Indice dei contenuti per November/December 2020 in Adirondack Explorer

Low numbers could help moose thrive Most large mammal ecologists might shudder at an entire animal population of just 700. When it comes to saving Adirondack moose from winter ticks, though, such a small and fragmented herd might actually be a good thing. For years, winter ticks have threatened moose populations across the Northeast, particularly in “hot spots” like northern New Hampshire and western Maine. Some scientists are worried that climate change is drawing winter tick populations into the Adirondack Park, endangering the already elusive native moose populations. The size of the 6 million-acre park’s current population can be disconcerting. While Maine has 60,000-70,000 moose, researchers estimate that there are only 600-800 in the Adirondacks, putting the species at risk if disease ever swept the herd. But in the…

Shelving Rock Trail offered a shady respite on a warm September day in Fort Ann. Couples here and there strolled beneath the forest canopy toward spectacular views across Lake George and its wooded islands. It was an Indian summer snapshot of an Adirondack scene that might not last. In a decade or so, the trail and its vista could look quite different. A bug the size of a ground pepper flake is killing these hemlocks—a species accounting for nearly 80% of the trees in the lake’s watershed. The state Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed this summer the infestation of the hemlock woolly adelgid. It is the second known attack in the Adirondack Park. It was upsetting for a region already dealing with more bad bug news. Just one week before,…

On a bitter February day in 2019, the Warren County Sheriff’s Office got a call from a construction crew digging a foundation in Lake George. They had found human bones. Terry Comeau, the county’s undersheriff, was coroner at the time. He and an investigator drove out to the site where the former Whispering Pines cottage rentals used to stand. What they saw did not look like any modern-day crime scene. Comeau and his colleagues called David Starbuck, a local archaeologist and professor. Starbuck was in New Hampshire, where he taught at Plymouth State University, but he agreed to come take a look. When he arrived, the construction site was bustling with people—law enforcement, local officials, journalists. They were there to see the 60-foot-by-60-foot crater with bone fragments sticking out of…

The Explorer has a role in encouraging diversity I applaud your recent article about working toward a more diverse park (“A Place for all,” September/October 2020). I wonder whether the Adirondack Explorer has considered its own role in making the region more welcoming to all. How often do the images that illustrate your articles include a person of color or a disabled person? I’ve not made a study, but I’ve read your magazine for years and I suspect you could be more proactive in your image selection. Perhaps you could set yourself a challenge to increase the percentage over time until it consistently reflects the population at large. And what of your advertisers? Could you give them some incentive to include people of color or the disabled in their advertising?…

The contents of William O'Hern's “Adirondack Timber Cruising” are a treasure, the packaging not so much. Plagued by many of the problems of self-published books taken to press without the intervention of an editor or designer, it offers no introduction to explain the book's aim, with crowded, dense pages following no discernable organizational scheme. It's full of great details and anecdotes, but it's not always clear who wrote individual sections. Buried in a faint font at the head of each chapter is a name (or names); there is no explanation, but after a while you figure out that this indicates the author of that chapter, which might be a newspaper column, often written many years ago, that O'Hern has reprinted here. These are scattered throughout the book's 56 chapters. But…

Build on the park’s success What does success look like? Twenty years ago, New York State made important land purchases within the park. Tourism to the park was actively promoted. Acid rain was declining. Environmental groups and local residents worked together to find ways to stimulate the local economy in this “lived-in” park. The congestion that we now have in the High Peaks area is, in fact, a success story. So many more people are enjoying the park and many local businesses are enthusiastically serving these visitors. Unfortunately, we didn't plan for or fund logical infrastructure improvements to accommodate the growth in visitors. The result is wear and tear on trails, trailheads and parking lots. Safety is also a big concern, particularly when parking is along Route 73 and hikers…

Having a small fire while camping can add an extra level of comfort, providing warmth and light in an otherwise dark forest and unfamiliar environment. But campfires can come at a cost, too. Gathering firewood can harm the area surrounding the campsite. This has been documented in places around the Adirondack Park, including the Saranac Lake Wild Forest and High Peaks Wilderness, parts of which haven’t allowed campfires since 2000 because of past environmental impacts. The harmful impacts were the main reason that campfires were banned in the Essex Chain of Lakes when it opened to the public in 2013, a decision that land managers have been re-evaluating recently. The state Department of Environmental Conservation’s management plan for the Essex Chain states that fire sites are often small but firewood…

The story repeats itself around the country: Salmon vs. dams, dams vs. salmon. Dams usually win. But what happened in the eastern Adirondack Park town of Willsboro is remarkable, a sign of how quickly the balance can change. The old Saw Mill Dam stood in the middle of town decades after the mill there had closed. It stood for something about the town and what it had been, but it also stood in the way of what had been there, swimming in the Boquet River, long before there was a town. There used to be a lot of salmon in the Boquet—so many that one early account of the river says 500 were caught there in a single afternoon. But intense fishing like that, along with pollution and dams like…

Elizabethtown businessman Larry Bucciarelli got a surprise in early September from the government affairs director of a broadband company that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tried to banish a few years ago. The director informed Bucciarelli that he will be receiving a cash refund. What’s more, six of Bucciarelli’s neighbors will also be getting checks from Charter Communications, the Charter executive, Kevin Egan, told them. The group will split $8,845.78. Yet Egan, whose company is also known as Spectrum, wasn’t promising the money out of generosity. Bucciarelli and his friends in the Essex County hamlet had paid Charter $8,845.78 in the fall of 2016 to install lines and poles to connect to the company’s internet service. Egan came calling after some investigative work by local officials found Charter had improperly…

My hike began on a mellow gravel pathway crossing a meadow. I paused to watch blackbirds and geese at a wetland before meandering through a blueberry barren, hopscotching a hemlock forest stream, goat-footing a rocky spine, sashaying a grassy oak glen, and gradually looping down to the start. In not even 2 miles, the route had almost everything. This trail has siblings all over the park. Some are graded smooth and wide, while some are skinny, stony and rooty. Some are new, and some follow ages-old woods roads or paths. Some climb the heights; some meander the flats. Some visit wetlands, and some visit big lakes. All are well-marked, signed and mapped. All are welcoming. They’re our community trails. MORE PHOTOS Most of these layouts, whether just one trail or…

Turkeys on parade On the way down to Elizabethtown for a Christmas Bird Count, I suddenly found myself slamming on my brakes really hard in order to avoid running over 15 or so wild turkeys wandering around aimlessly on Route 9N—they looked like a group of overly serious philosophers contemplating a profound existential enigma, slowly pacing higgledy-piggledy all over the road and completely ignoring my horn. So I started to get out of the car to chase them away when I experienced the apocalyptically intense blast of an air horn immediately behind me, which stunned me and scattered the flock of turkeys immediately. In my rearview mirror I saw an ear-to-earsmiling truck driver giving me a vigorous thumbs-up. Severe hunting pressure had reduced the North American wild turkey population to…

YES By Peter Bauer The 36,000-acre Whitney Park is up for sale. With 22 lakes and ponds and over 100 miles of undeveloped shoreline, this extraordinary tract has been at the top of New York’s land protection priority list for 50 years. This sale raises serious issues for all who are concerned about the future of the Adirondack Park. First, the state of New York must buy Whitney Park and add it to the public forest preserve. Second, we should not heed the calls of those who want to cap the forest preserve and give up on the 125-year bipartisan and multi-generational success of the forest preserve. The dramatic increase in public use over the last six months in the High Peaks Wilderness, and most other places in the Adirondacks,…

Jeff Snyder was in his happy place, fly fishing the Saranac River near the foot of Franklin Falls Dam on a lazy summer day. He was at a loss to name anything wrong with the river. But something was missing. The Saranac flows from headwaters around Upper Saranac Lake, in the heart of the Adirondacks, and winds some 81 miles to the northeast, dropping nearly 1,500 feet before spilling into Lake Champlain. Snyder, who lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, has fished it for 35 years and keeps coming back. To him, the Saranac is ideal. It’s scenic and winding. Most important on this July day, though, it was alive with fallfish. “They put up a good fight,” Snyder said of the trout-size minnow. “They’re fun to catch and they’re easy…

In skijoring, a person on skis is towed by another creature—a dog, a horse or, in the case of former Lapland Lake Nordic Vacation Center owner Olavi Hirvonen, a reindeer. You can even skijor behind snowmobiles (if you dare). Many skijoring stories begin with a dog. For Brendan Wiltse, it was Khyber. For Alexander Barrett, it was Ole. For my husband and me, it was Hootch. Hootch was a black and tan beagle-Shepherd mix with a penchant for pulling. He was pretty terrible on a leash, but worse off it, with a tendency to become distracted by forest scents and fall behind or wander off. Hootch was 8 or 9 when we decided to put his pulling power to use on the trail. My husband had heard about a woman…

Public peaks need public debate If there was one issue the public was concerned about this season, it was the number of people using the High Peaks—especially in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic that seemed to only swell the crowds. This summer and fall, the concerned public who live in or use the Adirondack Park were carefully driving by hundreds of parked cars and people walking along Route 73 who couldn’t find other parking. They were sharing their water or first-aid supplies with underprepared hikers. They had to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to get a parking spot themselves. They cleaned garbage from trails. Clearly the Adirondacks’ challenge of too many people during peak times was top of mind. The public cares deeply and deserves to know what’s being…

A balancing act On July 3 this summer, a work holiday for the Town of Long Lake, Alex Roalsvig was still busy on the phone and checking email, waiting for important information. Would there be a Fourth of July fireworks show, even as other towns and villages were canceling theirs due to the coronavirus pandemic? It’s one of the town’s biggest events of the year. Roalsvig, Long Lake’s Parks, Recreation & Tourism director, planned to close the town beach, scratch the live band and barbecue, and spread people out at a virus-avoiding distance so the show could go on. A police officer would be stationed at the beach to keep people from crowding there. She had the town board’s permission, but was waiting for direction from the governor’s office and…

A winter coat for the North Country There's no coat quite like a mink coat. So I told myself one frosty December morning along the Saranac River as I sat in deep snow, a bitter northwest wind stinging my face. Shivering and hungry, I teetered on the edge of self-pity despite the self-inflicted nature of my misery when at long last appeared the thing I was hoping to see: a mink, fitted out with a magnificent chocolate-brown fur coat, bounding out of its den. I didn't think the mink would glean my scent. It was upwind; I was down. Yet as the sausage-shaped animal bounded straight for me, it suddenly stopped in its tracks. I froze, ironically not an easy thing to do when you’re shivering. The mink studied me…