Sierra Club on Shingle Shanty

Those of you who have been following the saga of Shingle Shanty Brook may be interested in an article that appears in the latest newsletter of the Sierra Club’s Atlantic chapter, written by Charles Morrison, the former director of natural resources at the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Morrison and two other Sierra Club members have asked DEC to force a private landowner to remove a cable strung across the brook to keep out paddlers. The club contends the public has a right to paddle the waterway. DEC says it is looking into the matter.

In the article, Morrison describes Shingle Shanty Brook as “a critical link” in the canoe trip from Little Tupper Lake and Lake Lila. The blockage of the waterway, he says, “forces paddlers to make a one-mile carry over a very rough trail in the Adirondack Forest Preserve.”

You can read the entire newsletter (which goes to about 35,000 members) by clicking here. The article in question appears on Page 8.

You can read the account of my paddle along the disputed waterway here.

Shingle Shanty decision a ways off

Don’t expect the state Department of Environmental Conservation to reach a quick decision on the Sierra Club’s request to force landowners to remove a steel cable that stretches across Shingle Shanty Brook.

In a recent letter to the club, DEC Regional Director Betsy Lowe says the department plans to provide “a comprehensive response” to the request. “As you can imagine, this will take some time given the careful consideration required by the Department’s technical and legal staff, possible coordination with the State Office of the Attorney General, and the need to balance a variety of demands with limited resources,” she wrote on November 4.

The Sierra Club contends that the public has a common-law right to paddle through a corner of a large tract of private land owned by the Friends of Thayer Lake, which is affiliated with the Brandreth Park Association. The association owns the recreational rights to the land and has posted no-trespassing signs to deter paddlers from using the waterways in question.

The club’s request was sparked in part by an article that appeared in the July/August issue of the Adirondack Explorer. In it, I described my two-day trip from Little Tupper Lake to Lake Lila. At one stage, I paddled on three connected waterways owned by the Friends of Thayer Lake: Mud Pond, the pond’s outlet, and a stretch of Shingle Shanty Brook. This enabled me to avoid a mile-long portage.

The Brandreth Park Association contends that the public doesn’t have the right to paddle these waterways. Since my article appeared, the owners have strung a rope across Mud Pond, put up additional no-trespassing signs, and installed two motion-sensitive cameras.

The Sierra Club contends that the chain, rope, and signs are an illegal blockage of a public canoe route.

Lowe’s letter was addressed to Roger Gray and John Nemjo, the co-chairmen of the club’s Adirondack Committee, and Charles Morrison, who is heading the committee’s public-navigation-rights project.

Click here for an earlier post that contains links to letters to DEC from the Sierra Club and Brandreth Park Association.

Click the link below for a PDF of Betsy Lowe’s reply to the club.

Shingle Shanty letter

Proposed Forest Preserve addition

The land shaded in pink would be added to state holdings. Courtesy of DEC.

In a post yesterday, I reported that Heartland Forestland Fund would donate 2,661 acres to the state under a plan to modify a conservation-easement agreement in order to allow hunting camps to remain on timberlands in the northern Adirondacks. I now have a map of the lands in question, shown above.

Most of the land (2,146 acres) lies within the Adirondack Park and will be added to the Deer River Primitive Area, which is part of the Adirondack Forest Preserve. The remainder (515 acres) lies just north of the Park and includes three quarters of a mile of river corridor along the Deer. Since it is outside the Park, this parcel would become part of the Deer River State Forest.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation says both parcels contain ecologically valuable wetlands. The larger parcel also contains frontage on Cole Hill Road, which can be used for access.

Most of the Deer River inside the Park and beyond is canoeable. In Adirondack Canoe Waters: North Flow, Paul Jamieson writes that the biggest attraction for the cruising canoeist is an eight-mile level known as Deer River Meadows, which overlaps the Blue Line. The 515-acre parcel contains part of this stretch.

In an earlier post, I wrote about canoeing the Deer River Flow. A longer story on this trip will appear in a future issue of the Adirondack Explorer. I’m looking forward to paddling the river proper next year.

Canoeing the Deer River Flow

Ben Blanchard explores an arm of Deer River Flow.

I had been wanting to paddle the Deer River Flow for some time, so when my friend, Phil Blanchard, came with his family to the Adirondacks for vacation, I suggested we take a trip there. Unfortunately, Phil got ill on the morning of our scheduled outing, so his son, Ben, and I did the trip alone.

Ben, who is twelve, was an enthusiastic companion. As we headed down the flow, we had to fight a moderate wind. I feared this might be difficult for Ben.

“Too bad about the wind,” I remarked.

“That’s OK. It makes it more fun,” Ben replied.

“How so?”

“The more you work, the more fun it is,” he said.

“I’ve never heard that theory,” I confessed.

“Because once the trip is done, you feel more satisfaction because you know worked more and you earned it more,” he said.

And you know what? The kid is right.

We paddled nine miles in all. We put in along Cold Brook Road on the south end of the flow, canoed to the large dam at the north end, then took the flow’s riverine east fork to Horseshoe Lake. You can read all about our adventure in a future issue of the Explorer.

Canoeing the Lower Bog

Martha near the put-in for the Lower Bog

 

Most people who canoe the Bog River start at the Lower Dam and paddle upstream to Hitchins Pond. From there, they can carry around the Upper Dam to enter Lows Lake. But there is another flatwater trip on the Bog that doesn’t see as much traffic.

 

Last Friday, my daughter, Martha, and I were looking for a short trip as the weather forecast called for rain. We launched our canoes near the Bog River Falls (just above where the river flows into Tupper Lake) and paddled upstream for about one and three quarters miles to the confluence of the Bog and Round Lake Outlet. Rapids on both rivers prevent paddling farther.

The iron ring.

About a half-mile above the falls,we passed under an old bridge. Just around the next bend we passed a solitary boulder in the middle of the river. Bolted to the upstream side of the boulder is an iron ring, evidently an artifact from the logging days. I am wondering if anybody knows the story behind this ring. Or if any would care to speculate. If so, please leave a comment.

After your adventure on the Lower Bog, you can cool off with a dip in the natural pool near Bog River Falls.

Paddling scenic Fall Stream

Paddling the weedy end of Fall Lake. Photo by Phil Brown.

A few years ago, the Explorer published a story by Mark Bowie about a canoe trip on Fall Stream, a tributary of Piseco Lake. Mark did the trip with some volunteers from the Adirondack Mountain Club who were investigating the possibility of adding Fall Stream to the state’s Wild, Scenic, and Recreational Rivers System.

Mark concluded that all or most of Fall Stream should be classified as Scenic. After paddling the river to Fall Lake and Vly Lake last weekend, I heartily agree.

Most of the river lies within the state Forest Preserve, but the put-in and some of the land upstream are owned by the Irondequoit Club. You paddle upstream to Fall Lake and then Vly Lake, winding through beautiful marshes decorated with pickerelweed, cardinal flower, turtlehead, and other flowers. We saw lots of ducks and a few great blue herons.

I can think of three reasons for adding the stream to the Wild, Scenic, and Recreational Rivers System:

1. To give this lovely stream the cachet it deserves.

2. To provide some extra protection against development.

3. To give the state more reason to ban motors from at least part of the stream.

The last would be controversial. Despite beaver dams above Fall Lake, anglers take small motorboats all the way to Vly Lake. On Saturday, we saw three motorboats on the lake. Given the dams and the smallness of the stream, I was rather surprised that they made it that far.

As a compromise, motors could be allowed as far as Fall Lake, which is located about a mile from the put-in. Most of the property in this stretch is private, and the stream is broader. Above Fall Lake, the stream narrows and becomes wilder as it penetrates the interior of the Jessup River Wild Forest.

Directions: From the intersection of NY 8 and NY 30 in Speculator, drive west on NY 8 for nine miles to Old Piseco Road (County 24) on the right. Turn and drive 1.6 miles to the bridge over Fall Stream. The put-in is on the right on the far side of the bridge. Park along the road, being sure not to block the entrance to the put-in.

‘Wild Times’ is here

We at the Explorer just received copies of our new book, Wild Times, a full-color anthology of 120 hiking and paddling adventures from the past ten years of our newsmagazine.

Softcover, 132 pages, $14.95

This is news you can use, whether you’re looking to paddle a quiet river, spend time on an uncrowded summit, visit a fire tower, or jump in a lake. As in the Explorer, most of the stories are personal accounts of trips, accompanied by hand-drawn maps and color photographs.

Our writers, photographers, and artists made this publication possible. A lot of credit also goes to Susan Bibeau, our designer, who laid out the book.

Wild Times sells for $14.95 (or $13.95 if ordered from our Web site). That works out to about 12 cents an adventure. Not a bad deal.

You can find a few samples from Wild Times on our main Web site. The book can be ordered online and soon will be in stores.

To order from our home page, click on “Order Now” in the Wild Times box on the right side of the screen. That will bring you to the sample pages from the book. Click on “Order Now” again to get to the order form. Or you can simple click here to get to the form.

Lows Lake proposal meets opposition

On Monday, the Adirondack Park Agency held the first two hearings on classifying Lows Lake as Wilderness, and as expected, there was a lot of local opposition.

Both hearings took place inside the Park: at the town hall in Long Lake and at the state Ranger School in Wanakena. The opposition was stronger in Long Lake.

APA spokesman Keith McKeever said only eight people attended the Wanakena hearing, and their views were “split down the middle.” Eighteen showed up at Long Lake, where “there more people opposed to the classification than were for it,” McKeever said.

Following are newspaper accounts of the two hearings:

• Wanakena (from Watertown Daily Times).
• Long Lake (from Adirondack Daily Enterprise).

A third hearing will be held in Albany at noon Monday at the headquarters of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, 625 Broadway, Room PA 129B.

The APA is expected to make a decision in the fall.

See my earlier blog for more information about the proposal.

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 Lila Traverse

Salmon Lake outlet. Photo by Phil Brown

The latest issue of National Geographic Adventure features an Adirondack canoe trip as one of its “50 Best American Adventures.” The trip in question is a forty-five-mile loop, beginning and ending at Little Tupper Lake. In between you visit Lake Lila, Lows Lake, the Bog River, Round Lake, and several smaller ponds and streams.

“So new is this route that it has no official name and several of the portages, or ‘carries,’  are merely flagged with tape,” the magazine says in its one-paragraph description.

It so happens that I did part of this route in late May, going from Little Tupper Lake to Lake Lila. I can attest that the carry trails are “merely flagged.” Yet the truth is that this part of the route, at least, is not so new. The state bought the Little Tupper tract in 1998, more than a decade ago.

Frankly, it’s a shame that the state has yet to properly mark the carry trails after all these years. This is one of the premier wilderness canoe routes in the Northeast. The lack of trail markers and signs makes it seem as though the state is neglecting this wonderful resource (for which it paid $17 million). Is that the impression we want to leave with people who drive hundreds of miles to do this route?

David Winchell, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, says the trails cannot be signed and marked until the agency writes a management plan for the Whitney Wilderness. He can’t say when the plan will be finished.

DEC is years and sometimes decades behind in writing management plans for Forest Preserve tracts around the Adirondack Park. The agency lacks the staff and money to get them done.

Something has to give. The public shouldn’t have to wait more than a decade for DEC to mark canoe-carry trails that are already in use. There must be a way to undertake small projects such as this, in a responsible manner, before a management plan is written.