Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2018 i Adirondack Explorer

Paddlers await ruling By Michael Virtanen A new ruling is expected by year’s end in the eight-year-old lawsuit that pits landowners against outside paddlers over rights to a two-mile waterway in the remote northwestern Adirondacks. State Supreme Court Justice Richard Aulisi, after hearing three weeks of trial testimony this summer, is tasked with deciding whether Mud Pond, its outlet and parts of Shingle Shanty Brook and Lilypad Pond are “navigable in fact” where they pass through private land and there-fore open to any canoeist or kayaker. The land is owned and controlled by the Friends of Thayer Lake LLC and affiliated Brandreth Park Association, whose members sued because they don’t want strangers on their land and waters. The defendant is former Adirondack Explorer editor Phil Brown, who in 2009 wrote…

Water is the lifeblood of the Adirondack Park’s tourism, adventuring and second-home economy, as well as its wilderness. Its lakes and rivers face multiple threats ranging from salt to human waste and invasive plants and aquatic animals. Hundreds of volunteers routinely monitor or test many waterways, including Nevton Dunn, who has a home on Mirror Lake. Dunn, a retired engineer, often canoes the roughly 2.5-mile perimeter of the lake in a lightweight solo boat, collecting any trash he finds and almost daily yanking out non-native purple loosestrife plants. Last year Dunn discovered sewage leaking into Mirror Lake. “It was black water and a sewer odor,” Dunn recalled. “It was very localized.” The dark pool was about seven feet by ten feet, and evidently came from one of the nearby motels…

In mid-June, Whiteface Mountain advertised a summer activity—rides aboard big all-terrain vehicles on the ski slopes of the High Peaks landmark. Called the “4x4 Alpine Expedition,” marketing videos showed children and adults enjoying the guided tours. Callers to the resort’s customer service line were told they could book sixty-minute or ninty-minute excursions through the fall. But by July, the rides were abruptly canceled. That came after environmental watchdogs raised concerns to state officials, and after the Adirondack Explorer inquired about the propriety of the rides. Though now mothballed, the program serves as an example of the attempts by the Olympic Regional Development Authority to improve its finances by attracting more summer visitors. And it provides a signal of ORDA’s efforts to push the limits of state law that constrains activities…

Thirty years ago, with increasing frequency, squadrons of black seabirds were spotted on Lake Champlain flying low and fast across the water as if on some sort of black-ops raiding mission. Their appearance was something of an environmental success that, in the eyes of many, quickly turned into an environmental catastrophe. PHOTO GALLERY The same scene was playing out on the Great Lakes and the Pacific, as the double-crested cormorant made a miraculous recovery after the ban on DDT, a pesticide that had once imperiled the bird’s existence. But while conservationists hailed the return of birds such as the bald eagle, they became increasingly wary of the collateral success represented by the cormorant. As the population surged, once-lush Lake Champlain islands were one-by-one commandeered and summarily defoliated by the cormorants,…

Hiking in the Adirondacks with kids—any hiking, really—offers a choice: a well-known spot that is predictable and easy to get to, or a more remote hike, farther away from civilization, where it is still possible to experience wilderness. On this late-summer day, I didn’t have a lot of time. My sons, Rushton and Devlin, were due back in Saratoga Springs for back-to-school haircuts. So I chose the former over the allure of real wilderness. Pilot Knob is a popular hike in the Lake George region. Similar to Buck and Hadley mountains, it is a quick jaunt to the top and easy to get to from the suburbia south of the Adirondack Park. The area beyond the trailhead, where the trail should be, has been obliterated by thousands of scrambling feet.…

YES Timothy J. Post In the September-October edition of the Adirondack Explorer, ecologist Charles Canham says there are legitimate concerns about overharvesting trees in the Adirondack Park, and that there is no good ecological or silvicultural rationale for clear-cuts. I must disagree with these suppositions by Mr. Canham. With millions of acres of state land preserved within the Adirondack Park and never to be managed (harvested), Adirondack Park Agency oversight of larger clear-cuts on non-state-owned lands, and best management practices in place for forest harvests, there should not be great concern for overharvesting. This is not the days of old, when massive cuts were done on steep slopes with no effort to stabilize the soil. Methods are much more environmentally friendly these days. A very good ecological case can be…

With summer weather lasting long into September, you might have wondered if the leaves would ever change. Oh, they did, and readers captured some fantastic shots of glorious fall color in the Adirondacks for our Views of the Park photo contest. These photographers each will receive a free one-year subscription to the Adirondack Explorer. The Reader’s Choice was determined by the number of “likes” on Facebook. Congratulations to Sam Perkins, whose photo of Cobble Hill was the crowd favorite. Our next Views of the Park theme is “On the Move” which can be any action taken in the Adirondacks by humans, dogs, or wildlife. This is completely open to interpretation and we can’t wait to see what you come up with. As always, post your photos to Instagram and Facebook…

I knew I loved the Adirondack writing of Roger Mitchell, a poet now in his eighties, but did he still write poetry? The day I found his email address and sent a short letter he responded promptly, “Very glad to hear from you and to report that I am still writing poems. In fact, I have a new book that just arrived here in Jay today.” Both of us marveled at the good timing. I’d been planning a retrospective column about Mitchell’s Adirondack books, but now I had new material to linger over. Mitchell lived his teen years in Saranac Lake, from 1946 to 1955. After college he became a Midwesterner, an English professor at Indiana University. He retired to the Adirondacks, though some of his poems in the new…

Need proof that getting universal high-speed broadband internet access in the Adirondacks is a vital piece of the region’s economic jigsaw puzzle? Just ask Suzanne Hurtado, who lives on Lost Pond. Within days of getting fiber-optic access in 2017, she was able to live video chat several times a day with students she teaches in China. Yes, China. “At the start, I had satellite internet,” she shared in an email with Joe Steiniger, chair of Schroon Lake’s broadband committee. “Many times my classroom would not load and I could only teach early in the morning and only one class a day, [affecting] my pay and bookings. Our fiber-optic internet was installed mid-December and it has been wonderful!” It’s a story echoed by others in Schroon Lake, according to Steiniger. Within…

Kris Bratton couldn’t believe she hadn’t known about this place years before. The architect from Highlands, New Jersey, stood on the banks of Sagamore Lake on a crisp late-September morning, marveling at her ability to come tramping up a trail on the western corner of the Blue Ridge Wilderness and snag a bedroom and a hot meal at the former summer home of one of America’s all-time richest families. Great Camp Sagamore, wildland retreat of the railroad baron Vanderbilts at the turn of the twentieth century, is now a nonprofit lodge open to the public and just a five-hour drive from Bratton’s home. It took her participation in a test trip for the Adirondack Hamlets to Huts trekking initiative to open her eyes to the rustic elegance of a Gilded…

From Guadeloupe, just shy of the swamp, slither along Darkside, where the woods dim and the midday light goes dusky. Turn away from the fen on a serpentine path beckoning you to the Hobbit House, in boreal woods thick with balsam and spruce. Next, hop along Pelvis Pass and Solstice over to the rollicking ride on 3-Wall’s dipsy-doodle down into sunny woods, past one of the massive stone walls, along the old apple orchard to the barn. Casting altogether different vibes, these pathways are just a few of the finds at the New Land Trust, up at 1,600 feet on the flanks of Lyon Mountain above Saranac. The place is a wildlife refuge of 278 acres, knit through with a trail labyrinth rife with mystery and whimsy, put together over…

More than twenty-five years ago, Rose Rivezzi and David Trithart started hiking for a purpose. In the mid-90s, along with young sons Albert and Will, they took an assignment from the Adirondack Mountain Club to research and write a guidebook for hiking with children. The result, Kids on the Trail! Hiking with Children in the Adirondacks, first published in 1997, has been reprinted seven times. It is the only guidebook of its kind currently available. This year, Rose and David are working on a sequel. Rose and David met, married, raised their sons and spent their careers in the Potsdam area. Rose retired three years ago from teaching in the Parishville-Hopkinton school district and co-owns Big Spoon Kitchen with Will in Potsdam. David was a librarian at State University of…

New York State public campgrounds are managed under what is called “Intensive Use” rules. These lands are the most developed (least restrictive of development) public lands in the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan. “Wilderness” is the most restrictive. Interestingly, when it came to establishing management plans for Moose River Plains Camping Area, special guidelines were agreed upon to preserve its unique version of primitive/public campground. The Department of Environmental Conservation may not “upgrade” the area with features found in regular campgrounds. “Keep it simple” is what the people wanted. The question raised now is: Should Brown Tract Pond Campground (also in Moose River Plains Wild Forest) be protected under its own special guidelines? It is feared that otherwise its rustic uniqueness will be lost to DEC development plans. Preservation…

A few minutes past dawn on a totally overcast, windless, minus-five-degree day, we walked slowly, slightly uphill through a foot of fresh snow, hoping, we both thought probably futilely, to see or hear a bird for the Elizabethtown Christmas Bird Count. We usually found half a dozen species on this long, seasonal driveway, but after taking forty minutes to schlepp up and down the half mile to the house we had found the big zero. At the bottom of the drive I heard my lips click loudly as my grimace somersaulted into a smile at the sound of a red-breasted nuthatch yank yank yanking away almost directly overhead. It kept calling for perhaps ten seconds and then started walking methodically down the trunk of a huge white pine, probing relentlessly…

Shrews abound in the Adirondacks, occurring in all terrestrial habitats and even in water. Shrews are distinguished from other small mammals by their tapered head, tiny external ears and eyes, short limbs, and dense fur—features adapting them to a semi-fossorial (burrowing) existence. Consequently we rarely see shrews, as they are small, wary of potential predators (owls, hawks, weasels, etc.), and spend most of their time hunting insects and other invertebrates in surface debris and tunnels. Like bats, they may use echolocation to help find prey. Six species of shrews make their homes here. The smallest is the diminutive American pygmy shrew, thought to be the second-smallest mammal in the world. Adults weigh as little as 2.3 grams, about the weight of a dime. Pygmy shrews eat three times their body…

On a Saturday a few winters ago, I awoke late and started thinking of where to go backcountry skiing. I wanted to go someplace new, but given the hour, it couldn’t be too big of an outing. Then it struck me: Goodman Mountain near Tupper Lake. The state opened a trail to the summit a few years earlier. Most of the route is fairly mellow, with open woods suitable for off-trail skiing. On the drive from Saranac Lake, I decided to ski nearby Coney Mountain too. If only I had not been such a late riser, I thought, I could ski Mount Arab as well. A Tupper triple crown—what a novel idea! As I got out of my car in the Goodman parking area, a guy on telemark skis emerged…

Mary Lamb has been hiking in the High Peaks since the late-1980s. Over that time, she’s noticed that many trails have gotten significantly wider and more eroded. “It’s sad,” said Lamb, who lives in Ticonderoga. “I just feel like hiking other places now. I do a lot of lowland hiking now.” Lamb’s thoughts line up with a preliminary assessment of trails in the High Peaks Wilderness region. Conducted by the Adirondack Council, the assessment found that 130 miles of trails are heavily damaged due to overuse, poor design or lack of maintenance. The assessment found damaged trails on Giant Mountain, Marcy, Algonquin, and in the Dix and Seward mountain ranges, among other places. Trails to McKenzie, Ampersand and Baker were also found to be in bad shape. The latter three…

Mark Lesser, a forestry instructor at the State University of New York Plattsburgh, was vacationing in Nova Scotia in the second week of July when his cell phone lit up with texts and tweets. The Altona Flat Rock pine barrens were on fire just beyond the Park’s northeast boundary. But these texts and tweets weren’t out of alarm. They were messages of elation. As Lesser put it, “People have spent their whole careers waiting for the Flat Rock to burn.” The destruction of 550 acres of the fifteen-square-mile Altona Flat Rock Forest is, in fact, a scientist’s dream. As the last of the drones flew over the charred landscape looking for hotspots, scholars and conservationists from far and wide awaited word from firefighters that it was safe to move in.…

In the three hours my husband Jim and I spent checking out the newly built Mount Van Hoevenberg East Trail on Saturday of Columbus Day weekend, we shared the trail and summit with some sixty people—and at least twenty dogs—who enjoyed an easy hike and some of the most spectacular views of the High Peaks in the Park during the height of fall color. Maybe some—or none—of the hikers were aware of the thought and planning that has gone into the new trail, a move to alleviate severe overuse in the region, particularly of Cascade Mountain, a popular hike for those looking to complete all forty-six of the High Peaks. Or that the crushed stone and soil they walked over was part of a 1.7-mile trail sustainably designed for heavier…

Scientists in the 1970s began to notice and be alarmed by the abnormally acidic lakes and streams they were discovering throughout the Adirondacks. In some cases, fish populations were disappearing. Their groundbreaking work coined the term acid rain, caused by fossil-fuel emissions that drifted on high-altitude winds and were flushed down in cloud bursts. Today, just as science-driven rules limiting industrial and vehicular emissions have helped our local waterways begin to recover, evidence we are seeing supports new approaches to safely managing snow and ice on roadways, driveways, and sidewalks while protecting our freshwater resources. Scientists are documenting increases in the salinity of freshwater sources, both in the ground and on the surface, and working with advocates, operators, property managers, and public officials to create solutions that reduce salt volumes…

Years ago, a colleague of mine, eager to jumpstart his love life, began placing and answering personal ads in a newspaper. Let us just say that they led in interesting directions. Adirondack whitetail deer seek relationships in similar fashion. They place their own advertisements, of a sort. Other deer answer them, and by the following June or thereabouts, does are delivering fawns. For whitetails, the courting season begins in earnest in early fall when testosterone levels rise in the males. Bucks that were downright sedate all summer begin to engage in what appear to be mock battles with sapling trees. Generally, the bigger the sapling, the more powerful the buck. Where antlers push against a trunk, bark is rubbed off. Without much imagination, these abrasions are known as “buck rubs.”…

I had to make a radical change. Therapy and treatments hadn’t eliminated the mental and physical pain that lingered due to some traumatic events I had experienced. So my therapist and I developed a multi-pronged plan of attack. It involved a women’s empowerment group through the organization Safe Horizon, psychiatric help, and another therapist with whom I would do experimental treatments. Things seemed hopeful, but I felt I needed to do more. Then I remembered the retreat on Lake George: Wiawaka Center for Women. I signed up for two workshops with Bonnie Olsen, who trained with Oprah Winfrey’s life coach, Martha Beck. After hearing about Wiawaka for years, I was finally going to answer its siren call. Riding the bus from my New York City home to the Adirondacks, one…