Table of contents for May/June 2023 in Adirondack Explorer

Fallout from park agency court losses BY GWENDOLYN CRAIG AND ZACHARY MATSON Rulings against the Adirondack Park Agency in two court cases in two days in early March raised questions about its internal operations and how it will conduct business in the future. On March 2, the state Supreme Court Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department, said the agency incorrectly applied its wetlands regulations when granting a marina permit on Lower Saranac Lake. On March 3, the state Supreme Court in Warren County ruled the APA should have held a public hearing before permitting herbicide applications in Lake George. Former APA Commissioner Chad Dawson, who resigned from the board at the end of 2020 over what he described as the agency’s insufficient data collection before issuing permits, said the decisions “send…

Thanks for story on young trail manager I loved your piece on Charlotte Staats (“Her Adirondack dream job” January/February). I didn’t know her story. Well, consider my interest piqued! I was blown away to learn how Charlotte, the first woman to hold the trails manager position for the Adirondack Mountain Club, transformed the ADK’s business model. I also appreciated learning about her background and discovering that she is the latest in three generations of family who are committed to the health of the Adirondacks. Thanks for this article on young people doing big work in the Adirondacks! Brian Woods Lake Placid Yeah, what about the prey? I am a big fan of your magazine and have subscribed for many years. Rarely do I feel the need to comment on your…

Jon Close has been farming all of his life. The 64-year-old, with a long, frizzy beard and cheerful demeanor, milks approximately 70 cows in a barn off Lakeview Road in Mayfield. His sprawling pastures offer views of Great Sacandaga Lake, a man-made reservoir that flooded homes and farms in 1930, including that of the Langer family, Close’s mother’s family. Close is the fifth generation to work these lands. He clings to one of the Adirondack Park’s last dairy farms. The Close Brothers Farm, also called the Close Family Farm, has grown as a result of farmers quitting, weary of the many challenges facing the industry. Its approximately 800 acres include farmlands the Closes bought over the years as neighbors got out of the agricultural business. “It’s a sign of the…

Steph Larsen knew what she wanted in a community: A rural, friendly place where she could farm and raise her family. In 2014, Larsen and her husband Noah Weber bought land in Montana and started their farm. But their lives changed just three years later. “The fire season in Montana was so bad that we couldn’t take our daughter, who had just turned one, outside for any reason for six weeks,” Larsen, 44, said. The 2017 wildfires spread across 539,026 acres and cost a total of $380 million to suppress. Larsen, who was pregnant at the time, worried that the thick smoke would affect her baby and her other child. It was around then that she and Weber decided to move. “As much as we loved Montana, as much as…

Not since railroads and highways transformed access to the Adirondacks has the region stood poised to dramatically improve the area’s connectedness over a more metaphorical “highway.” Dozens of collaborators—regional advocates, economic development officials, local/regional elected officials, and state/federal agencies—are working to take advantage of one part of the 2021 federal infrastructure law designed to expand availability of broadband internet access to even the most remote areas. One area activist describes the effort in terms of global events. “It took a worldwide pandemic to remind us how critical access to broadband is here and elsewhere,” says Dave Wolff, member of the board of directors at AdkAction, a Keeseville-based non-profit that advocates for the region. Other regional officials point to the medical needs of residents. District 7 Franklin County Legislator Melinda Ellis…

Northern New York is a birding mecca for many reasons. In winter, sought-after species to our north head south into our region. Year-round boreal species can be viewed in the Adirondacks without traveling to Canada. In the spring and summer, northern New York fills with breeding birds returning from the tropics and other southern wintering locations. Bicknell’s thrush, the only endemic species in the northeastern U.S., attracts birders from around the world to the Adirondacks. Twenty-eight nesting warbler species is another reason that birders flock to northern New York. Hosting such a large variety of breeding warblers is unique within North America and the result of a wide diversity of habitats spanning the grasslands/wetlands/shrublands in the St. Lawrence Valley to the high elevation boreal habitat in the Adirondack Mountains. Researchers,…

The ground beneath the once-flooded Duck Hole in the High Peaks Wilderness was soft underfoot and teeming with life. Monarch butterflies fluttered among summer flowers. Mosses, bog plants, grasses, shrubs and early succession trees carpeted the wide basin ringed by McNaughton, Panther and Seymour mountains. First-generation evergreen saplings sat low in a shady tangle, the tallest rising only five or six feet. Birds darted from branch to branch. More than a decade after Duck Hole Dam crumbled during Tropical Storm Irene, draining the old logging pond populated by otters, loons and brook trout, a storied stop on the Northville-Placid Trail, the landscape has emerged as an open meadow, a bog and a fledgling forest in the heart of the High Peaks. Guide and educator Matt Burnett first visited Duck Hole…

Jane Desotelle crouched at the edge of a brick walkway outside the Ausable Club lodge and plucked a green leaf and spindly flower from a low-lying plant. To the untrained eye, it’s a nuisance weed. Desotelle, an expert Adirondack forager, identified it as broadleaf plantain. The seeds of the flower spike act like Metamucil to combat constipation, and its dried leaves make a tea that can fight inflammation, even stop internal bleeding, Desotelle explained to a foraging group she led late last summer from the club grounds. She showed them how to squeeze the green calyx at the base of a yellow dandelion flower to release the petals, which she turns into a sweet, floral jelly. The long, strong dandelion roots—a source of aggravation to many a gardener—smell…

Perhaps the best stretch to ski on the Jack-rabbit Trail is known as Old Mountain Road. As it leaves North Elba, the trail drops through a series of beaver swamps, passes Pitchoff Mountain’s ice-covered cliffs and eventually ends at a woodsy trailhead on Alstead Hill Road, a quiet dead-end lane in Keene. In recent years, like many scenic places, this 3-mile stretch through the Sentinel Range Wilderness has seen increased use. Skiers show up in droves on weekends, climbers use the trail to access nearby cliffs and hikers enjoy the path’s gentle grade. “It’s a major access point to the wilderness area, the forest preserve, not just the ski trails part of it, but people hike on Old Mountain Road. They use it to access the Barkeater Cliffs,” said Josh…

Our hike begins at a trailhead near Long Lake on bog bridges over spruce wetlands. Beneath the spindly trees, wide boards lead us across a soft green carpet of moss. We’re doing a 15-mile day trip from Long Lake to Lake Durant on a scenic part of the Northville-Placid Trail. It’s one of the few places on the 140-mile trail where it is possible to do a moderate one-way day hike with a short car shuttle. After I hiked the entire NPT, I knew I wanted to come back with friends to this beautiful stretch. The trail winds through the Blue Mountain Wild Forest and climbs to 3,000 feet, the highest point on the NPT. It is there, after almost five miles of hiking, we decide it’s time to take…

I have always grappled with the concept of love. What does this word mean that society throws around so haphazardly? I feel most at home with bell hooks’ definition: “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” In the Adirondacks, my spirit rises organically. I appreciate all the love people give to the region through sustainability, education and protection—and all the love they provide in memories involving us humans and our experiences in the natural world within the Blue Line. I have a soul sister named Megan. The platonic love we share constantly contributes to my life. She is the type of friend I wish everyone had. She is kind, caring, immensely resourceful and adventurous. We adore the Adirondacks, exploring and…

In life there are things that last and things that don’t. Among the don’ts are a group of spring wildflowers sometimes called “ephemerals.” They come, and if you don’t get out in the woods in a hurry, they go. Then, there’s nothing to be done but head higher in elevation or race up to Canada to catch them on different time schedules or wait another year. In the Adirondacks, where we often leap from winter to summer without much of a spring, the ephemerality of certain May and June flowers can seem especially dramatic. When I think of fleeting flora, the first plant that comes to mind is an odd, delicate little plant in the poppy family known as Dutchman’s breeches. The leaves are thin and finely divided, like certain…

It often takes a near disaster to get politicians to act. Like, for example, the evacuation of 150,000 residents when erosion compromised the Oroville Dam in California, sending water gushing over the emergency spillway toward the neighborhoods below. Only then did California officials authorize $1 billion for needed repairs and impose stricter policies for inspections and reporting. Could that happen here? The safety of dams is an issue that needs a hard look in the Adirondacks, where dozens of structures are in various stages of disrepair. For 10 of those, experts say, safety can’t be assured. Owners of these dams include absentee developers, local towns and villages and conscientious lake associations. They are required by the state to submit engineering assessments, and in extreme cases—like the 10 “unsound” dams—they are…

During heavy rain in February 2017, concrete collapsed at California’s Oroville Dam, the tallest in the nation. Water pushed through the 3,000-foot-long spillway and drowned the adjacent hillside, eventually overtopping the emergency spillway. Erosion undermined the dam and officials ordered the evacuation of more than 150,000 downstream residents amid fears of a catastrophic failure. The worst-case scenario didn’t materialize. But the structure suffered over a billion dollars in damage, and California lawmakers within six months passed laws strengthening oversight and requiring owners of risky dams to post inundation maps showing the extent of potential flooding if a dam failed. In state after state, the gears of policy start grinding after a crisis. “That’s what happens when you have a significant dam event,” said Lori Spragens, executive director of the Association…

It’s tough to be a farmer in the Adirondacks, and doubly so at a scale that supplies wholesale markets out-of-state. And it’s hard anywhere to keep a family farm alive for more than a century and a half. Tucker Farms, surrounded by mountains eight miles north of Saranac Lake, has managed all of that. It’s one of the oldest and among the larger farming operations within the Blue Line. In mid-February, Steve Tucker met me on the rumpled ice covering the barnyard and we waddled like ducklings, arms out for balance, to a climate-controlled storage barn. It was built some years ago when the farm’s traditional, underground, sod-roofed potato barn finally collapsed. Surrounded by towers of wooden bins, Steve and his brother Tom talked about family history, the challenges of…

Sarah Keyes is often up in the middle of the night, after she gets off a nursing shift at Adirondack Health in Saranac Lake. Instead of going to bed, she goes running. Out on the rail trail in the dark, the 38-year-old ultra-runner is occasionally startled by another person. “I think, am I safe?” she said. Keyes spends hours alone in the woods running, but she has only felt the whisper of a threat from another person a couple of times while training, and it was far from the Adirondacks. Once in Utah and once on the Pacific Crest Trail in Washington, she said, she crossed paths with men who tried to extend conversations to an uncomfortable point, but an easy escape was at hand—she ran. Like others who use…

The kayak trip from Raquette Lake to Blue Mountain Lake is one of the great paddles of the Adirondacks. In about 13 miles, you traverse four lakes, a major river and two inlets. You pass beautiful homes and quiet woods and follow the path of what was once the nation’s shortest railroad. You will see wildlife. There is a portage, albeit an easy one. You never fully escape the sound of traffic, or at least loud motorcycles. And you need two cars, or a ride back to the start to retrieve your vehicle. I’ve been wanting to do this through-paddle for years, ever since I learned about it while staying with friends on Blue Mountain Lake. A year ago on Labor Day weekend, I finally made it happen. The route…

When I moved to Saranac Lake, Dick Beamish, the founder of the Adirondack Explorer, told me about one of his favorite bike rides: starting in town, he’d pedal up Forest Home Road, coast down McMaster Road, take Route 186 to Donnelly’s Corners, and return to town on Route 86. In the years since, I’ve done the ride countless times. It’s a wonderful 14.5-mile loop on mostly quiet roads with lots of scenery. Forest Home Road, however, requires a long climb that might be too challenging for elderly or physically impaired cyclists. An electric bike would seem to be a solution, but there’s a legal hitch: under a myopic state law, riding an e-bike on most roads in the Adirondacks is prohibited. In April 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Andrew…