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By Phil Brown
Bluff Island is a well-known landmark on Lower Saranac Lake. It’s easily reached by a short paddle from the Route 3 bridge west of the village of Saranac Lake. Head north through First Pond and enter a channel. As you emerge from the channel, you’ll see Bluff Island straight ahead, less than a mile from…
By Phil Brown
A state judge has dismissed the Adirondack Council’s complaint that guidelines for snowmobile trails, adopted last year, violate the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan and the forever-wild clause of the state constitution. The guidelines authorize the state Department of Environmental Conservation to construct extra-wide “community connector” trails between hamlets and allow tractor groomers to…
By Phil Brown
A state forest ranger last week killed a black bear that had been harassing people at the Eighth Lake State Campground. This was the first nuisance bear shot by the state this year. In 2009, state officials killed seven bears (a camper killed an eighth). Clickhere to read the full story in the Adirondack Daily…
By Phil Brown
Six men filed suit in federal court this week to force the state to allow the disabled to fly into wild lakes by floatplane or helicopter. The plaintiffs contend that banning aircraft from tracts of Forest Preserve classified as Wilderness, Primitive or Canoe violates the federal Americans With Disabilities Act. Before the adoption of the…
By Phil Brown
A rock climber from Lake Placid fell to his death yesterday evening at the Upper Washbowl Cliff in the Giant Mountain Wilderness. Dennis Murphy, who was thirty-five, slipped while walking along the top of the cliff after ascending Hesitation, a classic route on the popular climbing cliff. Murphy and his partner, Dustin Ulrich, planned to…
By Phil Brown
No charges will be pursued against three kayakers who paddled through Ausable Chasm in June, the Explorer has learned. The Ausable Chasm Company complained that the three trespassed on the company’s land on the first weekend that the river was declared open (against the company’s wishes) to whitewater paddlers. Based on the company’s complaints, state…
By Phil Brown
Bill McKibben wrote much of his pathbreaking book The End of Nature from his home in the Adirondacks, so even though he now lives in Vermont, we like to think of him as an Adirondacker. In truth, though, McKibben is a citizen of the world, a guy who has been fighting to save the planet…
By Phil Brown
Earlier this week, I posted on Adirondack Almanack an article about mountain lions. It includes a photo of a plaster cast of a paw print sent me by Don Leadley, a veteran outdoorsman. Leadley says he tracked the beast for about a mile near his home in Lake Pleasant. Do mountain lions exist in the…
By Phil Brown
I paddled the Jessup and Kunjamuk rivers near Speculator this weekend and saw lots of wildflowers on the banks and in the water, including cardinal flowers, pickerelweed, buttonbush, and pond lilies. I need some help identifying the flowers shown here. The purplish flower was photographed on the Kunjamuk in a marsh above Elm Lake. I saw…
By Phil Brown
The common loon is an icon of the North Woods, a symbol of wilderness, and sometimes the object of harassment. On June 12, two teenage boys frightened a loon off its nest on Sixth Lake, in Inlet, and struck the nest with a canoe paddle, breaking an egg, according to the state Department of Environmental…