Trails in the Rochester Metro Area

The links go to public sites or to my own descriptions of the trails.

• My description of the Auburn Rail Trail, going from the Brighton-Rochester line to Farmington.
  • Much of the best part of the trail goes through Victor. Here is a link to the Victor Hiking Trails organization.
• The "RIT - UR Trail", as I call it, is part of the Lehigh Valley Trail, North Branch, that, were it complete, would take you from downtown Rochester to the main Lehigh Valley trail in Rush ... and it is almost complete! The main Lehigh trail is mentioned below.
• The Lehigh Valley Rail Trail goes through Rush, Mendon, and Victor. It is a wide recently improved trail that even has a separate lane for horses (although check out the conditions on the equestrian side before you bring your horse there -- it's rather stony, IMHO).
• My latest addition is information on the so-called Butterhole / El Camino Trail. It is just a start. Where did they get this name from?!?
• The Erie Canal (yes, it still exists) has a trail paralleling it most of the way from Buffalo to Albany. Here are some maps. I have been on it from Long Pond Road in Greece to the center of Macedon. It is currently in very good shape. Most of that section is paved. The part from Long Pond Road to the Rochester city line and from Pittsford to Macedon, is tightly packed fine gravel and dirt -- very easy walking or riding.
• The Genesee Valley Greenway is the long north-south trail in Rochester, extending south towards the Pennsylvania border. When done, it will be about 90 miles long.
• The Genesee Valley Greenway connects to the Genesee Riverway Trail at the Rochester city line. If you were heading north on the Greenway, the Riverway Trail will get you all the way to a beach on Lake Ontario, but the trail has some parts that are not complete, and some that officially are done are actually specially marked urban sidewalks. There is a brochure you can download. Here is the front, and here is the back. (Those are PDF files that did not display with Adobe Acrobat, but they showed up fine in Ghostview. Go figure.)
• The Keuka Lake Outlet Trail is one of my favorite short trails. It's a rail trail, but quite crooked (coincidentally "Crooked Lake" is the old name for Keuka Lake), and with several 19^th century ruins.

Finally the Genesee Region Trails Coalition has a great map of all the trails in this part of New York. It is a little out of date (2004), meaning there are more trails available than it shows. The map is actually a brochure. Here is one side and here is the other.