CNYHikes

In the fall of 2020 I blogged about a hike in Cuyler Hill State Forest, a lovely piece of protected land tucked in the southeastern corner of Cortland County.  Although I covered a decent amount of miles on foot that day, I, unfortunately, never made it as far as I intended, so I had planned in the back of my mind to someday return.  Well, “someday” arrived in the past week - just in time for spring and the trees to show their leaves again.  A beautiful, quiet, and more remote segment of the Finger Lakes Trail (FLT) winds right through Cuyler Hill, running in an atypical north-south direction (since the trail is actually west to east), passing through upland deciduous hardwoods, impressive stands of conifers, and trekking along wooded ridges.  The hike here is pleasant, and with only a few brief uphill stretches. I began my hike at the junction where the FLT crosses jeep trail Potter Hill Cemetery Road. This was after a rather extensive, anxiety-causing drive a couple of miles

     Given the time of this hike was early March, essentially still winter, many of the trails in this spectacular state park were closed.  The Gorge Trail  specifically comes to mind, one described in detail by me in a blog from 2019.  But that doesn't mean Robert Treman Park can't be explored in the colder months, as there exists an approximately two-mile long stretch of the Finger Lakes Trail (FLT)  that winds through undulating topography in the southern flanks of the parkland.  It doesn't seem to ever get the foot traffic of the Rim  and Gorge Trails , which, of course, turns out to be a great thing if you're looking for more solitude.  I've only been on this part of the trail, years back, but in the summer months, so I was eager to see how it looked in winter within a leafless forest.  I also looked up the region's snow cover maps and found this place to have very little snow on the ground, which seemed ideal.      It turns out this happens to be the lowes