Innholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2019 i Adirondack Explorer

When I arrive at the worksite on the trail up the steep side of Mount Colden, the trail crew women are working next to long, pressure-treated 6-by-6 timbers, the stringers for the ladder they’re building up an open pitch of bedrock. They have hauled up the heavy lumber in the morning from where the helicopter had dropped it at a flat spot down below. It must have been a grunt of a climb because the trail is steep and located above 3,500 feet. But they laugh about it and show me the scrapes on their shoulders. It’s all in a day’s work for the Adirondack Mountain Club professional trail crew, but this week is special, a chance for all the women on the crew to work together, to celebrate their…

An 1884 map of the Adirondacks showered personal attributes like “Sobriety” and “Industry” and “Perseverance” on Herkimer County. At Camp No. 7 near the Boreas River, decades later in 1942-43, loggers either cut or counted 5,737 cords 87 miles from … something. A mill, perhaps? (The “cost” was “17.11.”) In 1948-49, their count was 5,320 cords. We know these things—clues for enterprising Adirondack historians and trivia seekers—because the Adirondack Experience has preserved them among thousands of maps stored flat in cabinets or rolled on basement shelves. But to follow the clues, first you would have to know that the museum exists, and you would have to know to call Ivy Gocker, library director, and tell her what you seek. Then you would have to drive to Blue Mountain Lake, a…

Trying to measure the economic impact of summer camps on the Adirondack economy is a little like snipe hunting. Like the mythical beast in this summer camp ritual, the exact figures are always just another bush away. That summer camps are big business in New York State is indisputable. The Northeast Region of the American Camp Association places the direct economic impact at $1.3 billion annually. “It’s vital to many of these small towns throughout New York where summer camps bring in a ton of business to local store owners and to local people to give them jobs,” says Susan Lippert, executive director of the Northeast Region of the American Camp Association. “Camps have an enormous impact on the local economy.” Statewide, New York camps employ 60,000 seasonal workers and…

Closed launch keeps out seniors along with the invasives Tim Rowland’s article “Under the Radar” in the March/April 2019 issue, is exposing the state’s program of doing things that have excessive impact on the taxpayers of this state. The state did the same thing (closed a traditional boat site) at Garnet Lake in Warren County. As pointed out in my letter to Commissioner Seggos of Sept. 21, 2018, (to which I have yet to receive a reply!) I am an 84-year-old man who can no longer use Garnet Lake. I live less than a mile from the launch site on Garnet Lake and have enjoyed hours of fishing there. There is now a bar closing off the launch site in the Town of Thurman. A sign posted alongside the launch…

Species from South America have been migrating toward the Adirondacks for a very long time: 2.7 million years, to be as exact as a biogeographer can. Not quite 3 million years ago is when South America, which had been drifting around the South Atlantic and South Pacific disconnected from other major land masses for tens of millions of years, collided with its immediate neighbor to the north. The result was Central America, including the isthmus of Panama. With the connection came an invitation for northern animals to plod south and southern ones to head in the opposite direction. As we hike, bike, paddle, drive and cruise in motorboats around the Adirondacks today, we put ourselves in the paths of two mammals that might well be addressed in Spanish or Portuguese.…

Sometimes it pays to wait until the crowd thins out at the latest attraction. The first hint came when my son Theo and I started gearing up at the trailhead to Wolf Pond, a new path and lean-to accessed from the Blue Ridge Road between Newcomb and North Hudson, south of Boreas Ponds. As we loaded water and other essentials into our dog Chili’s doggy backpack, a couple from Canada emerged from the trail with a warning. “Lovely,” one of them said of Wolf Pond, but way too buggy for them. They were the last people we would see that early-summer Saturday. The crowd we faced wasn’t human. After winter and spring had loaded the Adirondacks with more moisture than we had seen last year, people were complaining of a…

A guideline for sharing trails Fall foliage weekends in September and October can be among the busiest of the year on the trails as leaf-peepers seek out colorful views. It’s also a good time to practice Leave No Trace principle number 7: Be consider of other visitors This principle is more of an ethics-based one and not a hard skill, said Leave No Trace Master Educator Seth Jones, education director with the Adirondack Mountain Club. But one of the basic ways one can respect others is to follow the Yield Triangle, a guideline for which users should yield to others on multi-user trails. The traditional yield triangle used from spring until fall contains a horse, hiker and mountain biker. In the Adirondacks, a horse can be re-placed by an emergency…

The state legislature has passed a bill that would prohibit e-bikes on trails in New York’s forest preserve, unless otherwise authorized by state agencies, but would allow them on most roads. The bill differs substantially from legislation proposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who at deadline had not decided whether to sign it. Cuomo’s concerns reportedly pertain to the safe use of e-bikes and electric scooters in cities. In the Adirondacks, however, one of the main issues is whether pedal-assist e-bikes should be treated as mountain bikes and so allowed on trails in wild forest areas of the forest preserve. Mountain bikes are not allowed in wilderness areas. PREVIOUS COVERAGE:E-Bikes charge intothe Adirondacks Under a bill approved by the legislature in June, e-bikes would not be permitted on any public lands…

Some conservationists look at Lower Saranac Lake and they see the High Peaks. Not the High Peaks of today, but the peaks of the pre-selfie days, when it was still possible to get a parking spot at the Roaring Brook trailhead on the weekend, and not be confronted with sadly necessary signs instructing hikers on the finer points of human waste disposal. MORE PHOTOS Concerns of overuse on Lower Saranac are being raised following completion of a bigger state boat launch at Second Pond and the proposed expansion of the Saranac Lake Marina. By a circuitous route, motorboats can also access Lower Saranac from as far away as the marinas on Lake Flower in the Village of Saranac Lake, not to mention from a number of private camps. Along with…

Dan Jenkins resides in a monarch butterfly oasis. He is doing everything he can to keep it that way, despite increasing challenges for the species. When his family moved decades ago to property on the southern tip of Upper Saranac Lake, they didn’t realize they were inheriting a monarch landing strip along with the house. When Jenkins first started seeing the floods of monarchs around his house in the early 1990s, he had to learn more. Now, his garden thrives with milkweed and flowers beside his overgrown yard, encompassed by trees on one side and the lake on the other—a monarch’s paradise. “It was a phenomenon to see them streaming by this place,” Jenkins said. “It was just stunning … that migration, it’s just magical or something.” MORE PHOTOS Then,…

On a crystal clear summer day, bright but not too hot, two fat trout were drifting lazily in a quiet spot on the Schroon River in waters that hemlock tannin had turned the color of copper. No one had tossed a line in, but a couple of campers at the spanking new Frontier Town state campground said they were definitely thinking about it. For the moment, however, as they sipped on cans of Pepsi, the gravitational hold of a couple of comfy camp chairs was proving too difficult to break. The campers didn’t have the place all to themselves, but safe to say they had plenty of elbow room. The RV section was full, but RVers, while welcome, are not quite the demographic that the state has bet $25 million…

Soon after he began taking Lee Ann Sporn’s introductory biology course in the fall of 2018, Bryan confided to his professor that he frequently felt sick, as though he was fighting a mysterious disease that wouldn’t go away. A freshman at Paul Smith’s College near Saranac Lake, Bryan sometimes asked during class to be excused, which Sporn later learned was due to fevers that would spike without warning. One weekend he was suffering severe abdominal pain and urinating blood. Worried that he was gravely ill, he sought emergency care at Champlain Valley Physicians’ Hospital in Plattsburgh. “Tests revealed abnormal liver function,” Sporn said, “but he was released with no diagnosis and no treatment plan.” Sporn, a biology professor and coordinator of the college’s Human Health and the Environment program, had…

At 8 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 14, 2018, nearly a dozen bicycle riders set out on the longest, most challenging and least-known bicycle race in the Adirondacks. Departing from Waterfront Park in Northville, on the southern edge of the Adirondacks, they began what would be a meandering, 550-mile loop around the park. There would be hours after hours spent cruising down roads, bouncing over trails, dragging loaded bikes over rocks and fallen logs. Only half the riders would finish. This is The Adirondack Trail Ride, now in its fifth year. Inspired by similar rides held out West, the TATR attracts a certain kind of cyclist, says race founder Mikey Intrabartola. “You need to be willing to suffer,” he said. “A lot of it is not only how fast you can…

The list of Adirondack lands protected over the past two decades is long and impressive, but one choice property coveted by conservationists remains wholly in private ownership, its future uncertain: Whitney Park. Situated in the central Adirondacks, this 36,000-acre estate boasts more than 20 lakes and ponds, including Little Forked Lake, and has enormous environmental value and recreational potential. “The Whitney tract is the last major tract of ecologically sensitive, biologically important and recreationally important lands in the Adirondacks,” said Peter Bauer, executive director of Protect the Adirondacks. The death in July of Marylou Whitney, the 93-year-old family matriarch, has brought to the fore questions about what’s next. Will the family keep the land as it is? Will it be subdivided and developed? Will it be protected by conservation easements…

Imagine traveling by canoe or guide boat 100 years ago on our mountain rivers. Even the smallest waterways were easy to navigate as there were no beaver dams to slow down an expedition. By 1900 beavers had been exterminated from most of the Northeast, with one last group of five beavers living in a remote colony somewhere in the western Adirondacks. And then the rodent miracle. Thirty-four beavers were relocated to the Adirondacks from Canada and Yellowstone and by 1915 the beaver population was at least 15,000, and climbing. Dorothy Richards, born in 1894, had never seen a beaver until two were released on her farm in the southern Adirondacks in the 1930s. She wasn’t impressed with the lumpy mammals until she hiked to the top of her land and…

Age: 39. Birthplace: Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Residence: Elizabethtown. Occupation: Executive director of Craigardan, a nonprofit educational center located in Keene/Elizabethtown with a focus on the studio, agricultural, culinary and intellectual arts. Accomplishments: Started three businesses, traveled 14 countries mostly by bicycle, renovated 10 historic buildings, worked in the remote field camps of Antarctica, graduated with a degree in ceramics from Alfred University, and founded Craigardan. Favorite hike/adventure/outing: Discovering new routes in the park by mountain bike, especially if they connect towns with coffee shops. Often it requires river crossings or hike-a-bike, which is all part of a true adventure. Favorite view: Each fall we hike Hurricane Mountain before sunrise, an annual pilgrimage to watch the sun come up over the Champlain Valley as it slowly illuminates the autumn colors. There’s…

In his groundbreaking 1869 guidebook, “Adventures in the Wilderness, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks,” Boston preacher William H.H. Murray wrote that spending time recreating in nature rejuvenates both body and spirit for the city dweller. Murray wrote of the Adirondacks: “I deem the excursion eminently adapted to restore impaired health. I most highly recommend a month’s experience among the pines.” The idea that people needed to escape the cities to immerse themselves in wilderness was seen as radical at the time. Fast forward to today and it’s now firmly embedded in our psyche. Camping has long been a popular pastime and affordable family vacation, and it’s enjoying a new wave. For evidence, do a search online to book at Fish Creek Pond (spoiler: most of the campground’s 355 sites are booked…

In 1894, delegates to a New York constitutional convention decided that timber in the state’s forest preserve should not be “sold, removed or destroyed.” It might have helped if they had defined “timber,” but they didn’t. Maybe they thought the issue would never come up. Just as likely, there would have been no agreement on the meaning of timber even back then. This summer, the meaning of timber suddenly became about as contentious as a definition can get. On the day before Independence Day, four out of five judges on the Third Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division ruled that “timber” was essentially inclusive of the entire forest, not just big stately trees that were capable of being sawed into planks. That meant a Department of…

Microplastics are polluting Adirondack streams and lakes once thought unaffected by the emerging environmental threat, according to recent research. Eroded bits of cast-off water bottles and plastic bags, tiny synthetic fibers shed in laundering, and other manmade refuse contribute to the problem. These pollutants are defined as smaller than 5 millimeters—less than a fifth of an inch in their widest dimension. Many are microscopic. Other research shows zooplankton eat the tiny but indigestible detritus, harmfully coating their gastrointestinal tracts and putting them into the food chain when they are eaten by larger animals. “Microplastics are an emerging contaminant in freshwater systems and we are becoming more aware of them daily as new research is published,” said ecologist Danielle Garneau, professor of environmental science at the State University of New York…

How many trees can you remove from the forest preserve before it’s too many? Is a sapling the width of your wrist as much a tree as the stately hemlock that towers above the others? These are the questions underlying the lawsuit between Protect the Adirondacks and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Adirondack Park Agency. At issue is the protection of timber—or trees—under Article 14 of the state constitution, which protects the forest preserve as “forever kept as wild forest lands,” and further states trees on the forest preserve cannot be “sold, removed or destroyed.” So it’s important these questions be answered with clarity. A decision in this lawsuit will add new measures to past rulings used by courts to determine how much cutting is allowable.…

I had no sooner finished delivering a long, tedious telephone explanation of how, despite the rapidly melting glaciers and the alarmingly rising sea levels, one really couldn’t observe the effects of global warming in the backyard, than I poured myself a glass of wine and heard a wood thrush singing right outside the nearest window. I experienced a moment of complete mental bankruptcy, followed by a subtle wave of fear, and then heard the thrush again, singing like a liltingly lyrical postcard from the volcano. When we first bought our property in Keene, 33 years ago, we heard Swainson’s thrushes singing and calling outside the house, and after about 15 years we heard only hermit thrushes singing and calling in the yard. Wood thrushes have moved in now and we…

As weary hikers scramble the final few feet of rock-covered Mount Marcy, breathless and sweat-coated, Mary Lamb is a cheerful beacon, as welcoming as the panoramic views awaiting them. “Hi! How are you?” she asks with a wave before they even put down their packs. “You made it! Did you have a good hike up?” “Have a snack and have a drink and I’ll come back and take a group photo!” And she does. Couples, groups of out-of-towners, a guy with his dog. They hand the khaki-clad Lamb their phones, choose one of many spectacular backdrops, and smile. Back in 2013, when Lamb first started as a volunteer summit steward for the Adirondack Mountain Club, she hardly knew which button to press on the phones to get a photo. “Now…

Cranes, which have waded the world’s wetlands for 50 million years or more, are revered and symbolized in cultures across the world for their size, beauty, vocal repertoire and spectacular mating dances. Tragically, most of the world’s 15 crane species are declining and vulnerable to extinction, but our two North American species are increasing. Thanks to recovery efforts under the Endangered Species Act, whooping cranes, although still endangered, have staged a slow but steady comeback. The rebound of sandhill crane populations, on the other hand, has been nothing short of extraordinary. There are archaeological records and reports of large flocks of sandhill cranes in migration in mid-Atlantic states in the 1700s, but concurrent with European settlement sandhill cranes disappeared—even as migrants—from Eastern Seaboard states north of Georgia. Following enactment of…