7.31 km 23980.80 feet 4.54 mi 4038.00 seconds 67.30 minutes 1.12 hours 4.05 mi/hr
Rode the Kaaterskill Rail Trail. It's a portion of the same railroad that the Tannersville Bike Path is built on -- the Catskill Mountain Railway. Photos.
posted at: 23:16 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
I have a goal of riding every named Rail-Trail in New York State. There are many more railbeds not used for trains anymore which are also ridable. They are usually unnamed, unsigned, and unpublished. I speculate that this is because the owner is either indifferent or away. I've ridden some of these but I'm more interested in getting the named trails ridden first. I'm uploading them to OpenStreetMap as I go.
I'm starting to tread water. I'm finding new trails almost as fast as I ride the remaining trails. In October, I rode the Walkill Valley Rail Trail's new northern section. They decked the rest of the Rondout bridge and opened up the trail nearly into Kingston. In November, on a freezy day, I rode the D&H; branch that went through Lyon Mountain. It's not a named trail, but it's an official snowmobile trail. Middle summer, I rode the Kerhonksen Railtrail between there and Accord. It's part of the O&W's Kingston Branch. Also the Marbletown Rail Trail, which I had ridden most of already, but they extended it to the south.
Rode the Dutchess Rail Trail twice this summer, once end-to-end before they finished the bridge and again after they finished it. Rode the Orange Heritage Trail with Bob McCue walking and showing me things. The big ride, though, was the Genesee Valley Greenway from Nunda to Cuba. That was 79 miles out, and 62 miles back. The difference being fewer side trips coming back. I've now ridden all of the GVG that can be bicycled. Some of it could be walked, but other parts are washed out and walking would be a challenge.
Trails I've ridden:
Trails I haven't (yet) ridden:
posted at: 04:15 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
128.62 km 421994.84 feet 79.92 mi 50873.00 seconds 847.88 minutes 14.13 hours 5.66 mi/hr
Nunda to Olean, NY, riding the Genesee Valley Greenway. Very long ride, very rural rail-trail. Probably less rural than the GVG north of Nunda. Apart from Mt. Morris, there are no on-line communities in that direction. In this direction you have Nunda, Portageville (there's a convenience store at the top of the hill), Fillmore has two taverns that serve food plus a convenience store, Houghton is a college town with a supermarket and a Subway, Belfast has at least one convenience store, and then Cuba.
And the southern section differs from the northern section in being split up. North of Mt. Morris the trail is contiguous. South of it, the trail has multiple closures, some seemingly for legal reasons, others because of unrepaired washouts, and others because of missing bridges.
I started my ride by heading up to the north end of the nearby section of trail. It dead-ends at a washout caused by a creek. Riding south from there, there is a fenced-off section between Creek Road and Pentagass Road. Then it picks up and continues to the point where the canal (which has left us) rejoins. It goes into Letchworth Gorge State Park and becomes Letchworth Gorge Trail #7. It curves around, hugging the wall of the gorge until it gets to a portion that has been washed out. There, you have to walk on a hiking trail. It seems like a long distance, but is only half a kilometer.
We're then back on the the GVG, soon to pass underneath the Erie's Portageville Bridge. Then we get to a missing bridge, and exit the railbed for the highway. A couple of blocks through town and we're back on the trail again. This runs to Bailey Road, where they built a bridge with no accommodation for the trail. You can leave the trail to go underneath the bridge, then ride along River Road to the next trail access crossing.
Another 4km of trail and you've gotten to the biggest and baddest washout, where the Genesee River has totally destroyed the railbed by meandering through it. There's nothing until Cemetery Road on the south side of Fillmore. A bridge over a creek is missing, but south of Cemetery Road the trail picks up again for 2km.
You can stay on the rail-trail all the way through Houghton until a missing bridge after the south of town. Then when the trail crosses to the west side of NY-19, it's open again until Caneada where there's a bridge out. The trail picks up again on the east side of NY-19. It crosses NY-19 just after the trail goes over an old highway bridge. It's all trail from there through Oramel to Gleason Hill Road south of Belfast.
Unfortunately, the trail is washed out south of Belfast all the way to Baragon Hill Road in Belfast. There you can pick up the trail for 5km until the village of Black Creek, where you're off the trail on side streets to Cuba, where there is a 1.5 mile stretch recently opened.
The parts that are on trail are pretty and mostly shaded. Some of the off-trail portions are busy roads or hilly roads, alas. Still, I enjoyed riding the GVG. There is now no portion of it that I haven't ridden.
posted at: 03:41 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
16.69 km 54754.77 feet 10.37 mi 5421.00 seconds 90.35 minutes 1.51 hours 6.89 mi/hr
This is in two parts because I drove from one section to the other. There's a bridge between these two sections which they're currently working on. It looks like it might be the original steel from the railroad, but they have definitely re-done the abutments. It has no deck, so it would have been kinda crazy to cross it.
Both parts are the Marbletown Rail Trail, or the part of it south of High Falls. I've already ridden the section north of High Falls. The trail is fairly well maintained, except where they are currently working on the bridge.
posted at: 04:45 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry
11.55 km 37903.20 feet 7.18 mi 3461.00 seconds 57.68 minutes 0.96 hours 7.47 mi/hr
Bicycled the rail trail from Accord to Kerhonksen. It's part of the former New York, Ontario & Western Railroad, now named the Kerhonksen Rail Trail.
posted at: 04:34 | path: /bicycling | permanent link to this entry