and advanced mountain bikers. For hikers who like a challenge, there’s the 6-mile-long Seneca Trail or the 3-mile-long traverse from Ganondagan State Historic Site to Dryer Road Park. Both offer challenging hills that will get your heart pumping.

For a less strenuous stroll, wander along the Trail of Peace through the fields at Ganondagan State Historic Site and visit the replica Seneca Indian longhouse. You’ll be walking land that was once home to a major seventeenth-century Seneca Indian town. Head to the Maryfrances Bluebird Haven Trail to circle a field in search of bluebirds. This land was donated to the town of Victor by Robert Butler in memory of his wife. The 1.1-mile loop trail circumnavigates the property on a mowed path through meadow and forest. Wait until May, then head to Mertensia Road Park to see a spectacular carpet of bluebells along Mud Creek. Or, go look for active beavers along the trails in Lehigh Crossing Park.

Midway between these extremes are the mild, rolling hills at Monkey Run Trail, Fishers Park, and Ganondagan’s Earth is Our Mother/Sweetgrass/Meadow -Wood Trails. Monkey Run is a woodland oasis next to a suburban development that follows the hills and gullies formed by White Brook. Fishers Park offers over 3 miles of trails through a wooded hillside and across fields of grasslands covering glacially sculpted hillocks. Or, climb to the plateau that used to be a Seneca Indian granary at Fort Hill and enjoy a panoramic view of the surrounding farm fields.

Victor has a wealth of trails thanks to Victor Hiking Trails and Victor Parks Department. Head out to enjoy them. Victor Hiking Trails leads hikes one Saturday a month all over the region and welcomes the public to join them. For details, explore their web site at www.victorhikingtrails.org.

The trails of Victor are all mapped and described in the various Footprint Press Guidebooks, including:

Take Your Bike – Family Rides in New York’s Finger Lakes Region (NEW)

Take Your Bike – Family Rides in the Finger Lakes & Genesee Valley Region

Take Your Bike – Family Rides in the Rochester Area

Take A Hike – Family Walks in New York’s Finger Lakes Region (NEW)

Take A Hike – Family Walks in the Rochester Area

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