By Mike Lynch
The Lake George area, like many regions in the Adirondack Park, has seen a large spike in users over the past decade.
One mountain that has seen large numbers of hikers is the 2,333-foot Buck Mountain, particularly on the trail from Pilot Knob on the eastern side of Lake George.
As a result of the increase in numbers, Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) started stationing volunteer trailhead stewards there during weekends in 2022. The organization has a long history of having paid and volunteer stewards at trailheads and on summits in the High Peaks region.
The Adirondack Explorer thanks its advertising partners. Become one of them.
As of this summer, the program had about 20 volunteers for Buck Mountain and is now looking to expand its schedule into the fall months for the first time.
Saratoga Springs resident Jim Schneider, a librarian, and a long-time member of ADK’s Glens Falls-Saratoga Chapter helps coordinate the program. He is a co-creator of ADK’s fire tower challenge and a historic guidebook on the structures.
In the following interview, he talks about the program and users at the Buck Mountain trailhead. This question-and-answer session has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Lake George was seeing tremendous numbers of people, visitors and hikers, during the pandemic. Are there still large numbers of hikers going to the trailheads around Lake George in the last couple of years?
The Adirondack Explorer thanks its advertising partners. Become one of them.
Almost definitely. Super popular. Yes, Lake George trailheads are jamming.
How did the Buck Mountain trailhead steward program come about?
Buck Mountain is a very attractive mountain to hike for a variety of reasons. Number one is all the local people in the Glens Falls and Saratoga area know that it’s a great after-work hike and a great shoulder-season hike. You’re getting 6.6 miles roundtrip with 2000 feet of vertical, which is a pretty good workout. And then the big bang for the buck is the view of Lake George from the summit.
Those of us who are regulars at Buck Mountain, we continually would see people that were tourists or novice hikers – and lots of them. It’s a very popular trailhead, and many times the parking lot is full. So I was talking to my pal, Kim Brown, a volunteer trail steward in the High Peaks. She’s currently our local ADK Glens Falls-Saratoga chapter chair. We were talking one day about how everybody’s talking about the High Peaks. There’s so many study groups. There’s these visitor use management plans and all this stuff. (We thought) what about (doing a Buck Mountain program) because we’re going to reach people who really, really should be reached with some of the basics. (The idea was then pitched to the ADK staff.)
Can you tell me about the value of having this trailhead steward program outside the High Peaks. Why do you need stewards for some of these smaller mountains?
The Adirondack Explorer thanks its advertising partners. Become one of them.
There’s a couple of different perspectives on that. One is that the people who are regulars, particularly people who live in the Pilot Knob area, they’re really appreciative that we’re there. We pick up trash in the parking lot and (they like) knowing there’s a presence there.
The other thing is this, there’s another route that you can take from that same trailhead and that goes to Inman Pond, which is a really lovely hike. It’s an out-and-back. You go through some towering old growth hemlocks and through a beaver meadow. So we offer that to them (as an alternative and easier hike).
The other thing is we go through some of the 10 essentials. I say, “By the way, do you happen to have a flashlight or headlamp?” So a lot of people are hearing those kinds of questions for the very first time. We do not expect our messaging to be transformative to the highest degree at that particular moment, but it’s a process. What happens is we’ve created, to very small extent, a mindset. They’re going to read it again somewhere online or in a magazine. Or when they show up at another trailhead somewhere, they’re going to hear it again. If we can give them this preliminary one-on-one, quick-and-dirty messaging, and then they get up to the High Peaks, and they do Cascade, then they’re going to see a summit steward, and they’re going to hear it in a little different manner, in a different setting, (and hopefully remember it). So, it’s part of the holistic approach to stewarding and supports the ADK mission of stewarding the community of public wildland users.
Do you find that most people are prepared? How many novices do you encounter on a weekend?
The Adirondack Explorer thanks its advertising partners. Become one of them.
We trained our stewards to look for people who are ill prepared. We’re not assigning any kind of value to the (lack of equipment). But we’re talking to them about safety because when you approach the summit, the final pitch is on slab rock. And we tell people – be careful. But if somebody’s wearing open-toed shoes, sandals, or maybe street shoes, we would advise them as best we can of the hazards that are up ahead that they’re likely to encounter. We let them make the decision on what they want to do. That’s not our call. The only thing we can do is just to note the obvious objective hazards that are on that trail and (let them) make their own decision on what they want to do.
Top photo: Hikers on Buck Mountain in Fort Ann overlooking Lake George on an October day in 2020. Photo by Gwendolyn Craig
Plan your next Adirondack adventure
Pick up copies of our “Short Hikes” guidebook series!
Leave a Reply