Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2020 i Adirondack Explorer

New Adirondack Mountain Club Executive Director Michael Barrett said one of his jobs will likely be refining the venerable club’s mission and educating the public about it. He suggested that could mean focusing more on core missions. “I’d rather do fewer things really, really well than be spread too thin,” he told the Explorer. Some people view ADK as an environmental advocacy group, he said, while others know it as a hiking club or stewardship and educational organization. The group also publishes a magazine and runs a lodge with a restaurant. “It scares the heck out of me that I’m a caretaker of a lodge, a restaurateur, a publicist and a travel agent, but I am,” he said. “Obviously, any changes that are made are in tandem with the…

During a February snowstorm in North Hudson, highway crews filled trucks with sand. Snowplows carved into the drifting banks of white. Summer seemed impossible. Inside the garage it was toasty. “You can tell it’s quite warm in here,” said Emmett Thompson, one of the highway department workers, as he walked around the 1,700 square-foot building. Keeping the equipment thawed and workers cozy was an automated wood pellet boiler, a system that burns tiny pieces of wood to heat water and distribute it throughout the building. The water is stored in a large tank. The one inside North Hudson’s highway garage stands out like a yellow thumb. It is painted by local inmates to look like a minion, one of the characters from Universal Studios’ “Despicable Me” movies. The boiler has…

Cree howled. The sound stabbed through snow-laden pine branches, startling a raven or two. Steve was here. Steve Hall is used to getting announced when he pulls up in his truck to the Adirondack Wildlife Refuge in Wilmington. Hall is the friend and caretaker of Cree, a 14-year-old alpha male wolf, who knows the specific sound of Hall’s truck. The howling continued as Hall walked into the refuge’s visitor center and settled on a couch near his wife, Wendy. Smiles flashed across their faces as they looked out on the snowy Adirondack scene, and a wolf trotted in front of the window with a carcass hanging from his mouth. The smiles faded. While things may seem normal at the front part of their nonprofit education and wildlife rehabilitation center, they…

This new decade, things were supposed to be better than they were in 2010, when enumerators suspected large numbers of Adirondack residents went uncounted by the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2020, the count is going online, and “Complete Count” committees were formed in rural Adirondack counties, determined to ferret out every last individual in a crucial decennial exercise in which missing even a few hundred people can result in lost millions of dollars in federal assistance. But the coronavirus changed all that in a heartbeat, rendering much of the preparation useless in a world where meetings, social gatherings and publicity events are now verboten. Community-help agencies had to throw every last resource into the coronavirus fight, leaving little if any energy for census issues. Public libraries that were supposed to…

3 HIKES INLAKE GEORGE Lake George’s grand annual group hike is adding some personal space to the schedule this summer. Make that a lot of space, and quiet time for reflection, as the Independence Day weekend Lake George Hike-A-Thon drops its communal vibe for some alone time on the trail with a “virtual Hike-A-Thon.” The change is meant to keep hikers from spreading coronavirus. No groups of dozens hiking or paddling together to 18 destinations that are protected by the Lake George Land Conservancy. No posing at the summits as photographer Carl Heilman swoops overhead to take commemorative shots. No after-party at the park in town. “We will encourage everyone to go out to a local hike on their own, wearing an old Hike-A-Thon shirt,” Land Conservancy spokeswoman Sarah…

“Hi I’m a neighbor we were both at a cocktail party at Frank and Sally’s but we never spoke and I see you around town all the time I have this bizarre bird with a cerulean back, neck and head and a cadmium red chest and I no sooner saw it than another one flew in and they started fighting, pecking at each other’s heads and slamming into each other with their wings and finally locking their feet together and tumbling onto the ground and flying off together until about an hour later when only one of them came back.” I sipped my wine and said, authoritatively, “You saw a couple of Eastern bluebirds, which defend their territories fiercely and often fight, and the one you saw come back will…

Each of us is born with a personality trait or two that vexes our parents. In my case, the foremost was a love of snakes. My parents weren’t serpent haters, but nor were they ophidiophiles. I, on the other hand, from earliest memory, cherished the company of snakes. So it’s ironic that I should have come to live and work in the Adirondacks, where winters are longer and colder than most North American reptiles can tolerate. Here, a snake lover like me can go days or weeks even in summer without seeing a legless reptile snake of any kind. If not for the presence of four small, harmless members of the tribe, I might be inclined to despair. I’m tempted to sing, with a bow to Maurice Chevalier, “Thank heaven…

Some take the road less traveled. The truly adventurous don’t even need a road. In the Adirondacks this translates into bushwhacking, an eye-poking, pack-snagging, boot-sucking, map-and-compass romp into the wilds, boldly going where no person has gone before—or if they have, it’s easy to convince yourself otherwise. In an age when everything explorable has been explored, bushwhacking satisfies modern souls that channel Magellan, Drake and de León. At its most hard-core, it’s a game of wits, determination, stamina and sheer cussedness. It also satisfies that most basic of human instincts, curiosity. For all the millions of acres of state land in the Adirondack Park, the number who willingly prowl off-trail in the backcountry is miniscule. “There really is no bushwhacking community,” said Spencer Morrissey, an outdoor author and Adirondack bushwhacking…

MORE SALT COVERAGE For years, there were signs that something was wrong with the water on Ben Sweeney’s farm. The cows weren’t producing as much milk. Appliances and farm equipment broke. Ben and his wife weren’t feeling well. Their son’s hands would bleed, and their grandkids were getting rashes. He began to panic when the cows started dying. He tested the water and found it was full of salt. His suspicions about whom to blame settled on a nearby road. Each winter, the New York Department of Transportation dumped ton after ton of salt on State Route 26, which runs past the Sweeneys’ 300-acre farm near Boonville, just southwest of the Adirondack Park. In early 2004, officials from New York State admitted they had poisoned his water with salt. But…

The Town of Newcomb is reinventing itself. Long known for its southern gateway into the High Peaks and for historic landmarks such as Great Camp Santanoni or the abandoned mining village of Tahawus, its residents are celebrating fresh business, and are planning civic investments. So far in 2020, the small town where State Route 28N intersects the upper Hudson River has seen the opening of three key businesses: a cafe with a gas pump, a full-service bar/restaurant, and an inn. A grant announced at the end of 2019 raises hopes further. The $1.1 million award from New York’s Department of State will go toward building a center to welcome visitors, house the historical society and provide space for exhibits showcasing local industrial and cultural heritage. It will host community…

Editor’s note: As the coronavirus pandemic swept New York this spring, we asked those who know and love the Adirondacks for opinions on the upcoming season. What follows is a partial list of their online and emailed submissions, some excerpted. Their timing spanned late-March to mid-April, and not all of them fit neatly in our usual Yes-No format. YES Although I currently live in Monroe County, working as a nurse practitioner, I am from and love every chance I have to return to the North Country. However, as I learn and unfortunately witness this virus unfold its tentacles rapidly throughout western New York, which has a fairly good health care system, it’s in the best interest of all to avoid interregional travel at least through June. Hopefully this timeframe allows the…

Afew decades ago, transportation officials began trying to keep roads in the Adirondacks clear in the winter by applying salt before and after storms. Across New York, highway departments now apply more than 1 million tons of the stuff each year. Much of it runs off the roads, causing the gradual contamination of some nearby waterways, including drinking water wells. Why are we dumping all of this salt onto roads? The simple reason is that salt lowers the freezing temperature of water. That means salt on the road before a storm can keep hazardous ice from forming. Adding salt to an icy road after a storm can help weaken the ice so plows and the friction from tires can break it up and move it aside. Pure water begins to…