Table of contents for September/October 2024 in Adirondack Explorer

PUBLIC PANS FRANKLIN COUNTY’S TRAIL PROPOSAL BY GWENDOLYN CRAIG A widely criticized vision by Franklin County government leaders to build a 500-mile trail for off-road vehicles ran into obstacles and is being rethought. After more than 90 commenters weighed in on the draft scoping document, county officials indicated plans to keep striving to create the trail system but after finding ways to make it more appealing. “The county values the feedback of the public,” said Phil Hans, the county’s tourism director. He called the trail network “the most significant outdoor recreation project the county has undertaken.” Two towns passed resolutions against the network, citing constituents’ concerns for public safety, the environment, noise, dust and traffic. Some said off-road vehicle users are already a problem in their neighborhoods. Commenters, including state…

Brook trout doing well in Vermont Brook trout fishing is the best in many years in the higher elevation watersheds of the Green Mountains (“Baitfish ban” May/June). The higher water flow, with probably higher oxygen levels since last summer, provides an abundance of fingerlings 3 to 5 inches and many 6 to 8 inches long. I have been fishing mountain streams for native brook trout since 1957. I’ve observed many changes and the peaks and valleys of native brookies. The best period for quality and quantity was from 1975 to 1990 after extensive clear-cutting in many of these watersheds. This was a time of higher water volumes and a high density of insects. Larry Orvis Middlebury, Vt. Region’s communities need more sparks Tim Rowland’s article hit home for me (“Jobs…

Hundreds of thousands of wooded acres in the Adirondacks are part of the booming carbon credit market and drawing international investors. As companies look to neutralize their pollution and New York aims to offset its emissions, private North Country trees prove valuable to traders and buyers of carbon credits. The Adirondack Park’s massive forest carbon sink has absorbed pollution for ages. Now, parts of the woodlands are important players in a global enterprise: Trees continue storing unwanted greenhouse gases but are leveraged by polluting companies paying for the forests’ conservation. The practice gained popularity in recent years as a temporary solution to the excess amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases heating the planet. Landowners, often timber companies in the park’s case, enroll their acreage in an offset program…

Warren County—with Lake George, scenic trails, the Hudson River and many mountain bike trails—has some of Adirondack Park’s best outdoor assets. Now, county officials are taking a deeper look at those assets, hoping to bring additional dollars to communities and attract not only visitors but year-round residents. “We enjoy outdoor recreation, but we want to better understand the economic impacts of it, and then further leverage those economic impacts for community benefit,” said Warren County Planner Ethan Gaddy. “It plays such an important role in Warren County, but we don't really have a good understanding of it.” The county has hired SE Group and Common Ground Consulting to help create its Outdoor Recreation Economy Strategic Plan, a document that may serve as a blueprint for other regions. The team has…

It is my studied opinion, three 19th-century men named Ezra Cobble, Phinius Haystack and Charles K. Owlshead went around naming Adirondack mountains after themselves. Well, apparently Pearl Buck was up here too. This has been the Year of the Buck for me, climbing three Buck Mountains in, respectively, Long Lake, North Hudson and Lake George. This has been difficult for us at the magazine. We chose appropriate maps from our files, and as it happened an Outings Guide story about Buck Mountain (Long Lake) wound up with the map of Buck Mountain (Lake George). Oh, deer. Long Lake partisans gently pointed out the mistake, as did a friend in Keene Valley who wondered if it hadn’t been done on purpose to see how many readers were paying attention. At least,…

The Adirondack Rail Trail will create new opportunities for loop bike rides. No need for a car shuttle or to go over the same ground twice. One such circuit cuts through the most remote and scenic stretch of the 34-mile rail trail. This part is now under construction and closed. However, it should reopen in October when the work is finished. We hope this story whets your appetite. I first rode this 13.8-mile loop two summers ago, before construction began. About half of it was on the rail trail. Most of the rest was on a good dirt road or old woods roads. Cars were no problem. Along the way I saw ponds, wetlands, wildflowers, butterflies, three deer, two loons and a gaggle of paddlers. I also took a swim.…

As a June heat wave scorched the Adirondacks, Lake Champlain’s deep water and a light breeze helped cool the Doré’s crew as they pulled a 450-foot-long gillnet and the handful of fish ensnared over 24 hours onto the boat’s small deck. Bernie Pientka, a fisheries biologist with the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, worked at a specialized table outfitted with weights, measures and a paring knife. Dave Gibson, the agency boat’s captain for over 30 years, readied a clipboard and data sheet, while two technicians and a graduate student untangled and sorted the fish into bins. It’s scaly, slimy, bloody and, for the fish, deadly work. After thousands of years surviving the ebbs of oceans and ice sheets, development and pollution, the last native lake trout was lifted out…

East Caroga Lake is calm when the small band of kayakers sets off, slicing through the water, pointed west. It’s a mellow Tuesday morning, but not a silent one. Laughter, conversation and friendly banter can be heard as the kayakers glide, pause to wait for stragglers or stop to rest. This fun and friendly paddle is a weekly ritual for the Ladies of the Lake. The group started paddling together 25 years ago. And while members come and go, there are some constants. The women offer camaraderie and friendship, and there are few rules other than no men allowed. For those eager to exercise and socialize together, the Ladies are warm and welcoming, happy to loan kayaks and gear to newcomers, quick to crack jokes and to share their signature…

There aren’t many rock-climbing areas on the East Coast where one needs a canoe to approach a cliff. On a cool, June weekday, Cyrus Ferri and I paddled our rented canoe for 20 minutes along the north end of Lake George to the huge slab known as Rogers Slide. We stashed the boat, traversed along the rugged shoreline, flaked our ropes and started climbing one of the most unique routes in the Adirondacks. Such is the dichotomy of Lake George. It’s famous for its raucous tourist village, its million-dollar beach, its pristine waters and the sublime scenery that prompted Thomas Jefferson to call it the Queen of American Lakes. Thousands of climbers drive right past the region to the popular climbs in Keene Valley and its vertical surrounds. Those who…

I intended to secure a primitive waterfront campsite at the West Branch of the Sacandaga River. I had volunteered to go up solo on Friday, a day earlier than the men. The first-come, first-served sites on Saturday morning would be scarce. I was hours behind my plan, feeling pressure to find the perfect site for my boyfriend, his brother and their dad to celebrate the latter’s birthday. The sun was setting as I turned onto West River Road, in the town of Wells. You have to drive 15 mph for 7 miles on the dirt road before arriving at the primitive campsites. I was not expecting to encounter massive rocks on the road the whole way. I was surprised and proud of my Honda Element’s capabilities. In addition, this area…

As daylight dwindles, nights lengthen and temperatures cool, change comes to Adirondack landscapes. Among the most pleasing developments to my eye, is the annual eruption of fall fungi. They burst out of leaf litter and moist ground and rotting logs and sometimes out of live trees. We tend to call the ones with stems and caps mushrooms and the rest simply fungi, but fungi is a term that embraces them all. They are neither animals nor plants. Fungi evolved before plants and may well have enabled the evolution of plants by using their resource-gathering networks to help green things make the transition from life in the sea to life on dry land. Partnerships between fungi and plants continue. Scientists estimate that more than 90% of land plants flourish with the…

We spend a lot of time these days talking about what divides us: angry politics, trolls on social media, family matters that outsiders want a say in. So, it is especially refreshing to discover, in our own Adirondack backyard, that 34 miles of pavement and crushed stone might bring people together. The state is building the Adirondack Rail Trail, and people are coming … and coming. Skate-boarders. Roller skaters. A woman in a motorized wheelchair and her service dog. Mothers pushing strollers. An older couple on a tandem bike. Children riding bikes ahead of their parents. Walkers. Dog walkers. Runners. And, of course, many cyclists. On a steamy day in early July, my husband Jim and I rode the first completed section of the trail, from Saranac Lake to Lake…

At Indian Lake Central School’s June graduation, relatives in the dark gymnasium watched projected baby pictures of the Class of 2024 and wiped away tears. In a short row at the back, the graduating seniors—all four of them—waited to take the stage. With such a tiny class, the ceremony was special from start to finish. Each senior selected a song for their segment of the opening slideshow. A country tune about finding fun after a long blue-collar workweek. A folk hit about childhood fears and running away to New York City. And for valedictorian Kaitlyn Canaan, a song about leaving for someplace far, like South Carolina. “I'm going to college in Charleston next year. I don't know where I plan to be after the four years, but I don't think…

My first ride in “the Plains” was 2019 after a writer’s conference in Old Forge. My bike was a mountain bike in name only—a $75 beater I’d brought to commute to the conference. Those first rides were over tame, gravel roads with forays on easy trails into Icehouse and Helldiver ponds. But something about cruising through the forest on a bike created a spark. For the past decade, I‘ve met a group of friends every summer to ride road bikes for a long weekend. In the early COVID-19 days, renting a house together was out. I proposed camping in individual tents at Limekiln Lake, renting mountain bikes and riding in the Moose River Plains. My buddies were skeptical. They were road bikers, and they were grown-ups with high-de-ductible insurance plans.…

Solitude is one of many requirements The Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan sets out the rules for management of the Adirondack Forest Preserve. The master plan balances three key requirements for management of wilderness areas. The “imprint of man’s work” should be “substantially unnoticeable.” Wilderness areas should also provide “opportunities for solitude” as well as provide for a “primitive and unconfined type of recreation” that is human-powered and unassisted by any kind of machine. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) contracted with an experienced consulting firm to bring “Visitor Use Management” (VUM), long used around the U.S. and especially at national parks, to its Forest Preserve management with two plans, one for the central High Peaks Wilderness Area in the Adirondacks, and another for Kaaterskill Falls in the Catskills.…

Norton Peak has a grand view of the northeastern Adirondacks, but not many hikers have seen it. The 2,870-foot peak sits on conservation easement lands known as the Sable Highlands. The state Department of Environmental Conservation planned to build a trail that would go up Norton and continue along a ridge to Haystack and Wolf Pond mountains, whose summits are on isolated parcels of forest preserve. The easement terms allow bushwhackers up Norton but not to continue along the ridge. Thus, those two parcels of public land remain off-limits to the public. That’s just one example of how the public is shortchanged by easement deals that unduly restrict access. Before submitting my whine list, I want to emphasize that the state’s purchase of conservation easements would be merited even if…

After declining in North America through the middle of the 20th century because of pesticide use, merlin populations began to rise in the 1970s. The first verified New York nesting occurred in Saranac Lake in 1992, and the bird has been increasing in population ever since. Merlin is one of three falcon species that nest in New York. American kestrel, the colorful one, is the smallest at 9 inches in length with a 22-inch wingspan. Merlins are slightly larger at 10-inches in length with a 24-inch wingspan, still a relatively small falcon, but much heavier and faster than a kestrel. Peregrine falcons are the largest at 16 inches in length with a 41-inch wingspan. Merlins were not confirmed breeders in the state during the first New York State Breeding Bird…