TR: Hi Tor Tour

[MikeK]

This is my home land. I was born and raised in these very hills. Glacially carved hills and plateaus, gullies and extreme gorges define this area. Elevations range from 700' to 2200'. The hills can be mellow slopes to undercut cliffs. Most are rather mellow.

Hi Tor is a wildlife management area in the vicinity of Naples, NY. Camping is not allowed except at the two lean-tos and only by groups such as boy scouts or high school outdoor clubs. The Bristol Hills branch of the Finger Lakes Trail runs through Hi Tor and it has many other truck trails, foot paths and man-made ponds and fields. I believe the fields and ponds were made for some sort of ongoing wildlife study as I've seen the DEC (our department of environmental conservation) do this in other areas. It's a fun place to get lost for a few hours either on a bike, on foot, or skis. My normal mode of transport when I lived here was bike - the fire roads and single track in the area are awesome.

Today was on skis of course - and well, it was OK. I should have went a week or two weeks ago when the snow was fresh. The trails had snowshoe ruts or ski tracks and off those the snow was a heavy, somewhat breakable crust. It was extremely slow as even the steepest shots could barely gain any speed.

The weather was beautiful and the company was great, so I can't complain.

Climbing up the first section which is rather mellow:



Through an orchard of spruce, which I believe were planted. A lot of tree studies and management in here as well



Up, up, up it starts to get steeper:



Looking back down - I should have skied back down this way - snow was nicer here and softening up:



I poked around in some of the fields, here at the top of one, but even the steepest section I couldn't get enough speed to make it of any use... the snow was just too stiff.



On to the lean to. A nice view of the south end of Canadaigua Lake:



The tool of choice:

[connyro]

That's a beautiful part of the world you live in MikeK. I've been through the finger lakes region before several times and always thought it was stunning, like much of upstate NY. I've even got a good friend that moved to that area years ago who was a tele skier and oddly enough named Mike.

[MikeK]

Thanks for the kind words connyro - I wish I felt as excited about it as I used to. Unfortunately I grew up and understood something about land management. Although a lovely area, it is severely lacking in public land - the whole southerntier is IMHO. The public land there is sometimes over-managed or over-used and too small or patchy to really feel wild.

I'm not sure if it's that of the vast difference in flora and geology, but the Adirondack dome is vastly more interesting to me. It makes the Finger Lakes seem like an over-developed suburb. And by some standards, parts of the Adirondacks are vastly over-developed... although it seems to fade away much sooner from a trail head.

OTOH it does make a nice place to live. It's easy to buy a big tract of land. Hunting and fishing seems to be hanging on. Wineries are abundant as are farms of all sorts. It's very easy to buy local, live well and enjoy the outdoors.