Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2017 i Adirondack Explorer

A morning of cold drizzle and thick fog may sound like a time to curl up by the fire and mourn the passing of Indian summer. But for Jeff Allott and some friends this November Saturday the weather is a sign of winter coming and just right for preparing Otis Mountain for another ski season. Never mind that they weren’t able to operate at all during last year’s snow drought. A new year brings fresh hope, and it’s time to get ready. The volunteers splice rope to extend a rope tow by two hundred feet, clear debris, and rebuild a lift shack. This recharging of spirit at a time that others would find dreary is a fitting symbol of their cause. After all, they’re working to breathe life into one…

The Adirondack Park Agency held public hearings on Boreas Ponds at eight different locations around the state in November and December. Hundreds of people spoke, offering a potpourri of opinions. But one constant was a sea of green T-shirts bearing the slogan “I Want Wilderness.” BeWildNY, a coalition of eight environmental groups, created the T-shirts to push the idea that Boreas Ponds should be classified as motor-free Wilderness. Green groups have floated several Wilderness proposals for the 20,758-acre Boreas Ponds Tract, and though they differ widely, they agree that the land encircling Boreas Ponds should be Wilderness, the most restrictive and protective of the APA’s seven classifications for state land. When the APA released its options for the tract in October, however, all three called for classifying a former logging…

For many years, wildlife agencies in New York State and Vermont have controlled the population of double-crested cormorants on Lake Champlain by shooting the birds or covering their eggs with corn oil, but a federal court ruling may put a stop to the practice, at least for now. Anglers fear the birds will now spread throughout Lake Champlain and decimate fish populations. Bill Wellman, who sits on the board of the Lake Champlain chapter of Trout Unlimited, expressed frustration with the court ruling, noting that wildlife agencies worked hard for years to bring the cormorants under control. “Double-crested cormorants eat about two and a half pounds of fish a day during the breeding season,” said Wellman, a Plattsburgh resident. “And although the number of active cormorant nests have decreased over…

If you’re looking for a book that showcases the beauty, the tranquility, the recreational opportunities to be found in the Adirondacks, don’t get this one. But if you want unvarnished stories from some of the region’s most remarkable, if often nearly anonymous, older citizens, it’s for you. In We Were There: World War II Stories from the Adirondacks’ Greatest Generation, Dr. Daniel Way, a family-care physician with the Hudson Headwaters Health Network, which serves much of the Adirondacks, has assembled the riveting memories of eighteen of his patients, all survivors of World War II. We become acquainted with sixteen men and two women who, with the exception of one of the women (a German civilian who married a GI), served in the Army (American and British), Navy, Air Force, and…

Mike Lynch’s article [“Building on tradition,” September/October 2016] was a fine report on an inspired (and inspiring) group of guideboat builders, but I’d like to add some thoughts. Guideboats typically have three caned seats, not one or two, and the boat is rowed from the bow; the middle seat is for solo rowing, or for another passenger (like the stern seat, it was often equipped with a backrest). To call guideboats “heavy and a bit bulky” is rather a slap in the tumble-home. Their beam may be wider than most canoes, but their gorgeous, sculpted lines make canoes and kayaks look like skinny bathtubs. In 1960 my brother and I spotted a guideboat-for-sale sign on a yard in Saranac Lake. It was a sixteen-footer buried under a lot of…

YES Governor Andrew Cuomo has committed to building a snowmobile trail from North Hudson to Newcomb. Whether this trail makes any sense, will be used, or has the snowfall to support it doesn’t matter. The governor cut a deal, and he has made it a priority to expand motor-vehicle access in the Forest Preserve, especially for snowmobiles. The trail likely will pass through the Boreas Ponds Tract. We think the state should route it along Gulf Brook Road—a former logging road on the tract—to minimize the amount of new trail that the state needs to build. The trail will be part of a new network of road-like “community connector” trails. So far the state has built or approved about thirty-six miles of these trails. This will require cutting down over…

Ron Moore has been supervisor of the Town of North Hudson for five years. He was born and brought up in Ticonderoga before joining the Submarine Force of the U.S. Navy, where he served for twenty-one years. After retiring from the Navy he worked as a vocational instructor at Washington Correctional Facility in Comstock. Prior to being elected supervisor he served on the Town Board for nine years. North Hudson, a rural town with 240 residents, is located on both sides of the Northway, roughly between Exits 29 and 30. Its lands include a large portion of the Dix Mountain Wilderness and Boreas Ponds. The state recently acquired the Boreas Ponds Tract for the Forest Preserve and has begun a process to classify the land and determine how it will…

On a hot, sunny July day, Michael Frenette had a paintbrush in one hand and a can of stain in the other. He was finishing some new logs he had installed at the Artist’s Cabin at Santanoni, the state-owned Great Camp in Newcomb, when a stranger wandered up. “Want some advice? I’m here,” the man said by way of a greeting. He revealed that he was a retired contractor from Syracuse and could fix anything. It was hard to tell if he was joking. Frenette, who is fifty-nine, turned toward the gentleman. Frenette was nattily dressed (at least by wilderness standards) in slacks, a green long-sleeve shirt and matching cap, and a wool vest covered with wood shavings. He took a moment to consider his response, as if mulling…

Over the past five years, the unprecedented addition of sixty-five thousand acres of former Finch, Pruyn lands to the Forest Preserve has opened up many new recreational opportunities. To date, the most publicized opportunities have been for paddling and, more controversially, snowmobiling and mountain biking. Opportunities for cross-country skiing have not been mentioned as often. Now that these acquisitions are complete, it seems to be a good time to take stock of what’s also now available for cross-country skiers. The three main areas with new opportunities for skiing are the Hudson Gorge, Essex Chain Lakes, and Boreas Ponds tracts. The good news for skiers, especially after last winter’s non-winter, is that all of these areas typically have abundant (or at least some) snow. Furthermore, the Essex Chain and Boreas tracts…

On a few occasions I have skied the Jackrabbit Trail the full twenty-four miles from Saranac Lake to Keene, but like most people I usually ski only a section of the trail on a given day. I suppose my favorite section is the 3.4 miles from the top of McKenzie Pass to McKenzie Pond Road outside Saranac Lake, mainly because it entails an exhilarating descent of a mile and a half. On a good powder day, I sometimes do the round trip on an extended lunch break. But last winter, owing to a scarcity of snow, I found myself more often skiing the opposite (east) side of the pass. The trail on that side seems to hold snow better, perhaps because it starts at a higher elevation and begins…

In 2013, Protect the Adirondacks sued the state to challenge the legality of new, wider snowmobile trails under construction on the Forest Preserve. These trails, argued Protect, violated the forever-wild provision of the state constitution. To understand an important element of this suit, we need to examine a little-known chapter in the history of the Forest Preserve, the 1938 Constitutional Convention. When it was established in 1885, the Forest Preserve was a fragile and uncertain thing. There wasn’t much of it, and it was inadequately protected. Real protection was achieved only in 1894 when New York inscribed in its constitution its determination that the Forest Preserve be “forever kept as wild forest lands … nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed.” These monumental words were written into…

What to do when as a nation we are preparing to inaugurate as president a divisive figure whose campaign behavior has invigorated the kind of bigotry and intolerance that we should have put to rest long ago? Whose policies are hard to discern amid a torrent of tweets, threats, and campaign-promise reversals? Given the protean nature of his positions, it’s possible that Donald Trump will govern in a more responsible manner than he ran for office. More likely, leadership on social issues and key domestic policies, like environmental protection, will have to be found not in Washington but closer to home. First, we can all demonstrate as we go about our lives in small communities of the Adirondacks that we are better and stronger when we don’t fear or shun…

In the late 1960s, as the Adirondack Forty-Sixers approached its first “membership milestone,” there were those who thought the club should disband when it reached a thousand members. The reasons given were: (a) that the increasing number of hikers were creating herd paths, thereby damaging natural resources, and (b) the original challenge of becoming a Forty-Sixer was now gone. With the club now approaching ten thousand members/finishers, there is a renewed debate on what should happen to the unmarked routes leading to the summits of twenty of the forty-six High Peaks. After that first debate, the organization resolved to continue but transition from a “mutual admiration society” to active stewards of the High Peaks. Soon, Forty-Sixers were carrying bags of grass seed, lime, and fertilizer up Algonquin Peak to restore…

A long-in-the-works proposal to expand and modernize the former Crescent Bay Marina on Lower Saranac Lake inched closer to review by the Adirondack Park Agency in November, when the APA and the marina’s owner reached tentative agreement on satisfying a Notice of Incomplete Permit Application (NIPA) issued by the agency. It was the third notice sent by the APA. The marina appealed the latest notice, which largely involved its plans to handle storm-water and wetlands concerns. By the time the appeal reached the APA’s Regulatory Programs Committee, the two sides had agreed what information would be provided to satisfy the agency staff’s request; as a procedural matter, the appeal was denied. Mike Damp, managing partner of marina owner LS Marina LLC, isn’t offering a prediction when the process will end,…

It’s been over one hundred years since a search party found Grace Brown’s body in the bottom of Big Moose Lake, an overturned rowboat floating nearby. In 1906 the face of the man who walked away from that remote bay would become familiar to many Americans as he sat slouched in a chair at his murder trial in Herkimer. The local and national press wrote front-page stories about Chester Gillette, the handsome young man who murdered his pregnant girlfriend so he could rise up the social ladder. Craig Brandon has a section in the new edition of his book called “The Murder That Will Never Die,” and certainly for him as a writer this is true. Brandon first published Murder in the Adirondacks in 1986, and the book sold well.…

Growing up in Keene Valley, Sophie McClelland often sought solitude on Indian Head, a rocky cliff with a gorgeous view of Lower Ausable Lake in the Adirondack Mountain Reserve. Now twenty-seven, she noticed this summer that more people were visiting the lookout. One morning she arrived at sunrise to find a half-dozen people already there. Over Columbus Day weekend, she counted more than twenty-five hikers on the summit. “They were all trying to find their perfect frame of the wilderness shot, the Instagram photo,” McClelland said. The view of Lower Ausable Lake is one of the most picturesque in the Adirondack Park, and it’s relatively accessible by a moderate five-mile hike, most of it along a dirt road. Professional photographers and ordinary hikers have been drawn to the spot…

Once a week on her way to work, Heather Tuttle pulls her car over at the crest of Harrietstown Hill, steps out, and photographs the wide-open vista with her cell phone. On a clear day, Whiteface Mountain and the McKenzie Range unfold before her, forming an iconic view that both local officials and the Adirondack Park Agency have declared preservation-worthy. It’s a panorama that hasn’t changed much in generations. And now that the Adirondack Land Trust has purchased a 238-acre property known as Glenview Farm, it’s unlikely to change for generations to come. It’s the first major deal by the trust since Mike Carr announced he would serve as the organization’s full-time executive director, a move he made after spending sixteen years as the head of both the trust and…

Jeff Lowe is one of the greatest American mountaineers of his generation. A native of Utah, he has climbed all over the world and put up hundreds of first ascents—on rock, ice, and alpine peaks. So when asked for his favorite climb in North America, he had many to choose from. Such as Moonlight Buttress in Zion National Park, Bridal Veil Falls in Colorado, or the Keeler Needle in the High Sierra. He chose Gorillas in the Mist, an ice climb on Poke-O-Moonshine Mountain right here in the Adirondack Park. Since Lowe did Gorillas in the Mist in 1996 with Ed Palen, the owner of Adirondack Rock and River in Keene, the route has attained near-mythic status. It has been repeated only once, just a few days after the first…

Children have a way of rooting out the ignorance of adults. This is especially true when those adults are their parents. So it went at our house recently. My daughter, Tasman, asked her Adirondack naturalist father out of the blue, “Dad, what do skunks do in the winter?” I veered left and right and jumped through hoops before owning up to the truth. I really had no idea. I’ve seen plenty of striped skunks in the warm months and even raised a batch of babies, but I’ve never set eyes on a Pepe Le Pew between Halloween and April Fools’ Day. To give Tasman the answer she deserved, I had to hit the books. “In snow country, from New England to the Pacific,” Olaus Murie writes in his classic Field…

If you hire a guide for rock- or ice-climbing on New York state land, he or she must be licensed by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The guide-licensure program aims to keep the public safer, but it has serious shortcomings. In our consumer-driven economy, we live by the mottoes “buyer beware” and “you get what you pay for.” Hiring a rock- or ice-climbing guide is no different. However, you are putting your life in the hands of the person you hire. Needless to say, you want to be sure that person is competent and trustworthy. Unfortunately, a DEC climbing-guide license offers no such guarantee. And yet an unwitting client might think it does. Let’s look at some of the qualifications required for a license. All guides, including climbing guides,…

Who would have imagined a decade ago that the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus), our most abundant bat, the species that we saw in large numbers pursuing insects in the evening above the waters of Adirondack lakes and around outdoor lights, would in a few years become one of our rarest bats? More than 7 million bats in the East and Midwest have now been killed as a result of white-nose syndrome (WNS), a fungal infection that irritates bats and rouses them from hibernation in the dead of winter. Depleted of energy reserves, they leave their hibernation sites, typically caves and abandoned mines, and then freeze or starve from lack of insects. The fungus first appeared in a cave southwest of Albany in 2006, perhaps brought here from Europe on…

Eric Rehm started on a six-day camping trip from the Benson trailhead on the Northville-Placid Trail on May 11, 2008. When he didn’t return on the seventh day, a relative reported him missing, initiating a large-scale search by forest rangers. After a couple of days, rangers located the twenty-nine-year-old near the West Branch of the Sacandaga River, a mile from the Northville-Placid Trail. He was tired but in good condition, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. He was transported by helicopter to the Wells Central School, where he was examined by the Wells Ambulance Squad and then released. Rehm told searchers that he had traveled to the Silver Lake lean-to on his first day but was too tired the next day to continue, so he started hiking back…

Herringboning If you find yourself slipping backward, it’s time to herringbone. While keeping the tails of your skis close together, splay the tips to form a V. Roll both ankles toward the slope so your ski edges press into the snow, but don’t over-edge. Move uphill by lifting one ski at a time and stepping forward. As you make this step, plant the opposite pole. A narrow V may be sufficient for an easy hill. As the grade steepens, try widening the V. TIP: Don’t lean too far forward or your skis might slide beneath you. Sidestepping If the slope is too steep for herringboning, try sidestepping. Turn side-wise so your skis are level and parallel to the slope. Dig in with your uphill edges, but don’t overdo it. Step…