Table of contents for November/December 2021 in Adirondack Explorer

The Nature Conservancy and state officials are negotiating a deal for potential public takeover of one of the last vast tracts available for inclusion in the forest preserve, Follensby Pond and surrounding land. In 2008, the Conservancy acquired the 14,600 acres near Tupper Lake for $16 million. The land features 10 miles of shoreline along the Raquette River and borders the High Peaks Wilderness Area. The tract includes the 970-acre Follensby Pond where in 1858 Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell and Louis Agassiz engaged in discussions at a “Philosopher’s Camp.” It was also one of New York’s main sites for its bald eagle restoration project in the 1970s and 1980s. “We are in discussions with The Nature Conservancy with respect to this parcel,” said Haley Viccaro, senior advisor for…

If you hike Cheney Mountain just north of Port Henry on Lake Champlain, you will inevitably find yourself talking about solid waste. But don’t let that deter you. Cheney is a charming, lightly used little peak with three different overlooks along the mile-long trail. It does, however, begin with the traverse of an old landfill, and the standout view looks down over a jaw-dropping heap of mine tailings from the old Switchback iron mine that provided raw material for the guns, tanks and Jeeps that won World War II. But even if you’re not into rubbish, Cheney has enough natural phenomena to keep even the most discerning hiker entertained. Champlain Area Trails steward Bill Amadon, Explorer photographer Mike Lynch and I hiked Cheney in the late winter of 2021 as…

The year was 2005, my first time in the Trap Dike and well before I became a guide into this treacherous climb over rock. I squirmed upward in a chute after being gulled into what looked like an easy way around the crux waterfall. Atop the channel, I fumbled for a handhold while my friend reassured me, “It’s ok, reach a little farther. Don’t panic.” I was a neophyte climber at the time and had an overwhelming fear of heights or, moreso, a fear of falling. Neither hiking the High Peaks nor scrambling up a dozen slides had prepared me for ascending Colden on this rock-climbing path. I should not have been in the dike unroped. Hindsight is 20/20. A bit of research and an honest assessment of my own…

Affectionately known in many places as garbage gulls, ring-billed gulls feel preternaturally comfortable around humans, happily accepting handouts of french fries or apple cores or, in my experience, pizza crust. They consume anything edible and rise like clouds from garbage dumps when a delivery arrives. LISTEN I’ve seen hundreds of ring-billeds take to the air when a garbage truck arrived at a dump, and right through closed car windows, with the radio playing, heard their loud and raucous calls. Although we have ringbilleds, herring and black-backed gulls in the Adirondacks, you see the ring-billeds most often—they love people, and their garbage. About the size of a crow, albeit with a ten-inch longer wingspan, ring-billeds have white bodies and gray wings with black tips—when they’re standing around, which they do much…

If you noticed a lot of bare tree limbs in the eastern Adirondacks this summer, it could be because of a population explosion among nonnative leaf munchers. The gypsy moth, a native of France but a longtime resident of New York, had one of its biggest summers in recent memory. The caterpillars emerged and defoliated a lot of trees—especially in Clinton and Warren counties—at rates not seen in about a half-century, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation. Gypsy moths are cyclical, with population spikes coming roughly every 15 years. Their preferred tree is the oak, though moths will also infest everything from birch and maple to spruce and hemlock. They rarely kill the host tree but can weaken it and set it up for attack from other pests. Maple…

The Browns faced a conundrum. They had tried and failed to secure a permit to camp at the picturesque alpine bowl around Marion Lake, in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, after standing in line before 6:30 a.m., when park headquarters had opened. So the father-daughter hiking team of Rick and Laura Brown had decided to hike across park lands past the lake, then up and over a ridge to unrestricted national forest camping just beyond the park boundary at Fox Creek Pass. Then they would traverse another part of the park the next day, a broad alpine shelf, until ultimately reaching a canyon where they had secured a Park Service permit. But time, age and a nagging doubt late on their first day had stopped them short. Rick, 68, had…

My family has hiked, camped, cross-country skied and paddled throughout the Adirondacks. But our bicycle adventures have been more limited. Part of the reason for this is because we’re parents of a preteen and Adirondack highways—even those with wide shoulders—are not hospitable places for a child on a bicycle. Closer to our upstate New York home, there are abundant rail-trails and multi-use paths to use, but options are are fewer in the Adirondacks. So we’ve been watching the development of the Adirondack Rail Trail with great enthusiasm. When complete, the trail will stretch for 34 miles from Lake Placid to Tupper Lake along the bed of an old railroad, cutting through miles of wilderness and offering access to a variety of recreational opportunities nearby. My family and I set out…

One day in the fall of 1967, Peter S. Paine Jr., 32, went hunting for grouse at his family’s Essex County estate. He was with his father and Laurance Rockefeller, a family friend since Paine Sr. and Rockefeller had been classmates at Princeton. Laurance, 57, was chair of the New York State Parks Commission, younger brother and best friend of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, and one of the richest men in the world. But that didn’t stop Peter Jr. from speaking frankly. The three men spent the day walking through grasslands and marshes at the mouth of the Boquet River, pausing occasionally to admire breathtaking views of Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains. After they returned home, Rockefeller asked a question. He was puzzled about reactions to his recent proposal that…

The question of how to prevent residential development at Follensby Pond, the remote, 1000-acre Adirondack lake made famous by The Philosopher’s Camp of 1858 and by the 1976 reintroduction of the bald eagle, was settled in 2008. Another question remains, though: What to do with this gem and its surrounding land if the state is successful in current negotiations to control its future. In 2008, the Nature Conservancy’s Adirondack Chapter acquired the lake and its land from the conservation-minded McCormick family. The lake and its forest were to be conserved, not developed. Pressures to acquire Follensby as public Forest Preserve were temporarily set aside. General public access to the lake was still not permitted. But the most pressing priority, conserving the lake, shores and surroundings from development, was achieved thanks…

Smith But not so for owner Steve Smith, who had a record-breaking year in 2020. In 1998 when he first opened his shop, people thought he was “nuts” (a map store?). His business’s heightened success during a pandemic showed just how much interest in hiking and the outdoors grew in a short time, he said. Even before the pandemic hit, Smith had witnessed hiker conga lines up to summits and an increasing amount of trash at trailheads. A member of the committee for New Hampshire’s 4,000-footer club, Smith would normally mail about 250 to 300 patches a year to those who had climbed all 48 peaks. Over the years, he said, those numbers have increased to around 700 or 800 annually. It’s a familiar story for those who live or…

On a summer morning in West Newton, Pennsylvania, Leslie Pierce pointed to four brightly painted bed-and-breakfasts—houses just across the way from the GAP Trail—as simple and obvious evidence of the economic boost that came from converting the old railroad line there into a packed gravel bicycle path. “You should have seen them 10 years ago. They were dumps,” said Pierce, business manager for the Regional Trail Corp., which operates the visitor center there in a replica train station and maintains part of the 149-mile trail. B&Bs and other businesses have popped up elsewhere along it, she said. In the Adirondacks, supporters of the new 34-mile rail trail under construction between Lake Placid and Tupper Lake are looking for similar results. West Newton, 24.5 miles south of Pittsburgh with a population…

YES In 2018, I saw a news story about Cooperstown updating its local law concerning short-term rentals. They interviewed a resident about the new law. His reply was he thought it was good, that it would help keep the community a place where people could and wanted to live. His reply struck home and I started thinking about the effects these rentals could have on Old Forge and what laws we had in place for them. I went to the next town board meeting to inquire about such laws and came to find out there weren’t any. I also found that you can’t build a motel in a district zoned residential. But it’s OK to rent a house to different people every day of the week in a residential neighborhood.…

Having heard it claimed that woolly bear caterpillars in autumn predict the nature of the coming winter, and having noticed an unusual abundance of woolly bears marching around our place in recent days, I decided to conduct a survey. I wanted to see what the insects were saying about the cold spell expected to arrive in our neighborhood in November and last until April or beyond. A woolly bear is black and wears a brown cummerbund. Dating to colonial times, believers have held that wide cummerbunds foretell mild winters, while narrow ones indicate that long, severe, snowy months lie ahead. Before I could canvass the insects, I needed to define what constituted wide and what narrow. I also needed to figure out what to do with individuals that straddled the…