There is a small group of practical ramblers who never lost sight of why nature gave us feet. Tying together a delightful combination of animal trails, abandoned railroad grades, ancient wagon lanes, paved roads, city streets, even sections of beach, the FLT sets a wavy course through forests and fields, along dizzying cliffs, over streams, into hanging valleys, wetlands and deep gorges, always climbing out again, onto gentle hills that seem to roll on forever. Today, the FLT consists of a main trail, six branches, two loops and one spur. A new branch, the Link Trail, is on the drawing board. The brain child of Bill Coffin and Mary Kunzler-Larmann, it'll run for 35 miles through Madison County, linking the FLT to the old Erie Canal Towpath.
Access is easy throughout the system.
Parking is available at most trailheads and large FLT signs mark most access points. Two blazes, one on top of the other, indicate a change of direction. On the last leg of its eastern end, the FLT uses trails maintained by the Department of Environmental Conservation and is blazed by DEC disks of various colors. The Main FLT Stretching from west to east for 557 miles, the main trail begins at the Pennsylvania border in Allegheny State Park. Comprised of individuals who walked the whole stretch, this exclusive group just keeps growing and growing, and numbered 62 as of April 7, 1997.