Washburn hired by Wilderness Society

Michael Washburn, the former executive director of the Residents’ Committee to Protect the Adirondacks (RCPA), plans to take a high-level job with the Wilderness Society in Washington, D.C.

As the senior director of eastern forests, Washburn will oversee the society’s conservation efforts throughout the East, from Alabama to Maine. Among other things, the organization seeks greater protection for national forests, parks, and wildlife refuges. It also works with private owners to conserve land.

Michael Washburn hiking out west.

 ”I’m pretty jazzed about it,” Washburn told the Explorer.  ”This is bigger than anything I’ve been able to do before.”

 Washburn, who grew up just south of the Adirondack Park, took over RCPA’s helm about eighteen months ago, replacing Peter Bauer, who now works at the Fund for Lake George.

 The RCPA board has voted to merge with the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks. “We thought we’d stay a lot longer,” Washburn said, “but the economy threw everybody a curveball, and the organizations responded to that effectively.”

 The memberships of both organizations are to vote on the merger this Saturday. The new group would be called Protect the Adirondacks.

 ”I fully expect that’s going to pass,” Washburn said, “and I think this is a great step forward for both. Together they can create a stronger and bigger organization.”

 Washburn, who is thirty-nine, has a doctorate in forest policy from Penn State University. He also earned master’s and bachelor’s degrees from the New York State College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He will move to the Washington area with his wife, Natanya, and their two children.

 The primary founder of the Wilderness Society was Bob Marshall, whose family had a camp on Lower Saranac Lake. Marshall fell in love with wilderness during his boyhood hikes in the Adirondacks and went on to become one of the nation’s leading advocates for conservation. Marshall died in 1939.

A favorite paddle

Lynda McIntyre paddles the Osgood River. Photo by Phil Brown.

A friend and I paddled one of my favorite canoe routes the other day. Putting in at Jones Pond, we paddled across the pond, down the outlet to Osgood Pond, across the pond, and down the Osgood River to an old rock dam. We then returned to Osgood Pond, crossed it again, and finished by padding two small ponds connected by small canals dug by hand in the nineteenth century.

Water lilies abound.

This trip is hard to beat for the variety and beauty of the scenery: grassy rivers; large ponds with mountain views; vast marshes and bog mats; charming canals bordered by pines and hemlocks, and the Japanese teahouse at White Pine Camp.

If you do the whole end-to-end trip, you’ll paddle about ten miles and take out at Church Pond near Paul Smiths. It took Lynda and I about five hours, but we took our time. Instead of shuttling cars, I left a bicycle at Church Pond and pedaled back to my car at Jones Pond. The bike shuttle took twenty minutes.

I plotted our route with a GPS watch. You can see our route here. However, note that I forgot to turn on the GPS function until we had nearly crossed Jones Pond.

Incidentally, Jones Pond Outlet and Osgood River teem with birdlife. The trip is included in Adirondack Birding by Gary Lee and John M.C. Peterson, which I published last year under the Lost Pond Press name. As Lynda and I paddled down Jones Pond Outlet, we encountered two birders from the Albany area, Tom and Erika Butler, who had come here after reading the book (which they had in their canoe). They were quite amused when I told them I was the publisher. While we chatted, Tom spotted a blue-headed vireo in a dead pine.

The Osgood River is one of the best places in the Adirondacks to find the American three-toed woodpecker, one of the rarest birds in the state. We didn’t spot any woodpeckers, but we did have fun following a great blue heron down the river. We also saw what appeared to be a large canid swimming across Osgood, perhaps a coyote.

The view from the Osgood River: Debar Mountain rises in the distance. Photo by Phil Brown.

The charms of Lows Ridge

Lows Ridge overlooks Hitchins Pond and the Bog River.

Lows Ridge may rise only four hundred fifty feet above the landscape, but it offers an awesome view of the Bog River country, with the High Peaks in the distance.

 Most people climb the ridge after paddling up the Bog and across Hitchins Pond, but it also can be reached overland via an old woods road now closed to vehicles. It starts at a gate a mile west of Horseshoe Lake and ends at the dam that impounds Lows Lake. Depending on your inclination, you can walk, run, or mountain-bike down the road.

 I jogged down the road last Sunday and then went up the new trail leading to the ridge’s overlook. (To reach the trailhead from the end of the road, bear right toward a stone ruin, and you’ll see the register.) The route is a model of modern trail design. Unlike many Adirondack trails that go straight up the mountain, this one winds up the slope at a moderate grade.

 An interesting note: The trail sign says it’s 1.1 miles to the ridge overlook. It so happens that I was trying out a GPS watch (Garmin Forerunner 405), and it put the distance at 0.7 miles-quite a difference.

 The vista from the ridge is stunning. You look down on Hitchins Pond, the Bog River, and a vast marshy landscape. Mount Morris stands out in the northeast. Beyond it are the High Peaks.

The trail ends at this plaque.

The trail ends at a plaque dedicated to A. Augustus Low, who died in 1963. Low’s father acquired forty thousand acres in these parts in the 1890s and built a woodland empire based on logging, maple sugar, preserves, and bottled water (from “Virgin Forest Springs”). If you climb Lows Ridge, be sure to take the brief walk to Hitchins Pond before or afterward. A kiosk on the way includes information about the Low enterprise.

 After your hike, you can cool off with a swim in Horseshoe Lake.

Incidentally, Lows Ridge is part of the Lows Lake Primitive Area, but the Adirondack Park Agency proposes to add it and a lot of the surrounding land to the Five Ponds Wilderness. Opponents of the land reclassification note that the region still bears the obvious stamp of man in the form of roads, dams, and impounded waters.

Directions: From Tupper Lake, drive south on NY 30. After crossing the Raquette River, continue 6.9 miles to NY 421. Turn right and drive 7.6 miles past Horseshoe Lake to a gated dirt road on the left. If coming from the south, NY 421 is on the left about 13 miles from Long Lake. Note: NY 421 turns to dirt after 5.8 miles and makes a hairpin turn as it crosses railroad tracks. The gate is 0.9 miles past the tracks.

The woods road passes several wetlands on the way to Lows Ridge. All photos by Phil Brown.