Public relays concerns about possible visitor limits on Adirondack High Peaks trails

Draft plan for hiker management weighs the meaning of “solitude”

By Gwendolyn Craig

The state Department of Environmental Conservation got an earful Thursday on visitor management in the Adirondack Park’s High Peaks, including criticism of a test permit system already in place and of its lack of natural resource studies in relation to visitors’ experiences.

In its virtual meeting on ways to deal with access to popular trails, the DEC faced questions of why the state leans toward “solitude” in the High Peaks, with some commenters saying that was unrealistic and unnecessary. Other participants called for more forest rangers to educate and prevent unseasoned hikers from precarious situations. 

The meeting was part of the DEC’s latest effort to address an increasing number of visitors to the High Peaks. Under a $600,000 budget item, the DEC hired contractor Otak to study hiker attendance and make management recommendations.

A draft plan for the High Peaks is expected this fall, followed by a public comment period. The DEC and Otak continue to collect comments on a website. 

The process is called a visitor use management framework, a system used by federal agencies like the National Park Service to decide what conditions are desired and how best to achieve them. 

More than 80 people logged into the DEC’s virtual meeting, with more than 60 staying for the three hours of presentations and group brainstorming sessions.

While appreciative of the meeting and comment opportunity provided Thursday, several members of the public already appeared at odds with the state’s proposed vision for the High Peaks. 

Key themes contractors said they were looking to achieve for visitors hiking the state’s tallest mountains included things like opportunities for solitude, lack of crowds, safe parking, no traffic and more hiker education. 

With those themes in mind, contractors have been in the field studying the number of people on mountain summits, the number of groups encountered on High Peaks trails and the number of cars in parking areas as indicators of management actions. 

They declined on Thursday to provide all of the locations where these studies took place in the High Peaks, pointing out that it would be available in the draft report. Some counts took place at the Adirondack Mountain Club’s Adirondack Loj and Cascade Welcome Center, they said.

A focus on solitude

Several attendees criticized the state’s bias toward solitude. They felt it showed the state was bolstering a case for limiting visitors, possibly through permits. 

“I’m a little concerned about what I consider to be a disproportionate, artificial focus on solitude,” said Bill Schneider, a 30-year Saranac Lake resident who said he bikes, skis, rock climbs and trail runs in the Adirondacks and across the United States. “When you travel to the crown jewel of an area, like the High Peaks … the idea that you’re going to have solitude or be alone, it’s a bit of a fallacy to expect that.”

Josh Clague, who was the DEC’s Adirondacks coordinator but has since been promoted to chief of the DEC’s Bureau of Forest Preserve and Conservation Easements, said the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan mandates “opportunities for solitude” in wilderness areas. The master plan is the guiding policy document for the Adirondack Park, and a wilderness area is one of its zoning categories.

“It puts us in a bit of a bind,” Clague said.

But opportunities do not mean the entire area must provide solitude, Otak representatives said. They said they are working on how to distinguish that.

Eric Avery, a Glens Falls resident who hikes often in the Adirondacks and assists with search and rescue efforts and trail maintenance, said he thought it unreasonable to expect solitude on High Peaks summits.

“My concern is that just having that as a goal is going to make it a foregone conclusion that you’re going to have to limit us in the High Peaks,” Avery said.

Others said the trails to all 46 High Peaks should be excluded from any studies involving solitude.

Permits

The DEC is already testing a permit system in a slice of the High Peaks area, and meeting participants expressed frustrations with it. 

Even those who enjoyed reserving a spot at the Adirondack Mountain Reserve in St. Hubert’s, a popular gateway to a number of hikes including multiple High Peaks, said the system needs tweaking.

AMR, a group of private trustees who have a public foot traffic easement on a portion of their lands, and the DEC described the permit as a free parking reservation. That characterization has been criticized considering the system does not allow for drop-offs and there has been no coordination with the state’s free shuttle service. 

The biggest critique is that the system does not allow for same-day reservations. Several people said the AMR parking lot is often empty and people are needlessly turned away for not having a reservation.

Otak contractors said it was important for people to share what they don’t want to see happen as a management action.

Cathy Pedler, director of advocacy at the Adirondack Mountain Club, reminded the DEC and others of the High Peaks Strategic Planning Advisory Group’s recommendations for visitor management published in January 2021. There were many other strategies, Pedler said, “that could be implemented before we had to take that step of a permit system.” That report did recommend a pilot permit system, which manifested into the AMR permit, and the visitor use management framework currently unfolding. It also made recommendations like a new state outdoor recreation department, adding forest rangers and developing better parking at certain trailheads.

Trails and natural resources

Trail developers and environmental organizations also thought the DEC was too narrowly focused on visitor experiences and was ignoring visitor impacts on trails and natural resources.

Glenn Glover, executive director of the Barkeater Trails Alliance (BETA), faulted the DEC and contractors for not measuring any physical conditions of the trails. Otak contractor Abbie Larkin said the direct focus of work is on visitor experience and public safety. 

“But the condition of the trail, it’s not just about the environmental impact or its ability to maintain it,” Glover said. “It is also a critical aspect of the visitor user experience itself. And actually, you hit on another piece of it with safety.” Trail conditions, he said, do impact how safe visitors are on the trail. Pedler also thought trail conditions were important.

Clague said it was a good point and the DEC would consider a way to incorporate it.

Chad Dawson, a former Adirondack Park Agency board member, former professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and an expert on wilderness and public land management, also attended the meeting. He has lectured on visitor use management in DEC seminars and resigned from the APA in 2020 in frustration over what he considered to the state prioritizing recreation over environmental protection. 

After Thursday’s meeting, Dawson said the process was missing the environmental conditions. 

“DEC continues to claim that it is doing that component,” Dawson said. “No evidence of such an effort has ever been presented.”

David Gibson, managing partner of Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve, also attended and said later that DEC is constraining its contractors from considering natural resource factors, thereby not addressing visitor use management comprehensively.

“DEC keeps saying that the natural resource side of the equation will come, but our groups and the public are still in the dark about that integration process and its timeline,” he said.

More accessibility, more rangers

Otak and the DEC held three separate group brainstorming sessions and presented some highlights from each. 

Overall, people said they wanted better accessibility to the High Peaks. Many called for more parking and a better shuttle system. They particularly wanted parking without fees. 

Some said they wanted residents to be excluded from permit requirements or limitations. This generated discussion over who was considered a resident, and whether such a system was fair to the public, all owners of the state forest preserve.

Some said they wanted a complete evaluation of the AMR reservation system. 

People called for more hiker education, visitor centers and more informative signs.

“More rangers, more rangers, more rangers,” said Susan Hayman, a contractor for Otak, relaying feedback she’s heard from some members of the public.

People felt that forest rangers while on trails help prevent mishaps by new and unprepared hikers. Such educational exchanges could cut down on the number of search and rescues. 

Top photo: A silhouette of hikers atop Mount Marcy in 2019. Photo by Mike Lynch