Tabla de contenidos para March/April 2022 en Adirondack Explorer

Scouts embark on real estate sales jamboree BY TIM ROWLAND Boy Scout Camps are fading from the Adirondack Park landscape, victims of financial and legal troubles, as well as a declining number of youngsters interested in scouting. Largely out of sight and out of mind, even in the communities they inhabit, the camps have nevertheless protected forestland, en-hanced accessibility to nature and fostered a love for the mountains in generations of youngsters. “These properties play an important role not just in keeping the Adirondack forest connected but as places that connect young people to the land, and our hope is that they can continue to do both.” said Mary Thill, Communications Manager for the Adiron-dack Land Trust in Keene. But the recent sale of the Sabattis Adventure Camp in Long…

We got to Gore around noon on the second Saturday of January, parked in the last available parking lot, changed into our warmest outfits, and boarded a shuttle. We arrived at what felt like a quintessential winter sports fest, a mountain village of families, children and people in all sorts of snow gear, the colors of their outfits like ornaments against the white backdrop. I’m not around children a lot. Here, it is impossible to ignore their presence. I highly enjoy that aspect of snowboarding—the opportunity to observe kids being kids—vulnerable, risky, daring, adventurous, silly. The adults too, as they cascade down mountains. It is endearing being around people making memories and making them yourself with people you love. Beyond the warm clothes and wintery ambience lies a culture that…

When I think of unsung beauty I think of mourning doves, with their gorgeous, smooth pale brown plumage flecked with black and their pretty, pale blue eyelids. I also think of their squeaky wingbeats as they take to the air from a branch overhead or from the ground. Who could help but contemplate their profoundly sad and mournful calls? One of the most populous and widespread birds in North America, mourning doves thrive despite intense hunting pressure. More than 20 million birds are taken by hunters every season—a small dent in their population, which numbers in the hundreds of millions. LISTEN I remember a camping trip when a woman at an adjacent site asked if she could accompany me down the river to get some water. When we got to…

Old-growth trees — those at least 150 years in age — abound in the Adirondacks, residing among 350,000 acres, the most anywhere in the nation. They stand in small groups in remote areas, sometimes within a couple of dozen paces from a roadway, and in clusters of wild forest and wilderness. Barbara McMartin, in her 1994 classic, “The Great Forest of the Adirondacks,” mapped their locations, showing big stands near the Saranac lakes, north of the Stillwater Reservoir, around Raquette Lake and north and south of Piseco Lake, among other regions. She described her count as incomplete. No one has updated her work. “You need a small army of people and a decade to do it,” said Michael Kudish. The forestry expert, who retired from Paul Smith’s College 16 years…

Stephanie Ley looked like she had just heard a sour note. The 32-year-old watched one hiker after another weave through the trees at the base of Gorham Mountain in Maine’s Acadia National Park, bypassing the rocky trailhead. They were following a path called a social trail, an unauthorized offshoot eroded by foot traffic. Ley, summit steward coordinator for Friends of Acadia, said it probably started as someone’s quick bathroom detour. “It’s just really astounding to me that this has cropped up,” Ley said. “It’s so obvious and so bad, and through this lovely mossy area, and it’s only taken a few weeks!” She approached a couple emerging from the social trail and asked them to stick to the rocky areas to protect the moss. “We were just following the well-worn…

Awoman contacted Maj. R. Anthony Oliver, commander for the New York State Police in Ray Brook, seeking advice. Her son was about to take his driver license test. She asked Oliver if she should tape his registration to the front of the glove box. The mother didn’t want her son—a child of color—killed for reaching into the compartment during a traffic stop, Oliver said. “She’s been exposed to the news, the feeling of Black children or people of color have a high incidence of getting shot by the police,” he said. “That breaks my heart.” These sentiments are crushing for Oliver, not only because the 57-year-old has served for more than three decades, but also because he grew up feeling safe around police. His father was an officer. “To me,…

We will stipulate the importance of military history at the Crown Point Historic Site on southern Lake Champlain. It was, after all, an exposed nerve in the Seven Years War in the mid-18th century struggle for global supremacy between France and Britain. The fort era spans maybe 40 years, while visual, historic evidence of life on the point can be traced back more than 400 million years. And winter is a good time to visit, as the site includes several miles of seldom used trails that can be skied or snowshoed past snow sculptures and dog-walkers. “I actually think the site looks better in winter, because all the historical features really stand out,” said Lisa Polay, the historic site’s director. “When the wind blows snow through the fort it makes…

SOLAR PROJECTS IN THE ADIRONDACK PARK? ABSOLUTELY Should the Adirondack Park be used for large solar projects? Yes! Clean, renewable energy belongs anywhere energy is consumed. That doesn’t mean renewable energy projects should be recklessly sited, and they certainly don’t belong—and can’t be sited—in the Forest Preserve. But 56% (3.6 million acres) of the Adirondack Park is privately owned, and development on most of that land is also subject to review by the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). The Adirondack Park itself is a grand experiment in achieving sustainability. So, generating clean energy that does not pollute the air or increase climate warming greenhouse gases must be part of the picture. And there’s more. Clean, renewable power reduces energy bills, provides community benefits, helps create new jobs and keeps our energy…

On summer weekends, Crawford Notch State Park in the White Mountains of New Hampshire bustles with activity. Vehicles fill trailhead parking lots and line Route 302, the main artery. People traipse mountainside trails. Amid the commotion, the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Highland Center lodge welcomes visitors with a sign: “adventure—lodging—learning.” The Highland Center stands across the street from the more than 200-year-old Crawford Path, the longest continuously maintained hiking trail in North America. The lodge and its predecessors have catered to visitors since the Crawford House Hotel was built on the site in 1850. AMC turned the place into the Highland Center, a beacon for the region and a representation of a kind of welcome point that groups around the country have developed to deal with people in search of information…

Less than 18 months after the Town of St. Armand built a $5.2 million wastewa-ter treatment plant in 2017, state officials directed town leaders to improve it. The town is still looking for the money. Town Supervisor Davina Winemiller said she won’t ask residents to finance another long-term state loan, this time for disinfection and phosphorus removal. Even at zero percent interest, her constituents can’t afford the debt, she said. They are already stretched, the typical water and sewer bill costing around $1,200 a year. “You can't get blood from a stone,” Winemiller said. The town must also upgrade its sewer collection system in the hamlet of Bloomingdale and it aims to connect a handful of properties with failing septic systems into the municipal sewer. Winemiller said she wants clean…

Echo Cliff at Panther Mountain is a short trek with a steep climb that pays off with a rewarding view of the southern Adirondacks. Panther Mountain—not to be confused with the Adirondack’s other Panther Mountain near Tupper Lake—overlooks Piseco Lake in the town of Arietta in Hamilton County. The trail to and from Echo Cliff is 1.2 miles round trip with an elevation gain of 670 feet. It is a hike best labeled moderate. It is a local favorite, especially in the summer, and is accessible via a short walk from the three area state camp-grounds: Little Sand Point, Poplar Point, and Point Comfort. The trailhead is located between Little Sand Point and Point Comfort. To access the trailhead from state Route 8 at the southern end of Piseco Lake,…

Ihave never heard anyone utter a bad word about the state Court of Appeals killing a plan to build a bobsled run in the Sentinel Range. I do have a critique, but not because I disagree with the result. The high court opined in 1930 that cutting timber in the Forest Preserve “to a substantial extent” or “to any material degree” would violate the forever-wild clause of the state constitution. “To cut down 2,500 trees for a toboggan slide, or perhaps for any other purpose, is prohibited,” the court declared. Of course, a bobsled run has no place in the Forest Preserve even if zero trees are cut for it. Perhaps you’ve seen the bobsled track on Mount Van Hoevenberg all lit up against the night sky. Now imagine it…

Given the length of the Adirondack winter, I, eager after a few months of snow and ice to see warmth reclaim the landscape, find myself hunting for the year’s first flower. If I lived in Keene, Keene Valley, the Champlain Valley, or some other part of our frigid region’s banana belt, that first flower would likely be skunk cabbage. But that singular early bloomer, which produces heat and can melt a hole in solid ice, hasn’t yet colonized our higher altitude woods. Here, eight miles downstream from Saranac Lake, the first plant I find in bloom is almost always the beaked hazelnut. Two species of hazelnut are native to the Adirondacks: American hazelnut, which has hairy twigs and leafy, vaguely spherical green husks surrounding the shiny nuts; and beaked hazelnut,…