Free ADK guidebook supplement

The Adirondack Mountain Club has issued a supplement to its Adirondack Trails: Eastern Region guidebook that can be downloaded for free from its Web site.

The supplement describes twelve additional hiking trails in ten locations within the region, which includes Lake George and the Champlain Valley.

Perhaps the most exciting addition is the 2.6-mile trail connecting the scenic summits of Thomas and Cat mountains on the west side of Lake George. Both mountains belong to a preserve owned by the Lake George Land Conservancy.

Other additions include the new trail up Poke-o-Moonshine Mountain and trails at five Wildlife Management Areas, Noblewood Park in Willsboro, and the Crown Point State Historic Site. The supplement also describes 123-acre Schuyler Island, which lies about a half-mile off Lake Champlain’s western shore. It can be reached by a 1.5-mile paddle.

 Both the Eastern Region guidebook and the supplement were written by David Thomas-Train.

 Hard copies of the supplement may be purchased for $1 at ADK’s facilities in Lake George and at Heart Lake. The full guidebook sells for $19.95.

Revisiting Lyon Mountain

The view of Chazy Lake from the ledges on Lyon Mountain. Photo by Phil Brown.

Last weekend I climbed Lyon Mountain, the 3,830-foot peak west of Dannemora. What a great view! I had been up it a few times before but not since the Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) rerouted the trail.

The old trail was an old jeep road that shot straight up the mountain. It was a rubbly mess. The new trail switchbacks up the eastern face, so gradually that at times you hardly realize you’re climbing. At 3.3 miles, the rerouted trail is about a mile longer than the old one, but it’s much easier on the knees. 

In fact, the trail is so user-friendly that a strong trail runner could probably jog up it. I didn’t try that, but I did jog on the way down, and it was exhilarating.

Another change is that the fire tower on the summit has been refurbished. From the cab, you can see in all directions: the High Peaks to the southwest, the Champlain Valley and the Green Mountains to the east, and the St. Lawrence River to the north. Chazy Lake is spread out at the foot of the mountain. The view also now encompasses the huge wind farms just outside the Adirondack Park.

Kudos to ADK for redesigning the trail. And to the Adirondack Nature Conservancy, which bought Lyon Mountain from Domtar Industries in 2004 and sold it to the state in 2008.

Word must be getting out about Lyon (our publisher, Tom Woodman,wrote the new trail in the January issue of the Explorer), because there were more than 20 cars at the trailhead when I began my climb on Saturday afternoon–many of them from Quebec.

Directions: From the village of Dannemora, drive 9.3 miles east on NY 374 to Chazy Lake Road. Turn left and go 1.7 miles to a dirt road on the right. Follow the dirt road nearly a mile to its end. If coming from the south, turn onto Chazy Lake Road from NY 3 in the hamlet of Saranac and follow it 9.6 miles to the dirt road. (Chazy Lake road takes a left turn at 0.5 mles and a right turn at 2.4 miles, the latter at a four-way intersection.)

Backcountry skiers wanted

If you like to ski the backcountry, the Adirondack Ski Touring Council wants your help maintaining trails for skiing.

The council will be trimming brush and branches on the Van Hoevenberg Trail to Mount Marcy this Saturday. Volunteers are to meet at the High Peaks Information Center at Heart Lake at 8 a.m. Tools will be available, but if you have either a pair of long-handled clippers or a pole saw, bring it.

Next Saturday, ASTC volunteers will perform similar duty on the Wright Peak Ski Trail. Meet at the same time, same place.

Plans also are in the works for trimming along the Connery Pond Trail on Oct. 31 and Old Mountain Road on Nov. 7.

If you have questions, call Tony Goodwin at 518-523-1365.

Paterson urged to reject Lows proposal

The executive director of the Adirondack Park Local Government Review Board has written Gov. David Paterson to urge him to reject a proposal to classify part of Lows Lake as Wilderness.

At its September meeting, the Adirondack Park Agency voted 6-4 to classify the western part of Lows Lake as Wilderness and the eastern part as Primitive. Adjacent lands also were placed in one or the other of the two categories. To take effect, the proposal must be approved by the governor.

Fred Monroe, director of the Local Government Review Board, argues in a letter to Paterson that the proposal sets several “bad precedents.” He notes that it would be the first time the APA classified as Wilderness a water body with private shoreline.

“If the APA is allowed to classify waters as Wilderness, they will be authorized to vastly expand their jurisdiction over private lands without legislative action,” he says in the letter, dated Sept. 22.

Monroe also argues that Chris Walsh, the state Commerce Department’s designee on the APA board, should not have been allowed to vote, because Walsh had already left the department to work in the governor’s office. Without Walsh’s vote, the proposal would have been defeated, Monroe says, because it needed six votes to pass.

In an e-mail to the Explorer, the APA says the issues raised by Monroe were discussed at the September meeting before the vote. The agency contends that Lows Lake is unusual in that the state owns the lakebed and so that the vote does not represent a precedent for other lakes.  The agency also says Walsh continued to be the formal designee from the Commerce Department at the meeting.

Click the links below to read Monroe’s letter and the APA response.

monroe-letter

apa-response2

Finch, Pruyn in art

The history of Finch, Pruyn & Co. and its paper mill in Glens Falls is intertwined with the history of the Adirondack Park. Two years ago, the company sold all its lands, more than 160,000 acres, to the Nature Conservancy and its mill to Atlas Holdings. Much of the land is expected to added to the state Forest Preserve.

The Hyde Collection of Glens Falls will soon be exhibiting a piece of Finch, Pruyn’s history. The museum just announced that it received an oil painting by Douglass Crockwell titled Paper Workers, Finch Pruyn & Co. The artist, who died in 1968, was the first director of the Hyde Collection and an illustrator for such magazines as Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look, and Esquire.

“This painting is a remarkable example of his endeavor as a fine artist–long before he became the famous illustrator of the 1940s and ’50s,” said Erin B. Coe, the Hyde’s chief curator. Done during the Depression, the oil painting shows two men at work, closely watched by a supervisor.

The painting was donated to the museum by Mr. and Mrs. Samuel P. Hoopes of Bolton Landing. It will be sent to the Williamstown Art Conservation Center for cleaning and other treatment and before it’s put on display.

It’s uncertain when the painting will be returned to the museum,but Coe’s best guess is that it will be eight months to a year.

Harbingers of fall

American mountain-ash berries. Photo by Phil Brown.

We should be hitting peak foliage soon. Last weekend, I climbed the slide on East Dix and saw lots of color, mostly yellow, in the forest. But what really caught my eye were the succulent red berries of the American mountain ash.

 E.H. Ketchledge, in Forest and Trees of the Adirondack High Peaks Region, calls the mountain ash “one of our loveliest trees.” In June, it blossoms with clusters of white flowers. In the fall, the flowers transform into berries (actually, they are pomes, a false fruit) that resemble cranberries. The fruit can last into winter.

 ”A stalk of mountain-ash ‘berries’ lightly coated with fresh snow in October seems to mark the end of each growing season on the higher slopes,” Ketchledge writes.

 He also writes: “The fleshy seed is heavy, and it can travel great distances only via the stomach of the Canada jay or a few other birds.”

As its name suggests, the mountain ash grows on our upper slopes, along with balsam fir, red spruce, and paper birch.  But the name is misleading in one sense: this tree is not a true ash. Its narrow leaves, arranged in pairs along the branch, resemble those found on true ash trees, thus accounting for the common name.

 As a story in the next Explorer will point out, an invasive insect, the emerald ash borer, threatens to destroy all the ash trees in the country. (Less than 5 percent of the trees in the Adirondacks are ash.) Fortunately, the insect does not attack mountain ash.

Cliffs at the top of the East Dix slide. Photo by Phil Brown.

Fran Betters

Many of you may have heard about the recent death of Fran Betters, the legendary fly fisherman from Wilmington. He is usually associated with his beloved Ausable River, but he fished many other places in the Adirondacks as well. Years ago, for example, he wrote a nice piece for the Explorer about the fishing opportunities on the North Branch of the Saranac. Fran created the Haystack fly, used to catch trout in turbulent rivers like the Ausable. His wife says he could tie a complicated fly in just three minutes. Those of you who would like to know more about Fran can read his obituary in The New York Times, which was published this week.

Bull moose on Upper Ausable

A friend of the Explorer just forwarded these photographs of a bull moose taken on Upper Ausable Lake.  He also forwarded an e-mail from Ron Hall, who described the recent encounter. Hall was rowing a guide boat on the lake–on “a perfect morning, cool, mist”–when he heard clunking and splashing sounds near a boathouse. “Suddenly a large bull moose stepped out from the overhanging cedar branches. I spun the guide boat around … face to snout … with Bullwinkle. About 20′ away.” Adam Whitney took the photos.

Moose vanished from the Adirondacks in the nineteenth century, but they have made a strong comeback over the past three decades. The state Department of Environmental Conservation estimates that more than five hundred moose now reside in the Adirondack Park.

As the population has grown, sightings have become more common. My son, Nathan, and I spotted a bull moose on Route 30 north of Long Lake last year. Nevertheless, it’s still unusual to see a moose and even more unusual to get it to pose for pictures.

By the way, please don’t go looking for this moose. The Upper Ausable Lake is private, part of the Adirondack Mountain Reserve. The public is allowed on some foot trails in the reserve.

ATV abuse unabated

ATV damage on the trail to Gull Lake. Photo by Phil Brown.

The first time I hiked to Gull Lake in the Black River Wild Forest I was appalled at the damage to the trails caused by the illegal use of all-terrain vehicles. That was more than ten years ago. This past Sunday, I went for a morning run on these same trails and discovered that nothing has changed.

The photo above shows just one of numerous mud swales I encountered on my eight-mile jog. Not only do the machines create giant mud puddles, but they also double, triple, or quadruple the width of the trail in places.

It’s a shame, because these trails in the western Adirondacks are otherwise a pleasure to walk or jog. They’re mostly flat and follow old roads, ideal for people with kids or people who aren’t interested in climbing mountains.

Whatever the state is doing to protect the Forest Preserve from ATV trespass, it isn’t working in the Black River Wild Forest.

Lows Lake proposal OK’d

The Adirondack Park Agency voted 6-4 Friday to classify most of Lows Lake and adjacent lands as Wilderness, despite objections from local politicians.

Under the proposal, which requires approval from the governor, Lows Lake west of Frying Pan Island will be designated Wilderness. The rest of the lake, which is much narrower, will be designated Primitive.

Lows Ridge and Hitchins Pond will be part of the Eastern Five Ponds Access Primitive Area.

The two classifications do not differ much in their management guidelines. Both classifications forbid motorized use by the general public. In this case, the Primitive classification reflects a recognition that the eastern part of Lows Lake abuts private lands, access roads, and a large concrete dam, making it less wild.

The Boy Scouts, the major landowner on the eastern part of the lake, will continue to be allowed to to use motorboats.  They can take their boats on any part of the lake, but they usually stick to the eastern part, shuttling Scouts to and from islands.

Although the full APA board voted Friday, it debated the proposal on Thursday afternoon. One of the biggest objections was that the APA would set a precedent by giving a state-land classification to a lake. In the past, it has classified only land.

APA Chairman Curt Stiles argued that the novelty of the proposal was no reason to vote against it.  “If government never sets a precedent, it never moves forward,” he said.

But Fred Monroe of the Local Government Review Board, which has a non-voting seat on the APA, fears that it could lead to motorized-use restrictions on other lakes that are partially bordered by private land.”It’s not just that it establishes a precedent; it’s that it establishes a bad precedent,” he said.

Environmental activists also differed on the matter.

Neil Woodworth, executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club, favored the classification of the lake. Since the lakebed is owned by the state, he said, it is part of the Forest Preserve and should be treated as such. Dan Plumley of Protect the Adirondacks took a similar position.

But Brian Houseal, executive director of the Adirondack Council, argued that it was premature to classify the lake as Wilderness (even in part), given the adjoining private lands. He also noted that Lows Lake is created by a large dam.

“This is what upsets local governments,” Houseal said. “They see an artificial lake classified as Wilderness.”

Woodworth said he doubted the precedent would affect many other lakes. In many cases, if not most, the state is not the sole owner of the lakebed. He suspects the main reason local governments strenuously opposed the lake’s classification is that it will make it harder for the APA to reconsider its decision to ban floatplanes from landing.

Earlier this year, the agency voted to ban floatplanes from Lows Lake after 2011. The Wilderness and Primitive classifications reinforce this decision.

The proposal approved Friday was a revision of an earlier proposal to designate 12,700 acres, including the bed of Lows Lake, as Wilderness. The revised proposal, besides splitting the lake between Wilderness and Primitive, creates an Eastern Five Ponds Access Primitive Area that encompasses the region around the Lows Lake dam, including Hitchins Pond and the access roads. As its name indicates, this area will be classified as Primitive. The remaining land will be classified as Wilderness.

Woodworth said the vote will protect two wilderness canoe routes that include Lows Lake. One starts on the Bog River and ends on the Oswegatchie River. The other is a multiday loop that includes Little Tupper Lake, Lake Lila, Lows Lake, the Bog River, and Round Lake.

The proposal is expected to be approved by Gov. David Paterson. All three state officials on the APA voted for it. Joining them were Curt Stiles, Dick Booth, and James Townsend. Dissenting were Frank Mezzano, Leilani Ulrich, Arthur Lussi, and William Thomas–all residents of the Park. Stiles is the only other full-time Park resident on the board.