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Four Ponds and a peak A family spends a delightful two days paddling and hiking in the St. Regis Canoe Area—and, best of all, there were no long carries. By Lisa Densmore Ballard SOMETIMES my choice of canoe-camping adventure in the Adirondack Park is based on the lowest chance of family mutiny. My husband Jack and our…
Roaring Brook Falls is just one of many superb routes to be included in a new book on Adirondack climbing. By Phil Brown IN SOME RESPECTS, Roaring Brook Falls isn’t such a great climb. The rock can be loose, mossy, or wet. And there are places where you can’t find cracks to insert protective gear—cams…
ON ONE OF the first warm days of May, Penfield Homestead Museum President Joan Hunsdon and her colleagues were cheerily undertaking some spring cleaning in advance of opening for the summer. Leaves required raking, photos had to return to their places on the walls of the entry parlor, and virtually every room of the house…
I believe canoes and kayaks are the latest threat to our wild lands, and I am strongly opposed to permitting them in Wilderness Areas. Canoes and kayaks give people a huge mechanical advantage. They shrink wild lands. They can transport more people farther, creating intrusions in even the most remote areas. In many cases, the…
Regarding your article, “Trains carry oil and risk,” [May/June 2014]: Out of one side of protectionists’/preventionists’ mouths we hear: “Oh, we must break our dependence on foreign oil.” “Oh, we must learn to use more renewable energy recources…”, “Oh, etc., etc., etc.” On the other side we hear that we cannot transport oil by pipeline,…
I must take umbrage with your article “Keeping track of cougars” [March/April, 2014]. In it Rainer Brocke is quoted as saying the Adirondacks are a “pipsqueak park” with too few deer and too many roads for cougars to survive. The Champlain Valley is alive with deer. Just take a drive around the back roads and…
In your May/June issue, a letter from Ken Kaufmann of Skaneateles has provided what I believe to be the correct solution to the entire debate over an Adirondack rail trail between Lake Placid and Old Forge. Just convert the unused portion between Saranac Lake and Old Forge into a trail for now and everyone gets…
I am not in favor of the rail-trail idea that you keep hyping in your magazine. The railroad route is historic and is currently providing recreation and access from both ends for lots of folks that might otherwise not have an Adirondack experience. We should be encouraging motorless travel in the backcountry, not catering to…
I am very alarmed about the Department of Environmental Conservation’s “Black Bear Management Plan for New York State.” Among its proposals are to “Assess the potential benefits and concerns associated with bear hunting practices currently prohibited by the environmental conservation laws (e.g. hunting with the aid of bait or dogs, trapping with cable restraints, taking…
EVERY WEEK, reminders of the dangers of a failed energy policy rumble through the Adirondacks in the form of massive freight trains filled with oil. Carrying as much as eighty-five thousand barrels of crude in a hundred tanker cars, the trains embody a nation’s thirst for petroleum, a thirst that remains unslaked even in the…