Table of contents for May/June 2021 in Adirondack Explorer

Tupper Lakers seek outdoor recreational makeover By James M. Odato Tupper Lake residents are working on a plan to become an outdoor-recreation mecca. Last year a dozen villagers laid maps over folding tables and marked new paths for cross-country skiing, mountain biking, snowmobiling, golfing and downhill expansion. “We want Tupper Lake to be Trail Town USA,” said Mark Moeller, a local banker. The group wants government officials to embrace a series of projects, with acquiring Big Tupper at the top of the list. The alpine ski center has been dormant for two decades and could be on the auction block later this year. Called the Tupper Lake Business Group, Moeller and a few collaborators drew up a plan for $2.3 million in town spending. That spurred a letter from Tupper…

The loon was either truly loony, primping with great fanfare, or just having fun. Only 20 yards from the bow of our canoe, it waved a wing, scratched its “armpit,” and rolled onto its back with a whoosh. Its black, webbed feet danced a jig, then the spirited bird rolled upright again, glancing at us with its striking red eyes. It poked its head under the water, then sent a delicate fountain into the air as it lifted its dark beak skyward. My husband, Jack, and I giggled at the bird’s animated antics, then dug our paddles into the crystalline water of Little Clear Pond in the St. Regis Canoe Area. The only designated canoe area in New York and the largest wilderness canoe area in the Northeast, its eastern…

Some Adirondack Park Agency board members touted the subdivision planned for a little Fulton County lake as a model for developing homes in harmony with natural resources. The plan that they approved for homes around Woodward Lake exceeds the standards that a proposed state law might impose in the Adirondacks, agency staffers said. The man who wrote the book on conservation design doesn’t see it that way. Randall Arendt is an expert on conservation design, and has consulted for the APA in the past. After looking at the plots ringing Woodward Lake in the plans of this newly approved project, Arendt told the Adirondack Explorer that it looks like a conventional subdivision—not one built to conserve its waters and other unique assets. The plan could have better protected the lake…

The Adirondack Park Agency Act was a bold plan born with considerable thought, vision, controversy and hope for the future. Now we are 50 years into that future. Most supporters and critics would likely agree that the main purpose of the act, to “insure optimum overall conservation, protection, preservation, development, and use” of the park’s public and private resources and open space character, was achieved. But the degree of success attributed to the act depends on each person’s perspective, hopes and aspirations for the park. With the lessons learned in this grand historical experiment, and some experience, wisdom, and insight, how do we refocus on the promise and vision of the APA Act? Some reappraisals have been suggested by Adirondack advocates and supporters. Leadership: The position of chair of the…

Removing Debar Pond Lodge removes Adirondack history There’s a curious mind-set at work in the Adirondacks these days. Advocates of “forever wild” impose their limited view of the park by engaging in a kind of clear-cutting—the clear-cutting of history. The tiny town of Duane played an important role in the development of the northern Adirondacks. Today it has very little evidence of that history, with the exception of the magnificent lodge on Debar Pond. The move to demolish this historic structure is a kind of theft, and the thing that’s being stolen can never be replaced. There’s also a strong economic argument for preservation. “Forever wild” areas serve a small percentage of our population, those who have the youth and stamina to traverse the terrain. Historic sites draw more diverse…

It was July, and I was looking for an interesting but easily accessible paddling route in the northern Adirondacks—a place where I could get away from the summer crowds. So I picked a loop that I had previously paddled on the St. Regis lakes in Paul Smiths. The trip starts on Keese Mills Road at the trailhead for St. Regis Mountain. From the lot, there is a carry to the North Bay of Upper St. Regis Lake. You can then paddle to Spitfire Lake, Lower St. Regis Lake, and then take a channel back to your vehicle. The shores of Upper St. Regis and Spitfire are more developed than those surrounded by state land or in the neighboring St. Regis Canoe Area, but this trip offers a nice mix of…

Fifty years ago, the last Department of Environmental Conservation truck rolled along the miles of wide gravel road from Coreys to the old ranger station at Shattuck Clearing. Now balsam and beech trees crowd into the roadbed and toads and red efts live in its mossy ecosystem. In 1972, the State Land Master Plan designated the Western High Peaks as wilderness, land “without significant improvement or permanent human habitation.” If it were still legal, this area north of the Cold River would be a welcome place for a 21st century Adirondack hermit, someone who would continue the tradition that Noah John Rondeau began in 1929. These days human voices rarely disturb the quiet on the ridge above the Cold River where Rondeau made his home for 20 years. At the…

A collection of photographs made between 1885 and 1887 and recently made available to the public through the digital archive at Union College capture a moment of transition in the Adirondacks. The photographer was the Rev. Osmond D. Putnam (1861-1926) who owned a camera that produced 5-by-8 gelatin glass plate negatives. Raised in a wealthy family at the base of Crane Mountain in Johnsburg, Putnam traveled by foot or stagecoach around Warren and Essex counties when he was on break from Houghton Wesleyan Seminary. Cameras were not yet common in typical households in the 1880s, especially in those of the poorer homesteads Putnam visited. His customers might have their picture made once in their lifetimes, if at all, during a trip to Glens Falls. For Putnam, they dressed in their…

The first time I heard an American bittern call, I thought I had stumbled upon a gigantic, high-volume sump pump. Then the bird flushed from the phragmites to the left of me, actually swatting my face with the edge of one of its wings. The large, brown bittern with prominent stripes down its chest and belly blended perfectly with the phragmites, and although its insanely loud call almost knocked me off the boardwalk, I didn’t see it until it flew up 4 feet from where I stood. The bittern’s call sounds something like pump-er-lunk, or dunk-a-do, and it can be startlingly loud if you’re close to the bird. They call mostly in the morning, and when they copulate, for just under 15 seconds, the male makes a continuous shu-peep sound.…

At times, I think I’ve seen everything the Adirondack beaver can throw at me. Then the grandest and most enterprising of our rodents astounds and confounds me once again. During the COVID-haunted summer of 2020, I was leading almost daily nature hikes for guests of Lake Placid hotels and Airbnbs. My favorite trail, which shall remain nameless because it has been a bit too busy for my quiet-loving taste the past 12 months, begins by following a classic mountain brook upstream into the woods. I loved to show people the flowing water and enthused about the relaxing and health-promoting benefits of listening to its babble. Today, the brook babbles no more. In a matter of days, beavers completed work on two dams: an upper barrier that the clever animals completed…

Long after wild salmon and lake trout disappeared from Lake Champlain, government officials around the lake began to dump hundreds of thousands of fish into the lake each year. Most died naturally. Others were caught by anglers. Few, if any, reproduced. If there were going to be trout or salmon, it seemed, they were going to come from one of the government-run hatcheries near the lake in Vermont or New York. Now, though, nature seems to be taking over, at least a bit. In 2015, Ellen Marsden, a researcher from the University of Vermont, went out to count how many trout in the lake were hatchery-bred, and how many were born wild in the lake. Past samples showed all the trout had clipped fins, the sign they were reared by…

On June 5, 1971, two days before the New York State Assembly passed the Adirondack Park Agency Act, a group of environmental activists ran into a group of developers in a hall outside the Assembly chamber. “We all came together in a head-on collision,” remembered Abbie Verner. “Everyone started bellowing, and at one point I almost hit Red Plumadore over the head with my purse.” Abbie was with her husband, Bill Verner, an activist and museum curator. Bill worked for Harold Hochschild, the chairman of the commission that had recommended strict regulations limiting development inside the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park. Their posse included fellow activists Paul Schaefer, David Newhouse and Almy Coggeshall, who had been working toward this goal for decades. Abbie Verner’s opponent, Hayward “Red” Plumadore, was focused on the…

To Mike Hopmeier, it felt like an old-time country barn raising. Hopmeier is president of a northern Virginia counterterrorism consulting firm who, in the Adirondacks, turned a Cold War thermonuclear missile site into a research laboratory. Not surprisingly, Hopmeier needed bandwidth, and lots of it. But when Spectrum checked out his location on a lonely road south of the mountain called Poke-O-Moonshine, the company gave him an estimate of $50,000 to a lay a half-mile of fiber to his lab. Hopmeier figured there had to be a better way. On his road were a handful of other homes and businesses, populated with people of varying skills and one common need: connection to high-speed internet. So for about a fifth of the money Spectrum wanted, Hopmeier bought a used Vermeer trencher,…

YES Julia Goren Yes, now is the time for Adirondack Mountain Reserve and the state to be testing a hiker parking reservation system. The High Peaks and heavily visited areas in the park are at a crisis point. Visitor numbers are breaking records each year, with the peak-hiking season lasting longer than ever. Crowds keep coming, despite the pandemic and travel restrictions. Visitor safety, natural resources and the wilderness experience are negatively impacted. The harm to water quality, trails, wildlife and opportunities for solitude is well documented. The science and experts are clear. The negative impact of overuse is not debatable. The recently released report by the Department of Environmental Conservation’s High Peaks Advisory Group (HPAG) calls for a three-year pilot program to test permits as a strategy for managing…

The Adirondack Park’s hemlock trees are at risk following the second known infestation of the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid last year. The aphid-like bug was originally spotted on Prospect Mountain in Lake George in 2017. Last year, the woolly adelgid was found again, this time on the eastern shores of Lake George on more than 250 acres. The state Department of Environmental Conservation, the Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program and their partners are looking for help from the public to spot these tiny insects. The woolly adelgid has two typical identifying stages. One is where the adelgid develops a white wool ovisac on the underside of a hemlock branch at the very base of hemlock needles. In their adult stage during the warmer months, the insects look like a poppy…