Innholdsfortegnelse for July - August 2015 i Adirondack Explorer

Scientist Curt Stager walks along the edge of the woods, his flashlight shining into the shallow water of a leafy, roadside pool on a dark night in Paul Smiths. It’s late April, and he’s out looking for spotted salamanders, wood frogs, and spring peepers that have migrated to shallow vernal pools to breed. After poking around for a minute, he lets out an excited shout: “There’s a salamander! There he is! He’s early!” In the water is a dark, four-inch-long creature with bright yellow spots. In the same pool not far away, wood frogs float on the surface. In another week, pools like this will be a filled with breeding frogs and salamanders, which will leave behind egg sacks that hatch into larvae. Spotted salamanders spend most of the year…

Brian Mann and I had been on the water for several hours when we came to a fallen tree stretched across the river. We pulled over to a sandbank to carry our canoes around. “Human footprints,” Brian remarked. “So I guess we’re not Lewis and Clark,” I replied. If we weren’t intrepid explorers, at least we could pretend. For even though we weren’t the very first, we must have been among the first to paddle this stretch of the upper Hudson River after the state purchased the 6,200-acre MacIntyre East tract from the Nature Conservancy in late April, a few weeks before our trip. The state bought MacIntyre East as part of a multi-year deal to add sixty-one thousand acres of former Finch, Pruyn lands to the Forest Preserve. The…

The study challenges two longstanding assumptions about yellow perch: (1) that they are not native to the Adirondack Park and (2) that perch and brook trout cannot co-exist. For decades, the state Department of Environmental Conservation has regarded yellow perch as an invasive species that is a threat to brook-trout populations. Since the 1950s, the department has “reclaimed” more than a hundred ponds in the Park, using rotenone, a natural poison, to kill off all the fish in a pond and then restocking it with brook trout. (Perch are not the only species regarded as nuisance fish.) DEC staff says research has shown that when yellow perch and brook trout share the same habitat, brookie populations decline drastically. But Curt Stager, one of the authors of the new study, believes…

Environmental groups are calling for a regional moratorium on the transportation of potentially hazardous tar-sands oil, saying it would create a threat to Lake Champlain. A more volatile type of oil, Bakken crude, is already moving along the west shore of the lake—and thus through the Adirondack Park—on a virtual pipeline of rail-tanker cars to the Port of Albany, where it’s loaded onto barges at a facility owned by Global Companies LLC. Global is planning to modify its Albany operations to enable it to accept tar-sands oil as well, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Although tar-sands oil is not as explosive as regular crude, it is thick and heavy, which poses different risks. If it spilled into the lake, it would sink and coat the bottom,…

Law Ray Htoo represents the next generation of Adirondack Forty-Sixers. The eighteen-year-old has twenty-seven of the High Peaks under his belt, including Dix, Algonquin, Whiteface, and his favorite, Nippletop. He’s climbed most of them in winter. “I like it because I can challenge myself,” he says, adding that he relishes the variety of weather that hikers experience during winter. His fondness for winter hiking might seem odd, given that he never saw snow until six years ago, when he and his family settled in upstate New York as political refugees. Htoo is a member of the Karen tribe, many of whose members have fled strife and oppression from the government of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The Karen have long been in conflict with Myanmar’s military dictatorship. While he now…

With raccoons, you either see too much of them or, when you have friends visiting from overseas and you want to show them one, there’s neither hide nor hair to be found. For years at our place along the Saranac River, we saw no raccoons whatsoever. Occasionally late at night elsewhere in the Adirondacks, one bolted across the road in front of our car, but this never happened in the driveway. Over time, though, backyard sightings began to happen. Then they began to happen often. Last night a raccoon visited our bird feeder. I stepped out the door and heard a loud thump as it dropped to the ground. I’ve come to know that sound well. In a shed that alas is permeable to raccoons, we store bird seed in…

No When New York State spent nearly $50 million to buy the former Finch, Pruyn and Company forestlands, the acquisition was touted as a way to open tens of thousands of acres of formerly private lands to the public, providing spectacular new recreational opportunities and generating critically important tourism dollars for Adirondack communities. In the ensuing months, the five towns most impacted by this purchase—Indian Lake, Long Lake, North Hudson, Minerva and Newcomb—advocated strongly for land-use classifications that would accomplish just that. Now, as the state begins to implement a plan that will allow these opportunities to become reality, there is a danger that our communities’ economic progress will be stifled before it even begins. Last month, the state Department of Environmental Conservation issued proposed amendments to the Community Connector…

“I have always thought that whoever dubbed this vireo the ‘preacher’could have had no very exalted opinion of the clergy.”—Bradford Torrey, 1889 A usually mild-mannered neighbor of mine put it rather more forcefully than Mr. Torrey: “Hi, John. You know I like birds and even have a pair of binoculars and a bird guide and even went on one of your bird walks, but I gotta tell ya I’m gonna kill this [expletive deleted] red-eyed vireo that built a nest twenty feet from my bedroom window unless you can tell me how to get the [expletive deleted] bird the [expletive deleted] out of my back yard.” Red-eyed vireos sing relentlessly, in some cases continuously from dawn to dusk, holding forth ad nauseum with short, rapid, maddeningly repeated pairs of phrases:…

Blisters can form when your feet get sweaty or wet while hiking. Your skin prunes and softens, and after repeated chafing against your hiking boot, the top layer of skin separates, allowing fluid to build up beneath. PREVENTION The best way to prevent blisters is to eliminate moisture and chafing. Your heel, toes, and the ball of your foot are the most common places to blister. A properly fitted shoe will reduce friction. When your shoe is laced securely, it should hug your heel and keep your foot in place. Break your boots in around the house and on short walks before wearing them hiking. Blisters on your toes are usually caused by cramped space. Look for a shoe with a spacious “toe box.” If you can wiggle your toes…

The Clinton Correctional Facility has long been an inescapable presence in Dannemora, with a high concrete wall looming over the village’s main street. Dannemora’s official population is 3,822, but roughly half of the residents are inmates and most of the rest either work at the prison or know someone who does. The population dropped by two in June when two killers, Richard Matt and David Sweat, managed to get out of the maximum-security prison by cutting through their cell walls, following a steam pipe into the sewer system, and emerging from a manhole onto a village street. And then life changed in this quiet Adirondack community. In the days that followed, hundreds of police officers descended upon Dannemora and nearby towns, setting up roadblocks, scouring fields and woods, knocking on…

For centuries Lake Champlain has been a thoroughfare for history. Naval engagements helped determine the outcomes of the Revolutionary War and War of 1812. In the nineteenth century, a thriving iron industry used canal boats to transport ore down the lake and the Hudson River to Troy. And today fishing and pleasure boating strengthen the region’s economy. In Westport lives a craftsman who for more than four decades has absorbed this history and channeled it through his hands into representations, both miniature and life size, of life on the lake. Bill Kissam is a builder of museum-quality model ships, detailed dioramas of historical scenes, and full-size watercraft. This summer the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes, Vermont, will feature an exhibit on the history of Lake Champlain boating, displaying Bill’s…

Technology is making it easier for scientists to gather data about the natural world from observations made by ordinary citizens, and this is happening more than ever in the Adirondacks. One of the most recent examples is the new phenology trail at Peacock Park on Mirror Lake in the village of Lake Placid. The trail, which opened this spring, was set up by Ezra Schwartzberg, a local entomologist and owner of Adirondack Research LLC. Phenology refers to biological cycles in nature, such as when buds break on trees, flowers bloom, and birds migrate. The trail goes past twenty-five trees and shrubs, which bear labels naming their species and giving them an identification number. The trail is used by students from Lake Placid public schools and Northwood School, a private school…

Allen Mountain is the twenty-sixth highest peak in the Adirondacks, but it may be the toughest to get to. Not only does it entail an eighteen-mile round trip, but you have to ford the Opalescent River. When the water is high and/or cold, that can be dangerous. The state’s recent acquisition of the MacIntyre East tract could shorten the hike and eliminate the ford. The parcel lies between the Hudson River and Allen, and a logging road extends several miles into the tract, coming within a few miles of the 4,340-foot peak. On the way, the road passes through private timberlands leased by the Opalescent Hunting Club. The question is how much of the road will be open to motor vehicles. The state Department of Environmental Conservation has plans to…

When I suggested to my girlfriend Carol that we jog around Cascade Lake in the Pigeon Lake Wilderness, she endorsed the idea without hesitation. Not only is Carol a trail runner, but she also is an avid swimmer. You might say she is a little obsessed. When I mentioned that Cascade Lake has a sandy bottom, I could barely hold her back. I had my own reasons for wanting to visit Cascade Lake. I was just finishing a guidebook (published in June by the Explorer) called 12 Short Hikes Near Old Forge and wanted to take a few photos for the Cascade Lake chapter. Cascade Lake is not the shortest hike in the book. The trails leading to and circling the lake add up to six miles. Except for a…

Fisher populations appear to be declining in the Adirondacks but growing outside the Blue Line, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. As a result, DEC proposed in May to reduce the trapping season in the Park to twenty-two days from forty-six days. The season now runs from October 25 to December 10, but the proposal calls for ending it on November 15. Fishers are trapped primarily for their pelts, which can be sold for hundreds of dollars in places. Fisher populations naturally occur at low densities. DEC’s rough estimate, based in part on harvest data, is that between 3,800 and 5,000 fishers live in the Adirondacks. On average, Adirondack trappers kill about a thousand fishers a year (though the harvest has declined in recent years). “It almost looks…

We had been on the trail for nearly eleven hours when the storm hit. We were so close to success, so close to completing the Great Range in a day. The East Coast’s hardest hike (according to Backpacker Magazine, at least) was nearly within our grasp. We were only a half-mile from the summit of Mount Marcy, the last of ten mountains. We felt great: plenty of energy, plenty of food, plenty of water. Way, way, way too much water, as it turned out. Not just a storm. A deluge of monsoon proportions. Biblical proportions. The sort of weather that Ray Bradbury wrote about in his science-fiction short story “The Long Rain,” in which a crew of astronauts crash-land on water-soaked Venus: “It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain,…

The hills were alive with the sound of music—even before Julie Andrews sang of them. In 1947 the New York State Music Camp opened its first summer season at the Otter Lake Hotel. The building is long gone, but a historical plaque marks the location. For nine summers hundreds of students and faculty from the United States, Canada, and overseas had classes in music theory, harmony, conducting, composition, and arranging. They performed in bands, orchestras and choirs. They gave concerts at Otter Lake but also at the Boonville Fair and Old Forge. Weekly programs were broadcast on WBIX, Utica. The final concert was the evening of August 25, 1955—sixty years ago this summer. The music camp outgrew Otter Lake. Dr. Frederick Fay Swift, camp founder and director, moved it to…

Moths and their showy, diurnal cousins, the butterflies, are members of the order Lepidoptera, distinguished as a group from other insects by their scaly wings. Moths, like the majority of species in the animal kingdom, undergo complete metamorphosis, with eggs that hatch into larval caterpillars that transform into pupae that transform into winged adults that lay eggs. Moth caterpillars are a major food source not only for bats and birds but also for people in some parts of the world. The approximately two thousand moth species that inhabit the Adirondacks are conveniently divided into two groups: the relatively large moths, or macrolepidoptera, and the smaller moths, or microlepidoptera. A few of the latter are well known because they eat things we harvest or store. These include clothes moths, leaf miners,…

A long-awaited plan to allow snowmobilers to ride through newly acquired state lands in the Essex Chain Lakes region has been released by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The proposal, unveiled at the Adirondack Park Agency’s meeting in June, calls for the construction of a new bridge over the Cedar River and the continued use of an existing span, the Polaris Bridge, across the Hudson. When combined with another proposed trail network, the route will connect Indian Lake, Minerva, and Newcomb. When the APA classified the former Finch, Pruyn lands in December 2013, it left undetermined the exact route of the snowmobile corridor, pending the resolution of legal questions. It’s Debatable: Should state remove Polaris Bridge? Page 41 DEC has now settled on a proposed route, which is contained…

If NYCO Minerals acquires Lot 8 in the Jay Mountain Wilderness, as seems likely, the two-hundred-acre parcel will be off limits to the public for years. So if you want to see the area and what all the fuss is about, now’s the time to plan your hike. NYCO hopes to mine Lot 8 for wollastonite, a mineral used in plastics, ceramics, paints, and other products. In exchange for the parcel, the company would give the state other land that would be added to the Forest Preserve. I visited Lot 8 twice this spring. The first time, in early May, I went to inspect the rough roads and drilling sites that NYCO created when it was test-boring for wollastonite. I returned in early June when I climbed two small peaks…

I’m told there’s nothing quite like the Wild Center’s Wild Walk anywhere in the world, but the idea of a stroll among the treetops owes a great deal to Manhattan’s High Line, a popular rail trail that opened in 2009, offering a view of the cityscape from three stories up. As largely earthbound humans, we are unaccustomed to seeing the layers of life when we look up into the trees. Even when we climb mile-high Mount Marcy, our feet are still on the ground. Wild Walk spirals up through the trees and shows us the secrets of the treetops. We look down, as birds would. The Wild Center planned to open Wild Walk to the public on July Fourth, nine years to the day after the natural-history museum opened its…

The threat to Adirondack waterways from aquatic invaders has loomed over the Park for years, prompting an environmental call to arms that in the past three years has become both more urgent and more effective. An alliance of community and government groups has formed to provide the financial and political resources to make a real difference in defense of the Park’s waters. The leaders of this effort deserve praise for the decisive steps they have taken so far and support for even stronger measures. A handful of aquatic invasive species have already entered Adirondack lakes, diminishing water quality, interfering with recreational activities and racking up financial costs for communities trying to cope with them. Other species lurk not far from Park boundaries waiting for careless visitors to inadvertently carry them…

While longtime Adirondack Explorer readers probably are familiar with the campaign to create a rail trail between Old Forge and Lake Placid, many may not have heard about another potential rail trail in the Adirondacks: the Upper Hudson Rail Trail. The campaign for this trail had to be suspended in 2010, but recent developments suggest it should be resumed and perhaps expanded. It has the potential to be just as exciting as the proposed Old Forge-to-Lake Placid trail. I’m talking about another ninety-mile rail trail that would extend from Saratoga Springs to Tahawus. Back in 2009, the Friends of the Upper Hudson Rail Trail was interested only in the twenty-nine-mile corridor from North Creek to Tahawus. Known as the Tahawus Extension, this section of rail goes six miles up the…

David Kahn has been executive director of the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake for three and a half years. Before taking this position he was executive director of the San Diego History Center and prior to that director of the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans. He has also run the Brooklyn Historical Society in New York and the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford. Now in its fifty-eighth season, the museum is dedicated to Adirondack history and particularly the relationship between people and wilderness. It has sixty-five thousand square feet of exhibit space, with twenty-two buildings. It employs the equivalent of thirty-five full-time employees year-round and another fifty to sixty in season. The museum has embarked on a long-term project to design and build a “re-imagined” experience, with the…