Innholdsfortegnelse for May - June 2015 i Adirondack Explorer

The Adirondack Mountain Club’s Guide to Eastern Trails describes the Sucker Brook Horse Trail east of Schroon Lake as a long, lonely, and little-used route, with farm ruins and a brook named Desolate flowing through a “dark, dank” valley. Although I am now the author/editor of the guidebook, I had never gotten around to checking this trail. Had that description, by the book’s previous author, kept me away? The rolling 7.5-mile trail to Pharoah Lake from the southwest had remained a mystery, but last fall, curiosity took over. My friend Elizabeth Lee, a savvy naturalist and outdoor guide, and I undertook an end-to-end trek on a mild day in early October. Stopping in at the Adirondack General Store (in Adirondack, of course) we stocked up on chocolate and energy bars.…

Standing along a small stream, Alissa Rafferty turns and spots a small black animal a few hundred feet away. The mink disappears into the thickets briefly and then emerges to scurry onto the ice. It pauses to check out the humans upstream and then is gone again. With no more distractions, Rafferty gets back to checking the trail camera at the edge of a road culvert in Whitehall, east of Lake George. Just a short distance away, trucks and cars rush by, moving too fast for their drivers to pay attention to Rafferty and the mink. Rafferty is in charge of monitoring wildlife for the Adirondack Nature Conservancy, which has set up trail cameras in two important wildlife corridors on the edges of the Adirondack Park. One is east of…

The state has allocated $1 million to establish nine boat-washing stations throughout the Adirondack Park this year in an effort to keep invasive plants and animals out of the region’s waterways. Most of the money will be used to pay inspectors and wash-station attendants and to expand Paul Smith’s College’s lake-stewardship program, which deploys students to inspect watercraft at boat launches in the Adirondacks. Boats found to carry invasive species will be directed to one of the nine wash stations for cleaning. Participation is voluntary, but under the state’s “Clean, Drain and Dry” law adopted last year, boaters must take “reasonable precautions” to prevent the spread of invasives. People who refuse to have boats cleaned will be reported to environmental-conservation officers. Environmentalists are happy that the state is taking steps…

It was necessary to perform the whole journey on foot, the trail lying through the wildest and most inaccessible forests of the Adirondacks, portions of which were almost unknown. The trail was of the faintest description, only to be followed by the most experienced woodsmen … the hollows, eked out by the runways of wolf and panther. —Alfred Billings Street (1869) With great expectations, my husband Jack and I shouldered our packs at the Elk Lake-Marcy trailhead to begin our ambitious twenty-mile overnighter. Our plan was to hike to the Panther Gorge lean-to, drop our gear, then summit Mount Marcy on the first day (eleven miles) and hike out the second day (nine miles). Adding to the challenge was that the last two-mile stretch on the first day, from the…

Yes When the Adirondack Park Agency was created in 1971, the intent of the state legislature was clear: to ensure a balance between the Park’s environmental values and economic health. Today that balance is woefully out of whack, to the detriment of the Park’s economy and residents. But as the APA begins its process of reviewing and amending the Park’s State Land Master Plan, which governs land-use policy on state-owned lands, there is an opportunity to begin restoring balance—and hope—to the Park communities. To gain perspective, let’s take a look back at the balance that was envisioned when the agency was created. According to the APA Act, its purpose “is to insure optimum overall conservation, protection, preservation, development and use of the unique scenic, aesthetic, wildlife, recreational, open space, historic,…

As the high-water roar of Deer Brook behind us faded into a silence punctuated only by the mellifluous song of a white-throated sparrow, I gazed, mesmerized, at a gorgeous meadow of tall, chartreuse grasses sprinkled with wildflowers and shimmering in the sun. Cabbage white and fritillary butterflies percolated out of the grasses, and as I smiled I noticed, with alarm, a flame near the top of one of the hemlocks at the far end of the meadow. Descending immediately into complete mental bankruptcy, I tried to imagine how, with no other flames in sight, a fire could possibly have started at the top of the tree. Then the flame sang, and my fear somersaulted into laughter, and Pat and I looked at each other with big smiles on our faces.…

The three new trail guides that arrived in my mailbox remind me of the bears in the Goldilocks story. The Papa Bear is Bill Ingersoll’s 520-page Discover the Southern Adirondacks, a book filled with trail hikes, bushwhacking routes, and canoe trips. Mama Bear is the Adirondack Mountain Club’s fourth edition of Central Trails, edited by Michael Kelsey, a book half the length of Ingersoll’s tome. And petite Baby Bear can fit in a pocket: Phil Brown’s 12 Short Hikes Near Lake Placid. All the books are high-quality hiking guides with shiny covers that feature a gorgeous view from a mountaintop. And all the books have plentiful black-and-white photos and clear directions on how to get to trailheads and along a trail. After that they’re, well, those three bears, or maybe…

When you chat with Addison Bickford, standing perhaps next to a sap evaporator, steam swirling through the shack, you come to understand that making syrup is an in-the-moment kind of enterprise. Sure, there’s some advance work to make sure all the taps are in place, the tubing is strung, and the new vacuum pump is ready to go. But that’s about as far as planning can take you. Once you’re ready it’s a matter of being open to what nature decides the season will be and what your workdays will be like. When warmer days and spring awakening cause a buildup of pressure within trees, sap can be drawn and business begins. With sap flowing abundantly, you better be ready to work long hours. Addison usually starts boiling in late…

Last winter, the massive Adirondack Club and Resort proposed for Tupper Lake cleared its final major hurdle. After more than a decade of debate and controversy, environmental activists and a handful of local property owners who fought to block the project were dealt a sweeping defeat by the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court. The December 2014 ruling, upholding permits issued by the Adirondack Park Agency two years earlier, appeared to open the way for the $500 million project to move forward. It was hailed as a historic moment for the community. “I think the pieces are now in place to do what Tupper Lake and the Adirondack Park need,” said Tupper Lake Mayor Paul Maroun. But nearly five months later, ACR developers, local pro-development activists, and business leaders acknowledge…

The Adirondack landowners who sued the editor of the Adirondack Explorer after he paddled through their property are taking the case to New York’s highest court, saying a lower court’s decision infringes on their constitutional rights. The Brandreth Park Association and the Friends of Thayer Lake argue that opening their remote parcel to canoeists and kayakers would be tantamount to taking away property rights they’ve held since 1851. A ruling by the Court of Appeals might end a legal dispute that began in May 2009, when Explorer Editor Phil Brown paddled two miles through private property— on Mud Pond, the Mud Pond outlet, and part of Shingle Shanty Brook—while researching a story about publicnavigation rights. The landowners sued Brown for trespass a year later. The state Department of Environmental Conservation…

My wife Mary and I retired from Syracuse to Saranac Lake in 1999 and have resided here happily ever since. It has struck me more than once, however, that we likely would not be living here at all were it not for my boyhood experiences as a camper and counselor at Camp Askenonta on Moose Island in Lake Placid. Askenonta was operated by the Boy Scouts’ Onondaga Council in Syracuse. It encouraged boys fourteen and older to further their scouting skills as Explorers. My tenure at Askenonta from 1954 through 1959 was a life-changing event, and the birth of my love affair with the Adirondacks. Returning to the area was like coming home. Built around 1904, Askenonta came into the possession of the Boy Scouts of America on the heels…

By now the clutches of a long and cold winter should have finally loosened and we should be on track for a splendid fly-fishing season on the West Branch of the Ausable. Evan Bottcher of the Hungry Trout’s fly shop in Wilmington, who keeps a close eye on these things, told me on opening day (April 1) that there was some open water on the West Branch but you’d have to cross ice to get to it. At the time, he was discouraging eager callers. But Evan was optimistic about the season. Despite the hard winter, an early, deep blanket of snow stayed on the river well through March and acted as insulation, preventing the formation of dreaded anchor ice that destroys habitat and kills trout and the little critters…

As the state continues its phased-in acquisition of former Finch, Pruyn & Company timberland, much attention is on how the state classifies and manages different tracts of land. In choosing what lands will be classified Wilderness, Wild Forest, or Primitive Areas, the Adirondack Park Agency shapes the character of the Park. Clearly, these are key steps in the state’s management of public lands in the Adirondacks. But the state’s responsibility doesn’t end there. If the acquisition and classification of lands are to fully benefit the Park, the APA and the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) must effectively enforce the terms of the classifications. If they fall short in this responsibility we run the risk of seeing exceptional wild lands deteriorate through misuse. Park advocates have called attention to several areas…

Fishers are not cats, nor do they fish. Apparently, the name derives from their resemblance in the eyes of Dutch colonists to the European polecat, called fissau by the French and fitchew or fitchet by the English. This handsome member of the weasel family (Mustelidae) dwells in the boreal forests of Canada from the Yukon to Nova Scotia and as far south as California and Tennessee (in the mountains). Overtrapping, predator poisoning, and habitat loss led to their decline and extirpation in southern portions of their range in the 1800s and early 1900s. Fishers are becoming quite rare in the West, where they are proposed for federal listing as a threatened species and are on the “Red List” in British Columbia. However, they are becoming increasingly common in parts of…

Backcountry fastnesses—mountains, forests, canyons—have always been havens for those who take proper behavior with a (sometimes very large) grain of salt. Think the Wild Bunch (also known to moviegoers as the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang) or the Hatfields and McCoys. Closer to home, we have the likes of French Louie and Noah Rondeau, individualists who operated on the fringes of society and lived by their own code of conduct, although, by way of hometown defense, those two never killed anyone. Perhaps tipping our hats to an independent streak that goes back to Colonial times, we tend to make folk heroes out of these characters. But places like the Adirondacks have also harbored more sinister individuals with little heroic dimension to their lives. In her new book Adirondack Outlaws: Bad Boys and Lawless…

Forest rangers and state police rescued a mother and her two preteen sons near the summit of Mount Marcy in mid-March after undertaking, in brutally cold conditions, one of the largest search operations of recent years. “As far as our urgency chart, this was way up there. We had many, many red flags popping up,” said Forest Ranger Captain John Streiff, who oversees rangers in Region 5 of the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Potsdam resident Ningyun Cai and her two sons, ages seven and eleven, became lost in blustery conditions above tree line on the afternoon of Saturday, March 21. Realizing she was disoriented, Cai called Essex County 911 on a cell phone at 5:30 p.m., initiating a search that would include twenty-six forest rangers, four environmental conservation officers,…

A fellow carnivore scientist once showed Cristina Eisenberg the skeleton of an animal and asked her to identify it. Looking at the large hindquarters and feet, she guessed snowshoe hare. Told she guessed wrong, she took a closer look. “I looked at the skull, and it was a lynx,” said Eisenberg, a scientist with Earthwatch Institute, an international environmental organization. Eisenberg might be forgiven for her initial mistake: the Canada lynx and snowshoe hare have some anatomical similarities. “They have very big, soft feet that don’t punch through the snow,” she said. “Their feet are like snowshoes.” Both animals evolved to live in moist boreal forests with lots of snow, and hares constitute the vast majority of a lynx’s diet. “It can eat other small mammals like squirrels, but it…

Jug-o-rum, a voice boomed. I jumped. As far as I knew, I stood alone. Weller Pond, an appendix of cool green water and lily pads bulging from the northern reach of Middle Saranac Lake, spread out before me. To reach the spot, I’d beached a canoe at the head of Saginaw Bay, on Upper Saranac Lake, and hiked through hemlock woods up and over a saddle and down to Weller. As far as I knew, I was the only sentient being for miles. Yet the voice spoke again. “Jug-o-rum,” it said in a deep, rich bass. “Jug-o-rum.” Now it clicked. This was a bullfrog. There was something uncanny about its voice. This bullfrog sounded as if it was really speaking the King’s English, asking for a jug of rum I…

Wolves would be Adirondack attraction I agree with Larry Master’s comments about how wolves enhance visits to Algonquin and Yellowstone parks and boost ecotourism [“The wolf at our door,” March/April 2015]. The wolf would do the same for the Adirondacks and the Northeast. I too, spent many summers camping in Algonquin Park in my late teens and early twenties. There’s nothing like hearing the howl of the wolf, and I too wish to have them back in the Adirondacks. Joseph S. Butera, Floral Park Editor’s Note: Butera is president and co-founder of the Northeast Ecological Recovery Society. APA not protecting sensitive lands Kudos to the Explorer for knowing what’s important. The March/April issue devoted three full pages to the impending regulatory tsunami that threatens to wipe out the protections we’ve…

Perhaps you’ve heard of fat bikes. Still rare in the Adirondacks, they are distinguished by their very fat tires—up to five inches wide, compared with tires two inches wide for a typical mountain bike. Fat-bike riding in winter has exploded in popularity in many parts of the country that experience significant snowfall. It’s likely that fat bikes will catch on here, too. We should anticipate and accommodate their arrival while protecting our environment and not impinging on other winter activities. Why might a bicycle need tires as wide as motorcycle tires? In a word, flotation. A fat bike can roll on less than ten pounds of pressure, resulting in a large footprint that can roll across soft surfaces such as sand or snow that would swallow narrower tires. Fat bikes…

Lake Placid native Robert “Roby” Politi has been supervisor of the town of North Elba since 2008. Owner of the Merrill L. Thomas real-estate agency, Politi has held public office for more than twenty years, having previously served as mayor of the village of Lake Placid and member of the North Elba Town Board. As town supervisor he also serves on the Essex County Board of Supervisors. A registered Republican, he usually runs as an independent. North Elba includes the village of Lake Placid and a portion of the village of Saranac Lake within its borders. As the site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics, Lake Placid has been a leading Adirondack tourist destination for decades. The state’s Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) operates the Olympic venues, while the…