John Davis finishes TrekEast

John Davis bikes through Florida. Photo by Ron Sutherland.

After hiking, biking, canoeing, and sailing 7,600 miles over 280 days, John Davis says the hard work has just begun.

Davis resigned as the Adirondack Council’s conservation director last year to undertake TrekEast, a muscle-powered journey designed to draw attention to the need to protect wild lands in the eastern United States and Canada.

John Davis traveled from Florida to the Gaspe Peninsula.

He began his travels on February 3 in Key Largo, Florida, and finished this past Monday (November 14) on Quebec’s Gaspe Peninsula. In between, he meandered through swamps, fields, and forests, along coastlines, and over mountains. He reached New York State in the summer and traveled through the Catskills, Shawangunks, and Adirondacks.

“While I’ve seen numerous threats to wild nature over the past ten months, I’ve also seen incredible efforts under way to counter those threats,” Davis said after reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Forillon National Park in Quebec.

In an interview with the Explorer, Davis said one lesson from his journey is that the East needs to bring back cougars to restore ecological balance. Without cougars to keep them in check, he said, deer are overbrowsing the woods, consuming wildflowers and saplings. “Our forests are likely to slowly degenerate,” he said.

Davis said conservationists need to focus on four other objectives in the East:

• Protect large tracts of wild land and the wild corridors connecting them.
• Create wildlife crossings over and under roads.
• Protect waterways with wild buffers.
• Encourage private landowners to protect wild lands.

Davis said TrekEast, though arduous, was the adventure of a lifetime. “Now comes the much more important and difficult leg of the trip—maintaining and growing the network of people needed to protect a continental-sized network of connected eastern wild lands,” he said in a news release.

He next plans to go to Washington, D.C., to discuss his journey with the directors of the Wildlands Network, which sponsored TrekEast. After that, he will return to his home near Westport in the Adirondacks.

“I’d be delighted to work at the Adirondack Council again someday, but there are no openings right now,” he said.

Meantime, he is planning his next big adventure: TrekWest in the Rocky Mountains.

The harbinger of winter

Ron Konowitz, left, and Mark Meschinelli at the Lake Placid Turn on the Whiteface Mountain toll road a year ago. Photo by Phil Brown.

We had a brief snow squall in Saranac Lake this afternoon. No accumulation, but the cedars outside the office window got a nice dusting.

So I wasn’t too surprised when Ron Konowitz called to say he had just skied the toll road on Whiteface Mountain.

As the robin is to spring, Ron Kon is to winter. He is usually the first, or among the first, to hit the toll road in the fall and the last to put his skis away in the spring. Last season, he went skiing more than 160 times, mostly in the backcountry.

This season, he got off to a late start, thanks to a dearth of snow. Usually, he manages to squeeze in five or six trips on the toll road in October. After a freak snowstorm many years ago, he went skiing on Labor Day weekend.

“This is the latest I haven’t been able to ski,” he remarked.

On Friday morning, Ron and a friend, Katie Tyler, hiked 3.5 miles up the toll road as far as the Lake Placid Turn, where they put on skis for the remaining 1.8 miles to the summit castle.

Ron said there was five or six inches of snow up high. He and Katie did four laps between the castle and the Wilmington Turn (about 0.8 miles) and then skied back down to the gatehouse.

Ron said the skiing was very good for a few miles, on Styrofoam snow, but the cover became thin at the lower elevations. They would ski on the sides of the road, sometimes gliding over frozen grass. In a few spots, they had to walk.

“It was worth it, for sure,” he said.

Like many backcountry skiers, Ron is looking forward to skiing some of the new slides created by Tropical Storm Irene.

“It’s going to be an amazing winter,” he said. “All we need is snow—the magic ingredient.”

Ron is the only person to have skied all forty-six of the High Peaks. Click here to read an interview with him about this feat.

Ulrich picked to lead APA board

Governor Andrew Cuomo has chosen Lani Ulrich to take the helm of the Adirondack Park Agency board and nominated Wanakena resident Sherman Craig to a vacant seat on the body.

Lani Ulrich

Ulrich, an APA commissioner since 2004, had emerged as a consensus candidate to replace Curt Stiles, who resigned in August after four years as the board’s chairman.

“She gets along with both conservation organizations and local government,” said John Sheehan, a spokesman for the Adirondack Council. “We think she’ll steer a wise course.”

Fred Monroe, executive director of the Local Government Review Board, an APA watchdog, also has spoken favorably of Ulrich. “I think she takes a balanced approach, and she’s always willing to listen to local government positions,” he told North Country Public Radio in September.

Ulrich, an Old Forge resident, ran afoul of APA shoreline-setback regulations this year. APA spokesman Keith McKeever said her dock on the Middle Branch of the Moose River and the steps leading to it exceeded 100 square feet, the maximum allowed under the law. He said Ulrich fixed the problem by removing some of the steps.

Sherman Craig is a retired teacher and avid hiker who has lived on the Oswegatchie River in Wanakena since 2001. He is chairman of Five Ponds Partners, an organization that created the Cranberry Lake 50—a fifty-mile trail that circles Cranberry Lake.

Click here to read the governor’s news release on the appointments.

DEC reopens two more trails

The state has reopened two more trails in the High Peaks region, but it has no plans to reopen before next year other trails closed by Irene.

Hikers can once again take the Deer Brook Trail from Route 73 to Snow Mountain, though the low-water route through the Deer Brook flume remains impassable (it was eroded during the storm).

Also reopened is the second crossover trail between the East River Trail and West River Trail in the Adirondack Mountain Reserve. The first crossover trail is still closed, owing to a missing bridge.

Three trail on the Forest Preserve remain closed:

• The Southside Trail to the ranger’s cabin in the Johns Brook valley.
• The Cold Brook Trail between Lake Colden and Indian Pass.
• The Colvin Range Trail from Blake Peak to the Elk Lake-Mount Marcy Trail.

“These probably will remain closed throughout the winter,” said David Winchell, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation. “We’ll look at them again in the spring.”

Winchell said the public can still use the closed trails on the Forest Preserve, but they will not be patrolled or maintained.

DEC reopens 5 trails closed since Irene

Five trails that had been closed since August 29, the day after Tropical Storm Irene, have been reopened, the state Department of Environmental Conservation announced this morning.

Four of the trails start in the vicinity of the Ausable Lakes in the privately owned Adirondack Mountain Reserve:

• The Carry Trail between Lower and Upper Ausable Lake (trail #54 in the Adirondack Mountain Club’s High Peaks guidebook).
• Trail from the Carry Trail to the Colvin Range Trail (#55 in the book).
• Trail from Warden’s Camp at the foot of Upper Ausable to Sawteeth Mountain (#57)
• Trail from Warden’s Camp to Haystack Mountain (#58).

The fifth is the Haystack Brook Trail (#59). It leads from trail #58 to the State Range Trail in the col between Haystack and Basin Mountain.

DEC says the Carry Trail and the trail to Sawteeth have been cleared of blowdown. The other trails are passable but may have blowdown.

Two short trails in the Adirondack Mountain Reserve remain closed. They are the first two crossover routes between the East River Trail and West River Trail. Three other crossover routes are open.

Four other trails also remain closed: the Deer Brook Trail from Route 73 to Snow Mountain; the Southside Trail from the Garden to the Johns Brook ranger cabin; the Cold Brook Trail between Indian Pass and Lake Colden; and the Colvin Range Trail from Blake Peak to Pinnacle and beyond.

Hurricane Road to Crows Clearing remains closed, but the trails starting at the clearing are open. These trails lead to Hurricane Mountain, Big Crow Mountain, and Nun-da-ga-o Ridge.

Click the link below for DEC’s High Peaks bulletin for this weekend. It includes a list of trails that impacted by Irene.

Trail conditions 10.28

Cougar advocate to give talk

An advocate of reintroducing the cougar to the Adirondacks will speak at the Whallonsburg Grange at 7 p.m. Thursday.

Photo by Larry Master.

Christopher Spatz, president of the Cougar Rewilding Foundation, has argued in the pages of the Explorer and elsewhere that reintroducing the cats would restore the Adirondack Park’s ecological balance.

Spatz will discuss cougar biology and behavior, recent studies of cougar populations, and the much-publicized case of the cougar that migrated from South Dakota to Connecticut.

The talk is sponsored by the Northeast Wilderness Trust and the Champlain Valley Conservation Partnership. For more information, call 802-453-7880 or e-mail Rose Graves at rose@newildernesstrust.org.

Scientists pin down cause of bat disease

Researchers analyze the air near a hibernating bat in the Adirondacks. Photo by Carl Heilman II.

A study published in the journal Nature confirms that the disease decimating bat colonies in New York and many other states is caused by a fungus known as Geomyces destructans.

Known as white-nose syndrome, the disease causes lesions on the bats’ skin and a white growth on their muzzles. Since its discovery in a cave near Albany in 2006, it has spread to sixteen states and four Canadian provinces.

The disease has so devastated bat populations that some species are in danger of extinction.

Earlier this year, Winnie Yu reported in the Explorer that the number of little brown bats in the Adirondacks—once the most common bat in the region—has plummeted 90 percent. Northern bats are down 98 percent. Indiana bats, an endangered species, are down 60 percent.

Biologist Jeremy Coleman of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, one of the five authors of the study, said today that the disease is continuing to spread, though there is some evidence that it has stabilized in some colonies.

Scientists had suspected that Geomyces destructans was the cause of white-nose syndrome, but the new study confirms it. Researchers at the National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin found that healthy bats exposed to the fungus developed lesions and other symptoms associated with the disease. Before the study, some experts speculated that the fungus was itself a symptom, not a cause, of illness.

The researchers say little can be done to control the spread of white-nose syndrome. One possibility is manipulating the habitats of caves to make them less hospitable to the fungus.

The same fungus exists in Europe, but it has not decimated bat populations there. It’s thought that the fungus may have been inadvertently carried to the United States by a human and introduced to a commercial cave in Schoharie County, whence it spread to bat hibernacula.

Coleman’s co-authors included three scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey: microbiologist David Blehert, wildlife pathologist Carol Meteyer, and wildlife disease specialist Anne Ballmann. The fifth researcher was Justin Boyles of the University of Tennessee.

For more information about white-nose syndrome and its impact on the Adirondacks, we encourage you to read Winnie’s story.

Climbing the new Saddleback slide

A hiker ascends the new slide on Saddleback Mountain. Photo by Brendan Wiltse.

The new issue of the Explorer (November/December) will include a two-page spread on climbing five new slides created by Tropical Storm Irene in the High Peaks.

I’ve blogged about my climbs of four of them (see links below), but I have yet to write about my climb of the long slide on Saddleback Mountain. I climbed it two weekends ago with Ron Konowitz. It’s steep enough in places that I would recommend rock-climbing shoes or approach shoes.

Aerial view of the new slide (on right). Photo by Phil Brown.

You can easily reach the Saddleback slide via the Ore Bed Brook Trail in Johns Brook Valley. Starting from the suspension bridge near the ranger’s cabin, hike 1.7 miles to a house-size boulder on the right side of the trail (it’s 0.25 miles past a lean-to). From the boulder, you can see the slide on the right, a short bushwhack away.

If you leave the trail here, you’ll be walking up a scoured section of Ore Bed Brook, a mix of slab, boulders, mud, and pools. In a half-mile, you’ll reach the wide slabs of the slide proper. Your other option is to stay on the trail past the giant boulder: in another 0.8 miles, the trail passes the edge of the slide.

From the second access point, it’s just about a mile to the top of the slide. From the boulder, it’s 1.9 miles.

The ascent is gradual at first, but it steepens considerably as you get higher. Toward the top, you need to climb over or around a rock wall. We went left, which was fine, but we encountered a muddy section just past the wall.

While ascending, be sure to turn around occasionally to take in the spectacular view of the north face of Gothics.

The climb ends with a dike, one to two feet wide, that runs down the middle of the slide. The pitch here is very steep, but the dike is stepped. At the end you’ll need to make a tricky move to gain the woods.

From the top of the slide, you have a 10-minute bushwhack to Saddleback’s summit. We angled left and did not have too much trouble.

Saddleback’s summit offers marvelous views of the High Peaks. Between the slide and the summit, you’ll be sated with scenery. If you return by the Ore Bed Brook Trail, you’ll cross another slide created by Irene. In the aerial photo, this two-pronged slide is to the left of the Saddleback slide.

Following are links to my blogs on other slides created or expanded by Irene:

Trap Dike.

Cascade Mountain.

Avalanche Pass.

Wright Peak.

Climbing the ‘new’ Trap Dike

Matt McNamara climbs the new slide above the Trap Dike. Photo by Josh Wilson.

On Sunday I climbed the Trap Dike for the first time since Tropical Storm Irene triggered a landslide above and inside the dike. The slide swept away nearly all of the trees inside the canyon and created a new exit, a slab of clean white rock that can be followed to the top of Mount Colden.

Before Irene, the guidebook Adirondack Rock awarded the Trap Dike five stars, its highest rating for the overall quality of the climb. Since Irene, the climb is even better.

The Trap Dike must be approached with caution: it’s considered a third- or fourth-class climb in the Yosemite Decimal System, so a slip at the wrong time can result in death or serious injury. Sadly, this was proven when Matthew Potel, an experienced hiker, was killed in a fall on September 30.

Ron Konowitz ascends the the first waterfall in the Trap Dike. Photo by Josh Wilson.

People debate whether parties should carry a rope and other rock-climbing gear. Whether or not you carry a rope, I suggest you wear sticky-soled shoes: either rock-climbing shoes or approach shoes (some trail-running shoes also have sticky rubber). You’ll appreciate the stickiness on the steep sections, which are often wet, and on the finishing slab.

The dike has two waterfalls. The second is considered the crux of the climb. It’s steep and about forty feet high. Potel fell here after helping two companions up the falls.

The climb from Avalanche Lake to the new slide is 0.8 miles. The base of the slide is steep. I started up from the right side, following a left-rising ramp. Two companions, Josh Wilson and Matt McNamara, chose to start up the left side, ascending some cracks.

Once on the slide, we stayed more or less in the middle, following whatever features we could find to give us a foothold or handhold. Much of the slab is pocked with sharp-edged dimples, which also aid traction.

Depending on the slope, we either walked upright, more or less, or scrambled on all fours. I measured the slope in spots at more than forty degrees—steep enough for a long fall. In winter, this should be considered avalanche terrain.

At the headwall, the slide gets even steeper. Matt and I bailed left into the trees just before the top. Josh managed to stay on the rock all the way to the end. All told, the slide is about 0.4 miles long. From the top, it’s a very short bushwhack (20 or 30 yards) to Colden’s summit trail.

To my mind, the slide is just as dangerous as the waterfalls—especially if you’re not wearing sticky rubber.

Before Irene, hikers would exit the Trap Dike onto an older slide. You can still do this, of course, but if you exit the dike too early, you’ll find yourself on a part of the old slide that is as steep as the new one. Some hikers who exited early have become frozen with fear, too scared to continue climbing or retreat.

The Trap Dike may be a five-star climb, but it’s no fun if you find yourself in over your head.

Keene seeks volunteers for Irene cleanup

This coffee shop was among the businesses damaged by Irene. Photo by Tom Woodman.

The town of Keene is looking for volunteers to help with the post-Irene cleanup. The town plans to undertake a number of cleanup projects every weekend through November 5.

This Saturday, people will be removing mud from the basement of a house on Styles Brook Road, according to Joe Pete Wilson Jr., the town’s volunteer coordinator. Because of the mud, the homeowner has been unable to turn on the heat since the storm.

Next weekend (October 15-16), volunteers will clean mud and debris from the Keene Library and pick up debris at the community center’s playing fields. On the following Saturdays, volunteers will help clean up homes, yards, and local businesses.

If you’d like to volunteer, send an e-mail to Joe Pete at wilsonjoepete@gmail.com.

Those who would like to help but can’t provide labor can send a contribution to the Keene Flood Recovery Fund. Click here for details.