Well, I finally finished hiking the Letchworth Trail. Took me from June 2015 to September 2017 to manage 25.2 miles. On the other hand, since I did it in sections – hiking from my car, then retracing my steps – I actually hiked it twice.

*Letchworth Trail is a major branch of the Finger Lakes Trail system, and in fact it reaches the Main F.L.T. a little bit south of Portageville, in Wyoming County. This is the southern terminus of the Letchworth Trail, and the northern terminus lies in Mount Morris… 25.2 miles away. Except for a very short stretch at each end, the entire trail lies in Letchworth State Park.

*Wonderful!, I hear you say. This means incredible vistas in the “Grand Canyon of the East!”

*Well, not so much. Except right near the “dam site,” most of the trail is in the woods, set back from the gorge and actually closer to River Road. There are several spur trails that hikers can take to scenic overlooks. Access spurs in the other direction reach out to River Road.

*By the time I started the Letchworth Trail I had already finished the entire F.L.T. In Steuben County, plus the Bristol Hills Trail, the Crystal Hills Trail, the Interlaken Trail, and loop trails in Montour Falls and in Queen Catharine Marsh.

*But getting to Letchworth involved a lot of wheel-spinning. My wife experienced repeated severe health problems, and we suffered several out-of-state family deaths. With the trail an hour’s drive from our home in Bath, it just seemed like a slope too steep to climb. Inertia did its dirty work.

*Until a hot June Sunday when things were going pretty well, and our younger son was at home, and after church we all agreed that this would be a great day for it. I drove up to Mount Morris, parked at the access off Route 36 where Letchworth Trail terminates at the Genesee Valley Greenway, and plunged into the wilds of the Livingston County Campus. Then into Al Lorenz County Park, a pleasing setting shaded by tall old trees. Then into Letchworth Park, past the F.L.T. office, and across the parking lot to the dam. That was my goal for the day, and I’d completed 1.9 miles of the trail.

*I admired the gorge for a while, used the rest room, poked around the dam’s visitor center, and headed back (reversing 1.9 miles) for my car. I got there a little later than I might have, as I spent some time in a field watching a red fox.

*On my next trip I started at the visitor center and spent some time watching the soaring vultures before I struck out for the south. After that, from time to time, I did the trail piecemeal, from various points, though working generally north to south. I met chipmunks, and squirrels red and gray. I met vultures and blue jays, chickadees and pileated woodpeckers. I met hikers and cyclists and hunters, and monarch butterflies. I knew the park in summer, spring, and fall, and it was good.

*All in all, except in Portageville and at the dam/Mount Morris end, these were supremely quiet hikes. Most days I met nobody else at all. To all intents and purposes, I had Letchworth Park all to myself as my own private domain.

*What’s the hiking like? First of all, the trail is excellently blazed – kudos to the volunteers who work at that. The trail itself is clear and easy to see at all seasons, and very well maintained, nice and solid underfoot. Most of the route is over pleasant, gently rolling terrain, with very few long slogs upward.

*But there are, unsurprisingly, ravines. Of course water runs downhill to the Genesee river at the bottom of the gorge, and on the way it collects into streams and watercourses that cut right athwart the trail. Most of these are dry for most of the year, but it’s still a matter of down into the ravine, across the (probably dry) streambed, and up the other side, maybe three to five times in a given walk… and then, if you’re hiking the way I did, back again.

*Getting there, although a bit of a drive from Bath, is half the fun. The country between the park and I-390 is farm-and-forest land, with barns and hamlets and miles-long vistas, and occasional hay wagons on the road. Closer to the park some of the roads are dirt, and you meet the Genesee Valley Greenway again. In fall the roaring combines devour the cornfields. Amish and Old-Order Mennonites make their quiet homes here. You can get gas, or something to eat, in Mount Morris, Portageville, or Nunda.

*The on-again, off-again opportunities to hike made the Letchworth Trail take on symbolic significance: when I could carve out time to go there, it meant that things were going well. Even when my wife was wheelchair-bound in late winter, we set this as the year that I’d finish the trail. I made a couple of trips, and then I was down to the last five miles – ten miles, by the time I’d done my round trip. Two hikes to go, and now we set September as the MONTH I’d finish.

*Saturday the sixteenth went well, despite the heavy fog, but the following Saturday the heat went well up into the eighties, and I wisely skipped it. A week later rain fell off and on, but I forged ahead, wearing my L. L. Bean duck shoes. After doubling back I followed a doe that was also using the trail, maybe twenty yards ahead and seemingly unaware of me. And on September 30, I finally finished the Letchworth Trail.