Tuesday, August 9, 2005
photo slideshow
Ontario Pathways Trail info
Ann and I visited the Ontario Pathways Trail last summer, on the way home from a trip to visit her family. We found a wonderful set of cascading waterfalls less than a mile from the Rt 96 trailhead and spent a while wading along the ledges. In the end we walked to the first road crossing and found the trail to be very peaceful. (So I knew I had to come back on my bike...) As I researched the trail a bit more, I learned that one of the features further down the trail was a redecked 300 ft long, 40 ft high railroad bridge. That I HAD to see!
The trail was originally two different railbeds. The west-to-east segment, between Canandaigua and Stanley, was built in 1851 and changed hands several times. The south-to-north segment, from Stanley to Phelps, was part of the Sodus Point & Southern line, built in 1873. As with many of the local railroads, the primary business was carrying coal. By the 1950's these lines were dying out. In 1994 Ontario Pathways Inc was formed as a nonprofit organization and purchased these two segments from the Penn Central Corporation for the purpose of developing trails for use by the local communities. This was done in cooperation with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, and in fact was the first land conservancy project the RTC took on. Since then the trail has been a work-in-progress involving the cooperation of many organizations, individuals, and communities, since much of the work needed has been done by volunteers. They've done a VERY impressive job, too - approximately 20 miles of the 23 mile length is open. (Much of the preceeding information comes from the RTC's excellent guidebook Rails-to-Trails: New York.)
Anyway, enough history lesson. I unloaded the bike at the Rt 96 Trailhead just outside of Phelps, and rode the shady path as far as I could... which unfortunately was only a couple of miles, before I hit a big "trail closed due to trail work" sign. Tried taking the road for a bit, but found that to be a thankless task - it was all uphill, on my very heavy ATB, with knobbies! In other words, I worked very hard to go a very short distance in a very long time. So I zipped back to the trailhead, hopped in the car, and drove down to Orleans. In addition to being a convenient place to get back on the trail, Orleans is also home to the only steam-locomotive-era wooden water tower along a NYS railtrail. (It's listed on the National Historic Register. Unfortunately, I was out of film by the time I got back, so I don't have a picture of it... I'll just have to go back next year!)
Hopped back on the trail and rode along the ridge overlooking the creek (the same one Ann and I had waded in, back along the earlier section of the trail.) After passing through some fields and more woods, ended up at a fairly high redecked bridge which was partially blocked by a fallen tree. Unfortunately, the next bridge had not been restored, so I had to hike the bike down to the road and ride pavement until I could pick the trail up again, about three miles. After that I bounced down the trail into Stanley, where I hopped on the segment heading toward Canandaigua and, about half a mile later - SUCCESS! I was at the Really Big Bridge. While the view wasn't as unobstructed as I'd expected (I guess some of the branches grew back after they did the redecking and took the pictures I'd seen) it was still pretty darn impressive, especially considering all the actual work was done by 34 volunteers in about 7 hours (planning the project and pre-assembling the three redecking sections took a bit longer than that... but apparently it was worth it in the end.) And by virtue of figuring out how to use the timer on my camera, I was even able to get a picture of myself on the bridge.
After that it was just a long, hot trip back to the car, with a stop for something cold to drink in Phelps and then a long drive back to Albany. Maybe next summer I can ride more of the Ontario Pathways Trail - including the section they were working on this year!
JMH
