Paul Smith’s system opened the woods for skiers
By Gwendolyn Craig
At the northern part of the Adirondack Park, a band of outdoor enthusiasts have created backcountry ski trails, which they hope state officials will use as a model for the forest preserve. Though state staff have visited the site, backcountry skiers will have to wait a bit longer for any policy action.
The project is on Jenkins Mountain at Paul Smith’s College Visitor Interpretive Center, where there is one uphill skin track and three descending trails weaving through open woods. This winter marked the first time the trails were open to the public, though their builders caution they are meant for intermediate and experienced backcountry skiers.
It is a particularly meaningful project to Ron Konowitz, a Keene Valley resident and well-known winter lover, who has backcountry skied all 46 of the park’s High Peaks. He also leads the Adirondack Powder Skier Association and its approximately 1,000 members. The Jenkins Mountain trail markers asking, “Where’s Ron Kon?,” are even named after Konowitz. (Click here for a short video of him on the Jenkins trail.) His nickname came from a forest ranger, who had trouble with his last name. Konowitz was both tickled and embarrassed to discover the markers in late December when embarking on his own trek up the mountain.
Skiers must purchase a Paul Smith’s College VIC day pass for $15 to use the trails. To learn more, go to https://www.paulsmithsvic.org/jms-ski-zone/.
The 500-foot vertical climb is not very high, Konowitz said, and does not get to the mountain’s summit.
“But it’s in a place that gets snow,” he said. “It’s incredibly beautiful, and there’s a beaver pond.”
Policy work
Konowitz has advocated for the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the Adirondack Park Agency to create policies for backcountry ski trails on forest preserve lands. The state had been moving toward an official policy in 2019, but litigation halted the progress. Protect the Adirondacks, a nonprofit environmental organization, had sued the state over some snowmobile trails in the park leading to questions about tree cutting and trail width on forest preserve. In mid 2021, the state’s highest court ruled in favor of Protect the Adirondacks, limiting tree clearing, and the DEC has since convened a Trails Stewardship Working Group to determine what’s next when developing trails.
Konowitz, members of the nonprofit environmental organizations Adirondack Wilderness Advocates and Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve and the Paul Smith’s College VIC came together in early 2021 to discuss how Paul Smith’s College land may offer demonstrations for new sustainable visitor uses. One option was acted on: backcountry ski trails on the college’s land developed in harmony with the protections afforded forest preserve.
Adirondack Wilderness Advocates “has taken no position on whether backcountry ski trails should be opened in the forest preserve,” said AWA Vice Chairman William Ingersoll.
Though DEC and APA staff have visited Jenkins Mountain, the DEC said developing backcountry ski trails is not a priority.
“Backcountry ski trails are not currently the focus of DEC’s efforts to create and/or update management guidance for recreational uses on the forest preserve,” a department spokesperson wrote. “DEC is not currently evaluating the character of the Jenkins Mountain ski trails as to their appropriateness in a forest preserve setting.”
A spokesman for the APA said “any future efforts on a backcountry ski trails policy would be informed from the work currently undertaken by the Trails Stewardship Working Group and would include opportunities for public input.” The staff visit, he added, was “to gain valuable experience about the visitor use management framework and associated monitoring plan based on its use at this area.”
Konowitz laughed when he talked about the many years he has pushed for policy, and the thousands of hours he worked on the new trails.
“I hope that people enjoy it,” he said. “I hope it moves the dial.”
Konowitz invited Peter Bauer, executive director of Protect the Adirondacks, to view the trails. Konowitz said Bauer expressed concern over the trails being 12 feet wide. Bauer spoke with the Explorer and said he thought the trail work “was a pretty light touch.” He was concerned about the width, but reasoned that the trails involved no soil disturbance and he thought the number of trees cut was low. He also felt that the ski trails were not related to the now illegal snowmobile trails. Those snowmobile trails are called Class II community connector trails.
“We thought it was a red herring that the DEC and APA were attempting to entangle the powder ski issue with Class II trails,” Bauer said. “We never thought that was a legitimate position, and we were puzzled as to why the agencies took that position.”
Bauer was critical of the APA’s comment that the matter would be addressed by the Trails Stewardship Working Group. The group’s original schedule proposed in December 2021 said it was going to wrap up in less than a year, Bauer said. There have been about a half dozen meetings last year, no meeting scheduled as of yet in 2023 and no meeting since October, he added.
“We’re now into our 13th month, and we’ve barely started,” he said. “We haven’t gotten anywhere close to those active discussions or deliberations.”
The trails
This work can take place on the Paul Smith’s VIC’s property because it is private land. Scott van Laer, a former DEC forest ranger and the current director of the VIC, said it is already a well-established ski venue filled with Nordic trails. Jenkins Mountain used to be a larger component of the college’s ski offerings in the 1950s, but has since been somewhat forgotten. Former Explorer Editor Phil Brown wrote about skiing there in 2008 highlighting its variety and solitude.
The working group members of the Jenkins Mountain Backcountry Skiing Project are using adaptive and visitor use management. These terms involve collecting baseline data to see a site’s existing conditions before a project is implemented. This allows land managers to monitor after a project, setting benchmarks for acceptable and unacceptable changes. Chad Dawson, a former APA board member and an international expert on natural resource management and now on the board of Adirondack Wild, led the effort.
At Jenkins Mountain, for example, the trails were finished in the winter of 2021-2022, but the VIC kept them closed to the public. Scientists with Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute put up 12 trail cameras to see what kinds of wildlife used the grounds before people were introduced. The same cameras remain up and scientists will monitor how wildlife populations react to the change.
Michale Glennon, senior research scientist and van Laer’s wife, said the institute is also monitoring vegetation to see if there are any impacts.
“This information will help us to determine potential ecological impacts of the project and the degree to which management goals are being met,” Glennon said in an email. “This effort is an example of the kinds of real-world project experiences that Paul Smith’s College can offer to its students.”
The working group kept meticulous track of the number of trees cut, too, documenting their diameter and type.
Konowitz said they cut 60 trees that were more than 1-inch-diameter at breast height. Generally the DEC had used 3-inches-diameter at breast height to define a tree, but following the Protect the Adirondacks court ruling, smaller trees are now counted. Konowitz said they did not cut any trees over 3-inches-diameter at breast height except for eight that were considered “hazard trees.” Those were blown over sideways across a trail corridor. The group left any trees greater than 3-inches-diameter at breast height within the 12-foot ski trail.
Skiers will be asked for feedback about their experience as well, van Laer said. All of the data collected will be delivered in a report to APA and DEC in the summer. Van Laer is surprised that no one has been doing this kind of work sooner, and hopes that the demonstration project could create a stronger relationship between the college, APA and DEC.
“We’re really trying to find out about the experience so we’re managing people and managing the resource,” van Laer said. “We’re going to adapt on what they tell us, and we’re going to adapt on changes that we could see on the trail.”
Konowitz is hopeful, too.
“We’re a very low impact group,” Konowitz said. “We all know this place and care about it. We’re trying to be very patient.”
One user group gets one set of rules and all the other groups get a different set.
I think the caveat with adaptive management and vistor use management is that implementation has proven problematic on public lands, to say the least. It is often impossible for public lands managers to “adapt” when access restrictions are not in the toolbox (this is especially true for hiking and skiing trails). We end up in the situation that once a new trail is constructed, there will be an inevitable incremental rise in use over time. Incrementalism, in turn, often defeats the purpose of monitoring, as perceptions about acceptable levels of use shift and institutional memories fade before any meaningful monitoring horizon can ever be reached.
The aspect of the Jenkins Mountain trail system that should serve as a model is the one that no one is talking about: its clustered design. Only by clustering trails together, instead of creating sprawling networks — as per APSLMP guidelines, in fact — can newer systems be lower-impact *by design*.
If “adapt” and “monitor” inform the design process in this way, then I’m all for it — although, we should probably be honest that any benefits seen are really emerging from the more careful mindset that these frameworks necessitate. On the other hand, if these become another excuse to build bolder and more expansive trail networks (and all of the infrastructure that should come along with them) in farther and farther reaches of the Forest Preserve, then “monitor” and “adapt” become codewords for limitless incrementalism.
Hopefully, if anything, this project inspires the realization that conventional patchworked trail networks (perhaps in part a relict of logging activities that have long ago ceased) are not necessary for hikers, bikers and skiers to enjoy the Forest Preserve — or, at least, more of them than we already have.
(P.S. Great article. Well done.)
Everybody wants their particular recreational activity to be accommodated in “forever wild.” But then it’s not wild anymore is it? You want ski trails? Buy your own property, and don’t expect the state to provide for you. They’ve got enough on their plate already.
Outstanding comments. I am especially impressed by the thoughtful comments by Kieren Bell. The commenter shows experience with the “incremental” problem for public lands and waters throughout the Adirondacks and the country – that human adaptability to and acceptance of incremental increases in crowding and related conditions drive public land management response. Instead, management and stewardship should be driven by the land and waters planned and mapped purpose, policies and objectives – a plan that has been publicly vetted and adopted, and for which a public agency is held accountable – e.g., the Adirondack and Catskill Park State Land Master Plans.
Between slides, open hardwood forests, birch glades, and stream beds there’s only a couple million acres of already skiable terrain for skiers.
Is granting exemptions or carve outs for specific interests worth the altering of one of the Park’s most valuable resources…
… Article 14 with its strong protections?
I am neither a backcountry skier nor a snowmobiler but I find comparing the impact of the two activities absurd. A quiet individual gliding a narrow path under the influence of gravity vs. a large, noisy machine spewing fumes and carbon, mushing what little snow we get down to rock and root and mud? What about the impact of the large trucks/trailers needed to haul these things to the trail. State officials claim to be serious about carbon reduction while promoting fossil fuel emitting recreation. Perhaps Albany should stick to giving themselves huge raises, something they’re good at.
I have years of experience creating walking trails on my own property. It takes just a narrow path. I hardly ever cut a live tree. Mostly just remove deadfall and trim branches. If I don’t keep at it the trail disappears within a short time. Backcountry ski trails seem similar. I’ve also noticed that where snowmobiles go, ATVs often follow creating the year round impact of a rutted mess.
Public land managers have a tough job. But in trying to appease all users they sometimes seem to lose track of common sense observations.
Gee, do the vehicles bringing non motorized trail users magically stop polluting when they get to the blue line? Are they all electric? Just to make you aware modern snowmobiles have to comply with federal emission and noise standards. Also a reminder snowmobile trail mileage in the Park is capped. As for the ATV issue. You can blame the Environmental lobby and NYSDEC for creating this problem. Burying heads in the sand and stealing ATV registration dollars for over thirty years in Albany has caused this issue. Just ignoring the issue and the attitude it will just go away if we ignore it long enough is not the answer. Appeasement only goes one way in Albany.