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Years ago my wife and I camped along the Cape Cod Bikeway and had a very enjoyable experience riding our bikes along the converted rail bed. We have also biked along the Erie Canal and always enjoyed the ride. Having a safe, flat, smooth pathway with pedestrians as the only obstacles makes for a wonderful…
After reading “2 sides of Indian Lake” by Bill Ingersoll [January/February 2013], I feel obligated to point out that the Griffin Brook Slide on Snowy Mountain is a known avalanche slide path. Ingersoll fails to mention this fact anywhere in his account of a climb up the slide. This slide has a slope angle in…
Fred LeBrun’s recent column “On Counting Bobcats” [September/October 2013] was excellent, for so many are naive about this animal’s ecological robustness. Yes, bobcats are doing well. They are also beginning to inhabit most of New York, including the central New York farm country where smaller dairy farms are being abandoned. Every small farm with cattle…
In considering how to classify some of the lands recently acquired by New York State, the Adirondack Park Agency is making a mistake in not properly taking into account already-existing state land around the acquisition. Instead, the APA chose to view the proposed Paul Schaeffer Wild Rivers Wilderness piecemeal. Wilderness is a resource that needs…
In the July/August edition Bill Ingersoll advocates closing the road to Boreas Ponds [“It’s Debatable”]. If he wishes the area to be “Wilderness,” which is defined as “untrammeled by man” and “with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable,” the first thing he should champion is dynamiting out the dam at the southern end of…
The Adirondack Park Agency should classify the Essex Chain Lakes in the newly acquired Finch, Pruyn lands as a Canoe Area (Alternative 3A among the APA options). This would achieve the goals of strong resource protection and promotion of sustainable recreational activities. There is no question that the area proposed for “Canoe” easily fits the…
The Adirondacks does not need a train to transport overnight tourists from Utica and New York City (sadly, it would be a bust). Nor would the region benefit from destroying its rail system so that tourists could pedal instead of paddle to the Five Ponds Wilderness. What the Adirondacks does desperately need is a sizable…
I’m concerned about Hamilton County Planning Director Ann Melious’s thoughts about bringing development to her county [Talk of the Towns, May/June 2013]. Just what is the appeal of the Adirondacks? Why do people want to venture up here in the first place? People from around the world come to the Adirondacks because of the Park’s…
THE CONSTITUTIONAL protection afforded the state-owned Adirondack Forest Preserve is not something to be taken lightly. It is ambitious in its scope and timeless in its intention: the lands “shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor…
When New York State last year began its historic purchase of sixty-five thousand acres of former Finch, Pruyn lands for the Adirondack Forest Preserve it posed a challenge to itself. How should it classify and manage the land, balancing protection of the natural environment with providing people access to this incomparable resource? The Adirondack Park…