Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2018 i Adirondack Explorer

Thirty-four forest rangers and a dozen volunteers saved a hiker’s life after he injured his leg on an icy cliff on the remote Saddleback Mountain in the High Peaks Wilderness in early February. “If you’re on trail, it’s probably the worst spot in the High Peaks that you can break a leg,” said forest ranger Robbi Mecus, who led the evacuation team. “There’s no way to get to it without going over a High Peak.” The rescue took about thirty-seven hours to complete, starting with the emergency call placed by the injured hiker’s friend at about noon on Saturday, February 3, and ending at 1 a.m. Monday when he was put in an ambulance near the Garden parking area in Keene Valley. A longer versionof this story onAdirondackExplorer.org Rangers Scott…

It was a Monday when we hit Buck Mountain. It was in late March last year, a week after the biggest nor’easter of the winter, which dropped several feet of snow all over upstate New York. That means that any skier worth his salt was trying to catch as much of it as possible, knowing it would soon be gone. Which explains why my friend John and I wanted a relatively easy day. We had both been skiing and snowshoeing almost nonstop since the storm, and we were exhausted. But for outdoorsmen such as ourselves, a “rest day” meant an adventure that leaves at noon. Buck was perfect. It’s close to our homes in the Albany area and not too challenging for tired legs and blistered feet. Buck is a…

EDITORIAL The long-awaited Boreas Ponds land classification decision by the Adirondack Park Agency in early February is worth celebrating. The classification will split the 20,543-acre tract into 11,412 acres of Wilderness, 9,118 acres of Wild Forest, which allows some motorized access, and a small Primitive Area. Another aspect that deserves notice: the vast public participation in the process, but especially the young faces in the crowds at public meetings. They made themselves visible in their green T-shirts calling for Wilderness. They were passionate and enthusiastic, and we were heartened to see them pack meetings in 2016 to share their views and then keep the issue in the forefront through online forums and social media. Many of these twenty-and thirty-somethings, some of whom got their starts in the woods as employees…

Following the recent approval of the Health and Safety Land Account by the state legislature and voters, attention has shifted to land management. In recognition of scientific advances highlighting the importance of preserving intact forests to protect wildlife, and in reaction to controversial subdivision approvals by the Adirondack Park Agency (APA), legislation has been introduced in the state Assembly that is intended to help the agency shape new development to minimize ecological harm. Conservationists have been meeting with local officials, landowners, and the APA with the goal of developing a bill that can better protect wildlife and water quality, both of which are essential to the Park’s future. It would also make development more sustainable and less expensive for both landowners and local taxpayers who provide police and fire protection,…

It’s not easy being an early bloomer in the Adirondacks. As winter yields haltingly to spring, the ground thaws, and refreezes, and thaws again. For a while the upper layer becomes a soup floating on top of a still iron-hard lower layer. It’s mud season. Thermometers rise and fall like yo-yos. Pollinators are scarce on all but the warmest days. Yet bravely, defiantly, a few flowering herbs of the forest floor open for business. Among them are three of my favorites: hepatica (two similar species grow in our neck of the woods), spring beauty (also two species), and yellow trout lily. The first are pale-purple, pink, or white; the second candy-stripe pink on white; the third a rich pastel yellow. I’ve never found hepatica in the acidic soils of my…

When you get tired of looking at majestic, snow-covered mountains, lush forests, and glassy waters in the Adirondacks (unlikely, we admit.), turn your attention to the sky. You may just catch a spectacular color and light show: oranges, purples, blues; cool cloud formations; and maybe even a rainbow. Proof is on this page. We asked our Facebook friends and Instagram followers to post their best “Dramatic Skies” using the hashtag #adkexplorerpix, and they didn’t disappoint. We chose these five photos as our favorites. The Reader’s Choice was determined by the number of “likes” on Facebook. Congratulations to Daniel Way. Our next Views of the Park theme is “My Adirondack Town: photos from the place you call home—seasonally or year-round—in the Adirondacks”…

Fish, being creatures of habit, usually return to the same hole. Anglers, being creatures of habit, do too. Yet the Adirondacks has in the neighborhood of thirty thousand miles of rivers and streams, and three thousand ponds and lakes, so men and women who like to fish hardly have an excuse for not exploring some new waters every now and again. But where to start? Simply listing all the waters in the Adirondacks and environs would be a daunting task, but parsing the vagaries of each individual fishery is a job sure to wear a lot of rubber off the soles of your waders. Yet Spider Rybaak gives it an admirable shot in Fishing the Adirondacks: A Complete Angler’s Guide to the Adirondack Park and Northern New York (Burford Books,…

On the third page of Radio Free Vermont, Bill McKibben’s first novel, a Coors beer truck follows detour signs as it enters Vermont from the Crown Point Bridge. At the end of a long dirt road the driver is presented with a bag lunch (made with Vermont products) as people in balaclavas release the air from the truck’s tires, then dump hundreds of bottles of the “foreign” beer onto the ground. The apologetic activists also give the stunned driver a generous gift pack of beer selected from the fifty-one breweries in Vermont. McKibben—environmentalist, activist, and author—doesn’t worry about getting the facts right in his sixteenth book. He calls Radio Free Vermont a fable, and it’s also a laugh-out-loud farce that reminded me of Edward Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang. The main…

A Canadian skier who vanished from Whiteface Mountain Ski Area, triggering a massive search, was located six days later in good health in California. Constantinos “Danny” Filippidis, a forty-nine-year-old Toronto firefighter, disappeared late in the afternoon of Wednesday, February 7. “At that time, he told his friends he was going to take one more run,” said forest ranger David Russell, who helped oversee the search. His friends contacted authorities when he failed to show up after the lifts closed. His car was still in the Whiteface parking lot. MORE: Skier doesn'trecall 6 days Photos from the search Over the next six days, hundreds of people, including his fellow firefighters, took part in a search. Others involved included state forest rangers, state police, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and numerous volunteers.…

Every avid hiker has a relationship with a particular mountain. You might climb many others, but there’s always one that’s yours. It’s not a peak that’s simply checked off a list. It’s a favorite you climb over and over. It’s your go-to hike when you need exercise, you want to share quality trail time with someone else, or you need to get above the daily fray. Like relationships with humans, a hiker’s relationship with their mountain does not always go smoothly. A mountain can be moody, even violent when a storm brews, but it can also be warm and welcoming when the sun shines and the wind is calm, so it’s easy to forgive its sullen side. The more you get to know a mountain, the more it surprises and…

Standing at the bar at the newly opened Hotel Saranac in mid-January, Jim Bishop conjured up fond memories of the place in his youth. When he was about ten years old, he recalled, he would ride his bike inside the hotel’s first floor. “We used to ride our bicycles in one door and out the other and then come around and do it over again,” Bishop said with a laugh during an open house at the hotel. MORE PHOTOS The eighty-two-room Hotel Saranac had been the anchor of downtown Saranac Lake for decades before it shut down in 2013, and so its reopening generated a festive buzz in the village. The nonprofit Historic Saranac Lake hosted a Roaring Twenties Gala at the hotel. Mayor Clyde Rabideau hosted organizers from the…

I would like to dispute some information in Larry Master’s article about coyotes in the January/February issue of Adirondack Explorer. Coyotes do, indeed, need to be “managed” like any other wild game and/or furbearers. The current seasons for coyotes in most of New York State are from October 1 to March 25 for hunting and from October 25 to February 15 for trapping. These seasons, set by the Department of Environmental Conservation, protect the coyote during the time of birth and whelping of their young. There are always food sources for coyotes, including young grouse, turkeys, and fawns, as well as all the other food items that Mr. Master mentioned—and the occasional cat and small dog! In the central and western states, calves and sheep also make up much of…

YES Michael Robinson and Christopher Spatz The mighty mountain lions that once roamed the Adirondacks and much of the Northeast have been declared extinct—creating the perfect opportunity for Governor Andrew Cuomo to initiate the process to reintroduce virtually identical cougars from the West. The eastern cougar was removed from the federal list of endangered species in January. After eighty years without a reproducing population within its vast range, it’s gone forever. But cougars brought in from western states could fill the crucial role the lost lions played. Cougar reintroduction would help restore natural conditions in the Adirondacks and beyond, helping trees regenerate, wildflowers bloom, and migratory birds forage and nest. Those surprising and beneficial impacts—documented elsewhere in studies comparing the presence and absence of cougars and other large carnivores in…

Kathleen Suozzo’s work is at the heart of one of the more difficult issues facing the Adirondacks today: upgrading aging waste-water and drinking-water treatment facilities in small communities where the cost is borne on the backs of local residents, though the heaviest usage is when tourists and seasonal residents come to visit. At stake are the lakes, rivers, and streams of the region. “After the summer tourists leave, we have infrastructure we need to maintain,” says Suozzo, an engineer who lives in Bolton Landing. She commends the people who work on skeleton crews managing the facilities and “just do what needs to be done.” In its 2016 report “Clean Water Infrastructure in the Adirondack Park”, the Adirondack Council identified twenty-two facilities in the Park in need of upgrades totaling $100…

Salmon (Salmonidae) are represented in the Adirondacks by nine species: two native char (brook trout and lake trout); three native whitefish (round whitefish, lake whitefish, and cisco); two salmon species in the genus Salmo (Atlantic salmon [native] and brown trout [Eurasian]); and two salmon species in the genus Oncorhynchus, introduced from western North America (rainbow trout and sockeye salmon, or kokanee). In this article I discuss our two native “trout” species: brook and lake trout. Lake trout occur over much of formerly glaciated North America, reaching their southern range limit in the Adirondacks, where they survive in over a hundred cold-water, well-oxygenated lakes. This habitat restriction makes them especially vulnerable to a warming climate as well as other threats to their deep-water summer habitat. Looks are often particularly deceiving when…

I love the Adirondacks in winter. The crisp air, the pristine wilderness, the solemn silence, the bone-crunching fear of impending doom. The trail for Owl’s Head Mountain begins a short drive from Long Lake. The trailhead has one of those wooden boxes where competent snowshoe hikers this time of year alert rangers where they’re going and when they’ll be back. Incompetent snowshoers like myself might be leaving our final words. We should attach our wills. When my wife and I arrived at the register, I noticed a sign saying the trail to the summit was just over three miles. What it didn’t say is that it was three miles straight up. My wife, a High Peaks hiker and nearly constant long-distance runner, was buckled into her snowshoes and giddy about…

A resident or seasonal explorer of the Adirondacks, you may believe that our cool, northern landscapes are devoid of venomous animals. Sure, rattlesnakes inhabit a smattering of sun-warmed spots along the shores of Lake George and Lake Champlain, but that’s all, isn’t it? You might fall off a cliff here, or die of hypothermia, or be eaten by a bear, the bear being chiefly theoretical because no one we know of has been eaten by one in the Park to date. But you can rest assured that no venomous creature will do you harm. That’s a pleasant fantasy, yet it’s far from true. A fascinating new book by a pair of venom specialists, one in London, England, the other in Queensland, Australia, shows otherwise. The title is Venom: The Secrets…

The state has withdrawn, at least temporarily, a proposal to build a 1.25-mile road in a region characterized by lowland boreal habitat uncommon in the Adirondack Park. Since its release in September, the proposal had been criticized by environmentalists, including Adirondack Wild’s David Gibson, who wrote an opinion piece in the January/February issue of the Explorer. The state Department of Environmental Conservation said the road would enable the public to drive to conservation-easement lands now unreachable by motor vehicle. DEC bought recreational rights to these lands in 1989. The easement lands are located east of Carry Falls Reservoir in the northwestern Adirondacks. The spruce-fir habitat is atypical of the Adirondacks but common father north in Canada. The Adirondack Council has called for creating a Boreal Wilderness in the region, if…

After months of delay, the Adirondack Park Agency has approved land classifications for the Boreas Ponds Tract, but the fight over how to manage the property is not over. In February, the APA board voted 8-1 to split most of the 20,543-acre parcel into two categories: motor-free Wilderness (11,412 acres) and the less-restrictive Wild Forest (9,118). PAST STORIES: Journeyto the ponds Remember the beds atBoreas idea? Gulf Brook Road The Park’s largest environmental groups applauded the decision, though they expressed concerns about a Wild Forest corridor that could allow the public to drive to within a tenth of a mile of the ponds. North Hudson Supervisor Ron Moore, whose town includes Boreas Ponds, had pushed for more Wild Forest, but he described the decision as “a compromise we can live…

Julia Goren stands atop 5,344-foot Mount Marcy, a forest-green name tag pinned to her short-sleeve khaki button-down shirt. Her uniform marks her as one of the Summit Stewards, the conservation professionals who educate hikers about the rare plants found on New York’s alpine summits. It’s a summer day in 2016. Goren has worked this job for eight years, often positioned on Marcy or 5,114-foot Algonquin Peak five days a week. During her tenure, she has hiked nearly eight thousand miles, tallied 350 ascents of the two peaks, and spoken to forty thousand people. A man reaches the apex of the lichen-covered open dome, and Goren approaches, ready to do her job. “Hi, I’m Julia, and I’m a Summit Steward.” “Oh, you’re a stewardess? Well, where’s my drink?” Goren has lost…

The spring equinox occurred on March 20. The baseball season opened on April 2 (the Yankees lost). The Masters Tournament will begin in a few days. As far as I’m concerned, though, it’s still winter. I’m going to ski Mount Marcy today. The trip to the tallest peak in New York State is perhaps the region’s premier ski tour, prominently featured in both Tony Goodwin’s Ski and Snowshoe Trails in the Adirondacks and David Goodman’s Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast. I try to ski Marcy every year around my birthday (March 30), but I hadn’t been able to do so the previous year in the winter that wasn’t. This winter—in 2017—we have the snow. As I just turned sixty-three, however, I’m wondering if I still got it in me.…

The winter of 2015-2016 was a difficult one for the Mount Van Hoevenberg cross-country-ski center. Warm weather and rains forced the venue to close in February, ending a season that lasted a mere thirty-seven days. Mount Van Hoevenberg manager Kris Cheney-Seymour said the short ski season goaded the center to find a way to stay open longer in warm winters. By the following winter, Van Ho had installed a snowmaking system known as the Snow Factory. The result: it stayed open 137 days last season. “Last winter, which was not a banner year in natural snow or even temperatures, the Snow Factory was crucial to us having a successful season,” Cheney-Seymour said. “We were open just under forty days more than we would have otherwise been open.” PHOTOS: Making snowat…

The most mobile of all photo blinds is a car. I’ve taken many wildlife photos from my vehicle in the Adirondacks, including all those seen here. Two favorite locales with a variety of habitat are the Sabattis Road in Long Lake and the back roads of the Moose River Plains. I shoot with a telephoto lens resting on a beanbag draped over the window sill or on a specially designed window mount. If no wildlife appear, no problem—I just drive down the road to another spot. While lying in wait, I might turn on the AC or the heat, recline a bit, and enjoy a snack and a drink from my Thermos. It might seem lazy, but as a veteran wildlife photographer I’ve sat for countless hours behind paper-thin blinds…

New York’s vast forests are some of our state’s greatest assets, especially in the Adirondacks where they are part of our region’s DNA. Forests offer New Yorkers a powerhouse of benefits. They serve as natural filters for pollutants, providing clean air and water. Like sponges, forests absorb and store water, reducing the threat of droughts and floods, and they combat climate change by capturing and storing harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They also provide recreational opportunities for outdoor enthusiasts and habitat for wildlife. New York’s forests are also lucrative: the forest-products industry employs a hundred thousand New Yorkers and contributes $22 billion to the economy; forest tourism and recreation contributes $8 billion annually while supporting thirty-two thousand jobs, and wildlife-related recreation adds $4 billion annually. These industries sustain our…

After reading an article about climate change and its impact on boreal birds in the Adirondacks, I experienced an otherworldly, out-of-body sense of depressed relief that I probably wouldn’t make it to the ripe old age of 131. The Adirondack Archipelago, by Dr. Jeremy Kirchman, curator of birds at the New York State Museum, deploys climate projections to predict changes in Adirondack boreal bird habitat as far into the future as 2080. He considers the widely scattered patches of boreal habitat at high elevations and in lowland bogs something of an archipelago, a chain of boreal islands in an ocean of temperate forest. LISTEN: Carolina Wren Red-bellied woodpecker The largest land-based biome on the planet, the boreal forest exists primarily above fifty degrees north latitude and accounts for 29 percent…

Kathleen Suozzo says she could drive two hours to the High Peaks and fight with a hundred people for a place on the trail. Or she could take her two dogs and a bag of sunflower seeds for “the critters” and walk to her “backyard,” which is Indian Brook, one of the top five tributaries to Lake George. “The Jefferson Project has a sampling station on our property,” she said. (The Jefferson Project uses research and technology to help preserve the lake. It’s a collaboration between RPI, IBM and the Fund for Lake George.) Year-round, all times of day, she heads to the roaring falls on a trail flanked by a forest of century-old hemlocks, along with oak and beech trees. The view is oriented to the east, so she…

If the planet is warming, you might expect that certain Adirondack birds are moving up mountain slopes to cooler climes. It’s a good hypothesis, but how to test it? Jeremy Kirchman, an ornithologist at the State Museum, found a way. As it so happens, researchers had cataloged the bird species found at different altitudes along the Whiteface Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway in 1974. Kirchman and a colleague, Alison E. Van Keuren, duplicated that survey over three nesting seasons, 2013 to 2015. The new study found that many birds are nesting higher on the mountain than they were four decades ago. Since the first study, the average temperature on the mountain has risen a few degrees. Kirchman, the lead author of the new study, believes the rising temperature is the most…