Table of contents for July/August 2021 in Adirondack Explorer

Brian E. Wells, Indian Lake’s supervisor, tenses when he talks about what he envisioned after private talks with state officials nine years ago. He thought that the state would help create a system of wildland snowmobile trails connecting Adirondack communities like his. Asked about local government leaders and their discussions with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation back in 2012, when the DEC planned a major acquisition for the state’s forest preserve, Wells won’t say much—at least not to the Adirondack Explorer. “That meeting was done in good faith by local government,” he said. “The parties know what was agreed on. I can look at myself in the mirror.” He suggests others involved in those discussions might not be able to do the same, but he won’t elaborate.…

We huddled under a flapping tarp, but our flimsy shelter at Mud Lake wasn’t keeping out the rain. Heads bowed, Teresa, Clare and I gulped down a few bites of lunch while the wild, wet northern edge of Hurricane Isaias swirled around us. We had planned to hike at least 12 miles on this first day of a Northville-Placid thru-hike and we were only at mile 5. Our afternoon would be a soggy forced march. As we walked after lunch, I kept up a cheerful, spirit-boosting chatter and tried to ignore the unrelenting rain that flowed down my rain gear onto my boots. When we reached the ford at West Stony Creek, the broad stretch of water surprised me. Shouldn’t this be called a river? “Let’s head straight across,” I…

YES John Sheehan On June 9, the hard work of many Adirondack residents and organizations paid off when the New York Legislature granted approval to a bill designed to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species. Special thanks are due to the Adirondack Common Ground Alliance, which made passing this bill a priority. The bill had broad support already. The CGA’s efforts brought it unanimous approval in both houses of the Legislature. Thanks are also due to bill sponsors Assemblyman Billy Jones, D-Chateaugay, and Senate Environmental Conservation Committee Chairman Todd Kaminsky, D-Long Beach, who bridged the gaps between competing versions of a new bill. Together, they took the law that expired on June 1 and made it permanent statewide. They also improved it inside the Adirondack Park. So, when the…

Sleeping in a log-sided lean-to is a quintessential Adirondack wildlands experience. It involves some luck in finding one unoccupied – or at least not fully occupied – or the grit to get on the trail or the water before others and claim one of 240 shelters arrayed throughout the park. Finding an open lean-to can be a relief to the backpacker who is weary and dreads pitching a tent or, worse, has no other shelter for the night. It’s also a way to commune with those who have come before during the roughly century-long era of the Adirondack lean-to, by reading the log book – or the graffiti carved on the logs. There are some rules, though. According to the state Department of Environmental Conservation: • Campers may not set…

In early May, Maeghan Farnham and Matt Smith set out to paddle the Oswegatchie Traverse, a classic trip in the northwestern Adirondacks. Due to the time of the year, they had no problems finding a campsite. With high waters, they cruised down the Oswegatchie, a waterway known for forcing many paddlers out of their boats with its dozens of beaver dams. Both expert paddlers, they finished the 35- mile trip in two days. You could definitely say that things went smoothly. But not everyone is so lucky when they head out on paddling adventures in the Adirondack Park. Part of the reason is that many people plan their overnight trips when conditions are prime, in July and August. As a result, paddlers looking for water-access campsites at popular places such…

The Adirondack Park’s 6 million acres of pristine waters, mountain peaks and forestlands were not always the main attraction for all vacationers. Some came for the dumps. In the 1960s and ’70s, nearly every town in the Adirondack Park had its own dump or landfill. With lax regulations, black bears would descend on these open-air pits and feast on garbage. Tourists and residents descended, too. They lugged cameras, set up lawn chairs and took the family out for a night of wildlife viewing—some of the bears close enough to touch. THROWBACK THURSDAY:BEARS AT THE DUMP “It was a big attraction on a Saturday morning,” said Kevin Hajos, superintendent of public works for Warren County. Hajos used to go with his grandparents to watch the bears at the North Creek landfill.…

The challenges of owning 36,000 acres of prime Adirondack real estate, along with new pressure from the Internal Revenue Service, are part of what John Hendrickson says motivated him to pursue subdividing the historic Whitney estate near Long Lake. Conservationists and recreationists have long coveted the property for addition to the public Adirondack Forest Preserve, though Hendrickson has said he’s not selling to the state. Instead, his proposal could be one of the most significant tests of the Adirondack Park Agency’s large-scale subdivision permitting process, which many environmental advocates believe fails to prioritize natural resource protections. Legislation that they say would strengthen the agency’s authority over big subdivisions has stalled in the state Senate and Assembly this year. Unable to write off business expenses without cutting more trees, and so…

When an opportunity comes along that is rare, magnificent and consequential, it is almost always best to say “yes”—to put aside doubts, fears, and in the moment even the details of how it will happen. Individuals do it with job offers, partnerships or a move across the country. Businesses do it when they face mergers or acquisitions. Great political leaders do it for history. The chance for New York State to purchase Whitney Park, and add it to the Adirondack Forest Preserve, is one of those moments. Whitney Park is 36,000 acres of pristine land, with 22 lakes and ponds in the heart of the Adirondacks. Gov. Andrew Cuomo must move now to forge a deal that will forever benefit New Yorkers, the environment and the communities surrounding these forests…

The widespread interrupted fern, Claytosmunda claytoniana, given its common name by reproductive structures that interrupt the regular pattern of some of its fronds, grows in every Adirondack county. I can’t think of a plant more interesting and worth getting to know. Consider this: Fossil ferns 180 million years old yield cell nuclei and chromosomes that convince paleontologists that the interrupted fern of today is the same one that grew then. It’s not a close relation or look-alike. It’s the same thing. Ponder the fact that the most famous dinosaur of them all, Tyrannosaurus rex, began stalking herbivorous cousins a mere 68 million years ago. This gives a sense just how long and uninterrupted a run this common Adirondack fern has enjoyed on the planet. Everything about ferns is fascinating. For…

Essex County Supervisors Chair Shaun Gillilland can smile about it now, though it is not a wide smile. On the 23rd day of March, 2020, he penned an emphatic letter to the hundreds of thousands of hikers, vacationers and second-home owners who are driven to the mountainous and sparsely populated county each year in search of fun and relaxation. Last year they were being driven by something else: fear of their neighbors in the crowded cities to the south that were being ravaged by disease. PAST COVERAGE Rather than stay put, urbanites would flee to the mountains, setting down the equivalent of a small city in a county where there were scant medical services or, for that matter, services of any kind. It wasn’t just that Gillilland was worried about…

Buried in a maze of state planning documents for the Adirondack Park are calls to study the park’s wild waterways in order to make sure they are protected. The state has rarely, if ever, conducted such studies for most of the waters. That is now causing conflict in court and with local officials around busy Adirondack lakes. Late last year, Thomas Jorling sued the Department of Environmental Conservation, which he led during much of Gov. Mario Cuomo’s administration. He seeks to stop a marina expansion on Lower Saranac Lake. One of his arguments is that the state failed to truly study what the expansion of two marinas on the lake would do to it. The case dredges up years of uncomfortable and increasingly pressing questions about whether the state lacks…

When Johnsburg Supervisor Andrea Hogan heard sewage might be spilling onto her town’s scenic main street, her reaction wasn’t what you’d expect. “I got so excited,” Hogan said. Such is the upside-down world of infrastructure funding in the Adirondacks. For years—as far back as the 1930s—local officials have wanted to install a sewer system in North Creek, the Town of Johnsburg’s main hamlet. And, for just as long, they haven’t been able to get together the money to make it happen. That means each home and business has to build its own individual septic system. As the years have gone on, the public health standards for such systems have become increasingly hard to meet, particularly for restaurants, which have to assure the state that their septics can handle their customers’…

The New York State Court of Appeals ruled in May that a new type of snowmobile trail is unconstitutional, and that decision is now the law. New York State and Adirondack communities must now find a way to work together so that good forest preserve projects that provide community benefits can move forward. But it is important to these discussions to set the record straight and respond to a recent lopsided op-ed penned in the wake of the decision. A May 12, 2021, Adirondack Daily Enterprise column (posted online at bit.ly/2RPfbkv), “Class II is nothing like a hiking trail,” by Protect the Adirondacks Executive Director Peter Bauer leaves the erroneous impression that the Cuomo administration, and the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in particular, were out to destroy the forest…

While leading a field trip at John Brown’s Farm, I heard the distinctive ka-ka-kow-kow-kowlp-kowlp call of a yellow-billed cuckoo, looked quickly to my left and saw the bird, 15 feet away and 10 feet up on a bare branch. The people on the field trip dropped their jaws and raised their eyebrows to the tops of their foreheads as one of them said, incredulously, “Is that a real bird?” The cuckoo continued to call and the birders maintained the drop in their jaws, only to gasp as they closed them when the bird flew away and disappeared in the brush. Nobody in the group had ever seen or heard a cuckoo, and the looks on their faces suggested something resembling a religious experience. I reinforced the spirituality of their response…