Tabla de contenidos para May/June 2025 en Adirondack Explorer

WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE WHITNEY ESTATE? As the search continues for a buyer of the 36,600-acre Whitney Park property in Long Lake, questions remain about whether the state or land trusts could play a role. Edward Hendrickson, the co-executor of his brother John’s will, said John, and his wife Marylou Whitney, who died in 2019, loved the property and adored the Long Lake community. John Hendrickson had directed that the net proceeds from the sale of Whitney Park go to the town. Edward Hendrickson said it is his duty to make sure Long Lake gets the funds it deserves to strengthen its financial future. In an interview, Edward Hendrickson did not rule out the possibility of selling to the state or land trusts. “I’m sure if the state is interested,…

Essex County, the economic epicenter of the Adirondacks, shattered records for overnight accommodations in 2024, booking 24,184 more room nights than in 2023, according to the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST). But as summer approaches, a giant question mark hangs over the hospitality industry. The Trump administration’s comments and policies have angered Canadians, and travelers from other nations fear they might be turned away or detained by unpredictable American border agencies. Drilling down into 2024 numbers According to Smith Travel Reports, which tracks about 80% of the total rooms in Essex County (meaning its numbers are likely on the low side), there were nearly a half-million nights booked in 2024. ROOST President and CEO Dan Kelleher said each room-night in Essex County generates approximately $537 in daily spending and…

Only 10% of residents and visitors in the Adirondacks are people of color, despite comprising around 40% of the state’s population. This disparity reflects a broader, national story of exclusion, where people of color have historically been left out of the narrative of “the great outdoors.” As racial minorities grow into the majority of New York’s population, some outdoor advocates say the preservation of the Adirondacks is contingent on engaging a new, more racially diverse group of people to become the next generation of park stewards. Meet some of the individuals working to expand the park’s relevance beyond its borders, forging connections with diverse communities to reshape the region’s workforce and visitor demographics. From backyard to the backcountry Raised in a Chilean-American family in Flint, Michigan, Vanessa Rojas discovered her…

For decades, volunteers across the state have led members of the Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) into the wilderness—on foot, on skis, in boats and sometimes on bikes. The chapters decided who the trip leaders were. They also set the qualifications and rules for them. In April 2023, the ADK Board of Directors approved new trip leader training requirements for volunteer trip leaders. The new Outings Leader Certification Program provides a uniform set of standards across all chapters. Julia Goren, who recently stepped down as the interim executive director of ADK, explained that the changes were made to improve safety and meet insurance requirements. The new guidelines also serve as a two-part recruitment tool. They reassure participants that leaders are qualified and support the development of trip leaders. “By saying, ‘I’m…

Each year, the state Department of Environmental Conservation dumps more than 10,000 brook trout into Raquette Lake. Jordan Ross would like to see that number come down to zero. It is not that Ross has anything against brookies. He owns a fly-rod company and founded Trout Power, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting native brook trout. “When I was a young boy, I would ride my bike to Eagle Creek on Big Moose Road, and that is where I fell in love with brook trout, catching them on bobber and worm,” he said, reminiscing. In his teens, he learned to fly fish, now one of his passions in life. His big idea is to establish an experimental Adirondack brook trout preserve encompassing Raquette Lake and its tributaries, among them South…

It is not every day one of Tupper Lake’s watering holes draws an investor with aspirations of building a sit-down restaurant with a rooftop lounge. So, an abundant reaction resulted after news spread in March about the future of Trails End Tavern: A man who last fall purchased Big Tupper, the shuttered ski mountain on the edge of Tupper Lake, is in the final stages of purchasing the roadhouse. Much of the response came from Tupper Lake boosters who consider Martin Schapira’s purchase of the Route 30 landmark a sign the village is on the cusp of greater prosperity. “We’re hopefully on the verge of getting back on track in Tupper—we’ve been up and coming for a while,” said Sara Barrington, a member of the town planning board, which unanimously…

Pity the wilderness that has no overlook, no trail leading up to a dazzling mountain summit with infinite Adirondack views. Certainly any wilderness worth its salt requires legions of selfie-taking hikers plying its hills to be worthy of the name. Until the recent completion of a trail up and over the thoroughly satisfying Jones Hill lookout, the Hoffman Notch Wilderness was infrequently considered a hiking destination. Trails at the southern edge of its 38,000-acre expanse lead to a couple of ponds, and the ever-loving species known as the intrepid bushwhacker can occasionally be sighted doing battle on sprucey ridgelines for reasons no sensible person could comprehend. But as the mountains begin to warm and the forest floors begin to green up and burst forth with subtly vibrant wildflowers, there is…

Accessibility for all For most of the history of the Adirondack Park, the focus has been on guarding the resources and preserving these beautiful mountains and waters. That forethought made it possible for us to enjoy them today. At the same time, some people, particularly those with physical disabilities, can’t enjoy even a tiny percentage of what we regard as ours. Thankfully, we will never build a road to the summit of Mt. Marcy, but just off Route 73 near the primitive camping spots at the southern end of Chapel Pond, we hope to place a boardwalk over a short, impassable section of trail so that a canoe or kayak can be carried into the water’s edge. This would make it possible for my friend who has spent most of…

One of the Adirondacks’ many breeding warbler species often goes unnoticed. The blackpoll warbler possesses one of the highest pitched bird songs, often outside the range for people with high-frequency hearing loss. In our area, breeding is at higher elevations over 2,900 feet. To find this species, you need to be up on a mountain, where it is often windy, be able to hear a bird singing just a few, quiet, nearly inaudible notes in a high frequency range, and then spot it. It is a challenge. As its name implies, the male blackpoll warbler has a black cap. It is mostly gray and white with bold black streaks. The female is an olive-gray color and less sharply marked. Both the male and female have dark wings with two white…

The sweeping federal program cuts imposed under President Donald Trump are beginning to take a heavy toll on the Adirondacks, with lasting consequences for our fragile rural economy. Our region relies heavily on government jobs, tourism and many nonprofits. Our towns and villages desperately need to upgrade aging infrastructure. These cuts are not just an abstract budget issue here in the Adirondack Park. They are a direct threat to the future of our rural communities and the vast wilderness we cherish. From small nonprofit organizations to farmers, small businesses, environmental research and hospitals, damage is mounting. Here are just a few examples: In early April, OurStoryBridge, a small non-profit recording oral histories of Adirondackers, received a letter letting them know the National Endowment for the Humanities grant they’d been promised…

Three guitars rest on stands, silent, waiting to be brought to life. Persian carpets blanket the floor. The room, not exactly large, not exactly small, is painted oxblood red, glowing warmly in the amber light of 300-year-old ceiling lanterns from the Black Sea coast. People come to this space just south of Whallonsburg, near the shores of Lake Champlain, to play, record and listen to music, but even nonmusical types who would not know a Fender from a fireplug cannot help but gawk at walls filled with vintage stringed instruments and bask in an era when music was something more than an app on a phone. The ambiance of the room is important, said Eric Sherman, who designed and built 22 Pawn as an unlikely addition to Champlain Peony Co.,…

When Lake Luzerne’s Rockwell Falls Public Library reopened its doors in March 2024, it had to reconcile with a series of events that shook this small Adirondack community to its core. Almost a year prior, a proposed drag queen story hour event at the rural library sparked protests, a violent incident at a board meeting and a bomb threat. The event was ultimately canceled, and multiple board member and staff resignations forced the library to close. Neighbors criticized each other online and in person, and the question remained: How could this community, and its library, pick up the pieces? Playwright Neal Herr from Glens Falls believed an important part of the narrative was missed. Herr was troubled by a news article that cited “disagreements between the community and the board”…

A YEASTY ODOR OF BREWERY WASTE emanates from an indispensable pipe in Bolton on a sunny March day. Flush a toilet or dump beer-making discard in this lakefront hamlet and eventually it finds its way to that pipe. The town of Bolton’s treatment plant, installed in the 1960s, is permitted to handle an average of 300,000 gallons of wastewater a month, which from time to time bursts out of the pipe and into a large open-air holding tank—a fountain of sewage and the first stop at the plant. The aging plant’s system enables bacteria to break down the wastewater’s high levels of ammonia into nitrates, but for decades there was no process to take care of the nitrates, which flow through the rest of the treatment plant, seep into groundwater,…

It’s a hot, sunny day in the summer of 1998, and I’m sitting in a baby blue Dagger kayak, floating in an eddy below a series of steep, technical drops on the Black River. I’m 13 years old and I took a hard pass on paddling this section. My dad is up there, somewhere, with his buddies, scouting the rapids and picking lines. The minutes pass at a snail’s pace, but eventually, I see Dad’s kayak slip gracefully down the falls, pencilling the last drop. He surfaces, wipes the water from his face, and smiles. He can tell I’m bored—he’s gone up and down this section a few times—so he beckons me to follow. I paddle behind him until we pull to a rocky shore below a small waterfall, maybe…

Flowering plants, including low-growing trilliums and orchids we call “wildflowers” and giant, wild, woody-stemmed flowers we in the Adirondacks tend to call hardwood trees, reproduce by way of, at the risk of sounding redundant, flowering. Pollen delivers the male contributions to eggs that develop and are held in ovaries. Ferns, by contrast, produce no flowers. They have an old-fashioned way to make whoopee without them. How they do it is very, very interesting. Since the fern life cycle, like cycles in general, goes around in circles, let’s begin at an arbitrary starting point: a fern that you see uncurling a fiddlehead on a spring day or looking lush in a dinosaur-era kind of way in summer. On the fern, if you look closely, you may find structures called sori, singular…