Report to Hikers: week of Jan 22-Jan 28

Hello Hikers!

Wed Jan 24

Chestnut Lean-to, Danby SF — preliminary hike to collect firewood for our Sat cook-out

A bit of a grim day — snowing, cold and slippery — but we had a lot of fun

Official head count: 17H, three D

More photos:

Jack V

Sat Jan 27

Hot dog cook-out, Chestnut Lean-to, Danby SF

For once, a forecast of nice weather made a week ahead of time actually proved correct, and we had a gorgeous morning for our event — it was 50 by noon. But it was still pretty snowy, and the trail in was more slippery than on Wednesday

As promised, we had two great fires — Eckhart (extreme left in this shot) walked in an hour early and had everything roaring ahead of time — as you can see, things were a little smoky from time to time

This is the second fire — burning much cleaner than the one gushing smoke on the front side of the lean-to

We had a second hot dog cook this year in addition to Tiger, Annamarie, who has some commercial kitchen experience

The combination of mild temperature and snowy scenery was really pleasing, and the get-together took on a very relaxed and laid-back feeling

The smokier fire in front of the lean-to died down after a while, and more of the action shifted to the back fire

By coincidence, a group of hikers from Cayuga Trails Club had a scheduled hike right past the lean-to, and they dropped by. The hike was being led by David P, who runs CTC’s trail maintenance operation — I was delighted to meet David (red jacket and backpack in the center of the shot) and to thank him publicly for all the great work he does that directly benefits our group. I’ll take this opportunity to urge you to join CTC — they do great work for hiking here.