Table of contents for July/August 2022 in Adirondack Explorer

Attack of the caterpillars, the sequel BY PAUL POST Miles and Kelly Moody’s Clinton County apple orchard was stripped bare of leaves and several 90-foot-tall pines were killed and had to be cut down at considerable expense. Their loss is one small example of the widespread devastation caused by last year’s massive spongy moth infestation that’s plaguing northern New York again as tiny caterpillars have emerged to devour foliage. The moths attack oaks, the voracious insects’ preferred food choice, but they’ll eat both deciduous and coniferous trees while invading forests and residential settings alike. “At one point we could look out our window and the driveway looked like it was moving because there were so many caterpillars,” said Miles Moody of rural Morrisonville. “They’re perforating leaves again. It’s like a…

Yes on new lift, no on Whiteface trail widening Concerning the proposed changes to Whiteface Mountain (“Should ORDA reshape Whiteface?” May/June), the proposed new lift from Bear Den to the Legacy Lodge is a good idea. The widening of the trails is a bad idea. As a skier at Whiteface for the past 25 years, I find the trails are too wide. Often, I have rushed to Whiteface after a deep snowfall, anticipating a great powder day, only to reach the upper slopes to find bare hardpack and ice — the powder has been blown off the wide slopes into the surrounding forest. Narrower trails protect snow from the wind, allow for better visibility in poor light and precipitation, and, in general, make for a more enjoyable skiing experience. As…

The high school students take off their shoes and socks and step into the water of the North Branch of the Grasse River. They can’t see the bottom as the water is golden brown, steeped in tannins from bogs upstream. Crossing the North Branch is the first challenge of their AP Environmental Science final exam. All year they’ve been studying at Canton High School with their teacher, Tom Van de Water. They’ve been on field trips, but never one like this. On this trip they must make all the decisions—how to get across the North Branch of the Grasse River, how to bushwhack to the Main Branch of the Grasse, how to set up a low impact campsite. Most of the students have never been back-packing. Some of them wear…

Scores of four-footed families dating back almost a century live throughout the North Country woods. They leave paw prints on snowmobile trails and hiking paths, hide in the thickets and hunt white-tailed deer. You may never see them, but you can hear these Eastern coyotes yelping like a kennel. “You could go out into their territories and howl, and they’d howl back,” said wildlife biologist Gary Brundige, who spent several years monitoring them around Newcomb. His research with the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry led him to an Adirondack family of seven, four of which he collared with radios after trapping and sedating them. They deserve their reputation of being wily. The traps never worked a second time. “They’d dig them up, take a dump on them,” he…

CHAD E. SMITH Age: 38 Birthplace/Hometown: Minerva. Residence: Warrensburg. Occupation: Canoe company operator, boat builder and composite technician (see page 16). Background/Accomplishments: Since 2012, operated Adirondack Canoe Co. initially with partner Simon Gardner, both former employees of Hornbeck Boats who wanted to try their own company. Became sole operator in 2020 and partnered with Essex Industries owned by Mountain Lake Services in 2021, offering manufacturing support jobs to people with developmental disabilities. Started learning to build composite canoes in high school under guidance of Pete Hornbeck and became the production manager and general manager. Also worked for Adirondack Design Studio on composites shipped for studio projects including Star Wars, Shrek, Mario Kart and Toy Story and for theme parks around the world. Favorite view: Mount Adams and the fire tower.…

In June of 1966, Jim Goodwin cut a new trail up Pyramid to Gothics. Following behind, Jim’s 16-year-old son, nicknamed Tony, tossed aside downed limbs and clipped live ones. After days of hard work, Tony snipped the last of the balsam near Pyramid’s 4,515-foot summit and emerged to a view he now calls the best in the Adirondacks. He looked out at the snow and open rock on the slides of the Great Range in amazement. “If I had to pick one moment when I just realized how much I appreciated my surroundings and also the work that I was doing, (it) was (when) my father and I cut the Pyramid-Gothics Trail,” Tony said recently. That connection with the landscape he felt on Pyramid stands out, but Tony emphasized it…

The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, core to Mohawk tradition, calls on adherents to “live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things.” The address sends greetings and thanks to the fish that purify water and provide food, to the plants that sustain life, to medicinal herbs, to animals that “have many things to teach us,” to the sun, to the moon, to the winds that bring seasonal change and to the trees that “provide us with shelter and shade, fruit [and] beauty.” The right of water to flow unabated and of fish to live freely is so embedded in the Indigenous culture that it can be contradictory to suggest such rights must be formalized. “We revere [Mother Earth] as the ultimate mother and what right do we even…

Hiking up Blue Mountain and Goodnow Mountain on the same day seemed like a good idea on paper. They were located about 12 miles apart in the central Adirondack Park. Both hikes measured a little over two miles from trailhead to summit. Blue, 3,750 feet, and Goodnow, 2,664 feet, didn’t sound like much as my husband Jack, niece Hannah and her husband Adam contemplated our double-summit day. What’s more, historic fire towers crowned both. However, mountain stats and reality in the woods can vary greatly. By random choice, we headed to Goodnow first. Named for Sylvester Goodnow, a homesteader who settled at the base of the mountain in the 1820s, the mountain is one of those rare hikes in the Adirondack Park that is not state-maintained, though the state built…

One of the Adirondacks’ most sought-after boreal species, by visiting birders, is also one of the most entertaining to observe. With their loud “quick, three beers” song, the olive-sided flycatcher won’t elude your ear. Their habit of hunting insect prey from exposed perches of tall, dead “snags,” makes them easy to spot. No searching through the leaves to see this species! The elegant-looking olive-sided fly-catcher with its formal vest breeds in wet areas with dead standing trees where they can be found sallying—flying out and back—for insects, like the motion of a yo-yo. In the Adirondacks, their habitat can be found along the edges of bogs, along boggy/marshy areas by rivers, brooks, streams, lakes, and ponds, and in beaver-created wetlands. Although they are easy to hear and see, getting close…

Adirondack canoe aficionados, who collect boats as ants collect crumbs, at some point in their paddling adventures may have been exposed to beautiful, handcrafted components made at an Adirondack plant they have probably never heard of. Lacking an iconic name like Hornbeck, Wenonah or Old Town, Essex Industries operates anonymously amid the rusting ironworks of Mineville not far from the shores of Lake Champlain. Within the walls of a former Catholic school building, Essex has for decades churned out the good, old-fashioned wooden stuff—seats, yokes, gunwales—that accent the space-age materials that go into modern canoe hulls. Its parent company, Mountain Lake Services, is the largest employer in Essex County, and Essex Industries is among the county’s largest manufacturers, with annual sales of canoe parts exceeding $1 million. (Essex Industries also…

As Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett sang, it’s five o’clock somewhere, and on a Friday afternoon in mid-September, that somewhere was Hardy Road in Wilmington, where local mountain bikers drifted into the Beaver Brook Tract Trail trailhead parking after a long week at work, or whatever. Tires were inflated, helmets secured, pleasantries exchanged and cold cans of beer were nestled into fanny packs with care. It was “Hardy Hour.” It is a casual affair to be sure, with no dress codes or guest lists. All are welcome, come when you can, minimal experience required. Social climbing, however, is mandatory—760 feet of it, to be exact, as the trail known as All In leaves the valley floor and darts up the northern shoulder of Winch Mountain. But the payoff on this…