Forest rangers say wilderness restoration policies hampered abilities to search for missing Canadian hiker Leo DuFour, who died on Allen Mountain
By Patrick Tine, Times Union Staff Writer
ALBANY — The herculean effort to rescue a Canadian hiker in the Adirondacks was impeded because forest rangers were unable to use access roads that had been rendered impassible due to the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s wilderness-restoration policies, according to two rangers who led the search.
Leo Dufour, a 22-year-old college student from Vaudreuil-Dorion, a Montreal suburb, had set out to hike 4,340-foot Allen Mountain on Nov. 29 and was reported missing on Dec. 1. Forest rangers and personnel from other state agencies searched for Dufour for over a week in perilous conditions as winter descended across the North Country. Officials scaled back the search on Dec. 9; Dufour’s remains were discovered by hikers last month.
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Two forest rangers told the Times Union that DEC decisions “kneecapped” their chances to find Dufour. There is, they said, widespread discontent across the 153-person forest ranger force about how the department weighs search-and-rescue concerns against conservation priorities.
Jamison Martin, who served as incident commander during the Dufour search, was blunt in his assessment of the trails around Allen Mountain and much of the Adirondacks: “They’re brutal, they’re rugged, they’re s___,” he said. That presents a serious problem for rangers who need to cover a lot of remote ground as quickly as possible when they’re called upon to rescue people in distress, Martin and fellow forest ranger Andrew Lewis said.
For years, rangers had been able to bypass the public trails to move around the mountains more quickly by traveling on unpaved roads previously used by logging companies to move timber and machinery. Under a policy of returning man-made features of the landscape to a more natural state, the DEC “proactively destroyed these roads to the point where it’s unsafe to take machines” like ATVs and snowmobiles, Martin said.
Lewis and Martin said forest rangers had taken to calling the dug-out sections of former logging roads “tank traps.”
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An amendment to the 2018 DEC unit management plan for the Adirondacks ordered “structures designed for motor vehicles such as roads, culverts, and large bridges” to be decommissioned as nonconforming structures unsuitable for the High Peaks wilderness. The forest preserve’s history is marked by similar decisions weighing the imperative to maintain wilderness against acknowledging and supporting ongoing human activity.
The effort to return the land to a state of nature, however, can involve a lot of mechanized effort. “Imagine putting an excavator on a gravel road and (having) it dig up the entire width of the road and make a giant pile of all that material, leaving behind a six-foot-deep hole and a six-foot high berm and then it backs up a little ways and does it again,” Lewis said. “That’s the level of destruction.”
“You can’t even take your ATV 100 feet; that’s how bad these roads got destroyed,” Martin said.
The rangers said the consequences may have been deadly in the Dufour search, which began at 2 a.m. on Dec. 1.
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Though it is impossible to say, Lewis and Martin agreed that Dufour might have been rescued alive if searchers had access to the logging roads, as the ability to more effectively navigate the mountain during the search’s active phase would have been enormously helpful.
Being able to more quickly retrace Dufour’s steps as his tracks were rapidly disappearing under fresh snow “could have made a difference,” Martin said. “There’s a good chance we could have got him that night if it weren’t for those roads.”
‘Cheat routes’
Lewis and Martin first spoke to the Times Union in a conference call arranged by the DEC’s press office. Department spokesperson Jeff Wernick, who was on the call, did not immediately dispute their allegations regarding the decommissioned roads. After the call, Wernick said the men made those comments in their capacity as delegates of the Police Benevolent Association of New York State, the union representing forest rangers. Both men agreed they had a wider latitude to speak freely due to their positions in the union.
Rangers faced life-threatening conditions that were compounded by an inability to use motorized vehicles on the logging road during the search, the rangers said.
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“Everything pointed to (Dufour) being high on the mountain,” Martin said. “We had a singular set of tracks up high (and) nothing down low.” At the outset of the search, two rangers hiked 10 miles through increasingly heavy snow. They hoped to retrace Dufour’s steps. It was an enormous expenditure of time and energy when rescue workers had little to spare, the men said.
One searcher became so fatigued and disoriented that he began calling Lewis’ name instead of Dufour’s, Martin said.
“If (the searchers) would have gone in on machines, they would have been within three miles of the summit in minutes,” Lewis said.
With no ability to drive motorized vehicles on the mountain, some forest rangers were forced to live on the mountain during the active search phase of the operation. Rangers, already laden with equipment, trudged through waist-deep snow carrying canvas tents. Helicopters aided in the search when weather permitted. Forest rangers relied on them to air-drop bundles of firewood to rangers deep in the wilderness.
Lewis, who ran operations and provided Dufour’s family with updates during the search, described the response as “the most complex and challenging ops job I’ve ever had.”
“You’re just throwing darts at the dartboard,” he said. “There’s a constant game of ‘How the hell can I get a ranger in as far as I can before they start burning thousands of calories to cover any amount of distance to effectively search? ‘”
While the hunt was taking place, Martin said he wanted to enlist a private Essex County bulldozer operator to fill in some of the “tank traps” on the logging road to provide better access for the rangers. But superiors at the DEC rejected the idea.
The department explained its reasoning in a statement. “While provisions are made for emergency use of motorized equipment (Environmental Conservation law and the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan) do not contain exceptions for building infrastructure in wilderness areas,” it said. “In addition, the remote nature of the area, winter conditions including frozen ground and mileage of road that would have been required to establish passage for snowmobiles or other emergency vehicles would have made any construction work both challenging and impractical to complete on an expedited timeframe necessary to support an emergency response.”
State regulations, including the Adirondack State Park Land Master Plan cited by the DEC, have made the life-saving efforts of forest rangers harder, Lewis said.
“We don’t manage for emergencies, we manage for the state land master plan,” he said. “It’s gospel.”
The tension between regulations dictating how state lands should be conserved and the realities faced by forest rangers tasked with protecting the people who use the land is a universally acknowledged problem for the men and women who serve, Lewis said.
“Ask any ranger in the state,” he said.
Lewis and Martin questioned why the decision was made in the first place to disfigure the roads, which they describe as “cheat routes” and “sneak routes,” considering the potential usefulness in emergencies.
“I’ve asked that question a lot of times, particularly to the people that actually did the physical work, that called the shots and were pulling the levers on the machine,” Martin said. “And to be frank, every answer I got was a pile of s___.”
He noted that formerly private roads elsewhere in the Adirondack Park, including at Marcy Dam in one of the park’s most popular hiking areas, are used regularly for High Peak rescues.
“Nobody is looking for a paved road and a Walmart in the High Peaks,” Martin said. “You’re not going to find people who love the wilderness more than the rangers, but we’re looking out for the safety and well-being of our folks.”
“DEC prioritizes the safety of both the subjects of search and rescue missions and their rescuers in the face of complex responses in the most remote areas of the state,” Acting Director of the Division of Forest Protection Robert D. Cavanagh said in a statement. “Our top priority is always saving lives and protecting people. In this challenging rescue, DEC considered every option when making difficult life-saving decisions that involved extremely challenging conditions and an inaccessible location. Time and grueling weather conditions were the critical factors that drove the actions executed by all involved.”
Trail’s end
While searchers had found Dufour’s water bottle close to the summit and cellphone tower pings had placed him there, his body was found on May 10 far closer to the end of what the guidebooks describe as an 18-mile “out-and-back” hike: He was only about three miles from the trailhead, and roughly 40 feet off the trail.
Martin said Dufour, described as an experienced hiker for his age, was still strapped into his snowshoes and his pack was buttoned.
“It looked like he was eating a snack and fell over,” he said.
A State Police spokesperson said investigators were still awaiting the results of his autopsy.
The discovery of the hiker’s body jolted Lewis and Martin, who had become close with Dufour’s family during the search.
Lewis said he had just finished breakfast with his children in Plattsburgh and headed to the mountain when he heard the news. “I need to be the one who notifies Leo’s father,” Lewis recalled thinking. “Because it was either Jamison or I that had to do that job, based on the fact we felt so connected with him.”
Both men talked about Dufour’s father, Sylvain, with fondness and respect. (Dufour’s family declined to comment for this article.)
“We have to make a lot of snap judgments on people,” Martin said, “… and Sylvain was just one of those guys where you can tell he’s a good dude with a good soul and a good heart.”
A few weeks before Leo Dufour’s ill-fated trip to Allen Mountain, he and his father had hiked Algonquin Peak, the second-tallest mountain in New York.
“He was such a stand-up kid at a young age,” Lewis said.
While filling in the “tank traps” may have been helpful in this case, it is unlikely that without continual use and maintenance, the old roads would grow in with brush and trees, be choked with blowdown, and subject to washouts that would render them impassable.
The rangers have a difficult job with often grim tasks, but using this attempted rescue as an example of bad policy is farcical. Wilderness involves remoteness and stepping back from the urge to tame it.
This really should be labeled as “opinion”, as the “article” is little more than a mouthpiece for two disgruntled and outspoken rangers who insinuate they are speaking for all rangers everywhere, but who in reality have a specific beef with a specific DEC forester. There is no actual news event, and no actual journalism. The “writer” merely transcribed the rangers’ opinion and interspersed their comments with non-comments from their management, but upon reading the article in its entirety I know nothing substantial other than the obvious fact Messrs. Lewis and Martin profoundly dislike the road defacement that occurred a few years ago on the former Finch Pruyn lands added to the High Peaks Wilderness. I would’ve been more edified reading a straight transcript of the two rangers’ statements.
In fact, I have to apply my own personal knowledge of the situation and the landscape to even have a reasonable idea of what they’re so upset about. A decade ago the Explorer’s pages were filled with anticipatory accounts of the MacIntyre West, MacIntyre East, and Boreas Ponds Tracts, acquired in phases from the Adirondack Nature Conservancy. Even before these lands were made fully public, people were hiking and skiing the old forestry road network and looking forward to the trail networks they might someday support. Then the DEC forester for the High Peaks region sent crews to actively deface all of the major roads, making them permanently impassible to motor vehicles… but also making them unattractive even to foot-based travel.
If someone takes the time to ask that forester why he did so, he’ll tell you that (in his opinion, agree with it or not) old roads make dismal trails, the public does not want them, and that all future trail development will involve new construction. However, that view was not sought in the “writing” of this article. Instead, all we’re treated to is Mr. Martin’s enlightening viewpoint that “every answer I got [from the people who chose to make the roads impassible] was a pile of s___.”
Clearly, our national discourse is achieving never-before-seen oratorical heights.
Not mentioned at all is how some disgruntled rangers actually returned to some of these wilderness tracts and illegally restored some of the roads. Not even asked was why such presumably competent and passionate rangers, knowing the old forestry roads were no longer available, hadn’t developed contingencies for alternate means of access prior to the Dufour search. Was their plan all along just to wait for a mishap to occur and THEN complain that the road removal was to blame?
The whole point of being an intelligent member of the species Homo sapiens is anticipating obtsacles and planning methods to overcome them.
I am by no means defending the road removals. Rather, I am pointing out that a competent “news article” written by a “journalist” would’ve done more than paraphrase and contextualize an emotional rant packaged as a news conference. The emotional heat is not the story here, but the tip-off for a more curious and knowledgable writer that there will be a better story if one is willing to dig deeper.
I admire the NYS Forest Rangers and have met many fine members of that uniformed force, but I also know from direct personal observation that they are also fallible human beings like the rest of us, capable of errors in judgment.
Messrs. Lewis and Martin are clearly upset that Mr. Dufour was not found alive, but this was not the first High Peaks fatality, and past events were reflected upon by those involved with much more grace and dignity. The observation about the old Marcy Dam Truck Trail is duly noted and not without merit, but even the old truck trails don’t guarantee successful outcomes for all missing person searches. The High Peaks Wilderness is a rugged place, and not everyone comes home alive. That’s the risk we all accept by entering the place.
The summit of Wallface Mountain was partially clearcut by rangers during a well-publicized SAR event during the summer of 2017, when a young man from out of state went missing near Indian Pass. He, too, was found deceased, but was probably alive and hypothermic as the search began. One might bristle at the idea of helicopter dropzones being carved out of a thick alpine forest on one of our remotest mountaintops, but here were NYS Forest Rangers who descended upon the scene with a plan of action and no need to air their dirty laundry afterward. They understood the rules of the game and did their best to play by them as best they could in a trying and rapidly unfolding situation.
Your commentary is akin to those who tell professional athletes to “shut up and play” when they issue a political statement. A lot of words spouting nothing but disrespect and disdain for those who have to perform these complex and sometimes heartbreaking operations. I think I’ll take the insight of a ranger over you when it comes to these matters, thank you very much.
Bill,
These guys lived it you are merely writing about it.
Huge difference.
Those rangers deserve respect.
Those two Rangers are two of the smartest, dedicated and hard working Rangers in the park. I think Mr. Ingersoll is wrong, what was ok with Heavy ,carbon belching, machinery digging giant holes , just to prevent motorized access. Bullshit. NYS treats the Rangers like crap and everyone knows that. Rangers Martin and Lewis went far beyond “just doing a job” in this case., as well as all the other times they’re putting their lives at risk
Bill Ingersoll makes good points. As he notes, even the former truck trails do not provide any guarantee of a successful Search and Rescue. Every Wilderness (actually all Forest Preserve) trailhead expects us all to be informed of weather and trail conditions, properly equipped, hike with partner(s), sign-in, and to communicate in advance routes taken. For over fifty years a basic Wilderness area guideline is that “all management and administrative action and interior facilities will be designed to emphasize the self-sufficiency of the user to assume a high degree of responsibility for his or her own health, safety, and welfare.” The article could have quoted that. The Ranger comment that we manage in accordance with the State Land Master Plan makes sense since the Master Plan is a legal plan applying to all Forest Preserve units, in effect since 1972, well known to generations of hikers, Forest Rangers, State Foresters. Knowing Wilderness enthusiasts are ultimately responsible for their own health, safety, and welfare, I am also glad that motor vehicles, motorized equipment and aircraft in all land use classifications are permitted by the Master Plan in emergencies to protect and preserve human life. And I’m glad that NYS DEC Forest Rangers are well trained, often heroic emergency responders – though badly understaffed.
Hiking alone in the winter is inherently dangerous, and especially dangerous on perhaps the most difficult peak to summit. It is sad that this person’s fate has become a lever for one party to try and score points with another.
The Adirondacks are full of old logging roads, some obvious, others barely discernible. I consider them a part of the history of the region. They don’t need to actively destroyed: time and the forces of nature will do this without any need for machines. At the same time they are not something you can count on, and as the forests mature and nature does its thing, it will become more and more difficult to reach the backcountry on a machine.
First, My condolences to the family who lost there son. I know that this is heartbreaking for them. Second, hats off to the forest rangers who made every effort trying to find and get to the lost hiker. Thank you for your dedicated service.
Leo Dufour’s death is another Wilderness tragedy. Where to draw the line on access in Wilderness emergencies is a difficult one. In this particular case I do believe the state went overboard in making the old logging roads inaccessible. I hiked many of those roads before they were made virtually impassible and after. I understand not wanting to make them accessible by public 4 wheelers but I don’t understand why they had to make them as impassible as they did. They would make great family friendly XC ski and hiking trails. If they are too wide for state standards let them narrow naturally. I think the state could be more strategic in determining which roads to abandon and which could be converted for trail use and emergency access use.
Bill, you are way off the mark on this one, there is no logical explanation for the mess that was created by the roque operations crew . A good question would be who okayed this debacle to begin with, if the forester can decide to take his heavy equipment and crew into the back country ( interior Oppalescent, Fujacks, Casey Brook roads etc) and destroy the existing roads that could be used by the Rangers, skiers, hikers and more, then something is clearly wrong with DEC management and some people should be held accountable. Anyone who knows Rangers Martin and Lewis would be quick to tell you they are highly qualified and professional as are most of the Rangers. Your comments are off base and quite frankly unnecessary.
Mr. Ingersoll’s choice of attacking the Rangers that chose to speak out is dissappointing at best. Those roads being destroyed were flagged when it happened. Everyone who was concerned with those roads being completly impassable for search and rescue feared someone would die because of it. We hoped we were wrong. We should not be as a State, willing to sacrifice the ability of our rescuers to quickly get into areas where they are needed. Wilderness is an aesthetic that a very few will ever expierance. I, for one do not believe a human life is worth less than an illusion of wilderness. Nor will I trivalize the physical, mental, and emotional toll rescues have on our Rangers. We have lost Rangers to suicide, why do you think that is? There is a lot wrong inside this Park, we should not include demonizing those that at times risk all to save others.
I managed a large private parcel of land in the Catskills for 30 years. The parcel is 3400 acres and entirely surrounded by thousands of acres of state land known as the Peekamoose wilderness area. The owners had a weekend residence on the property as well as my home and maintenance buildings, and a historic stone house (1854) used and maintained as a guest home. In the late 1990’s we enrolled in the state 480-a timber harvesting program which I carefully managed above and beyond the states requirements. Old logging trails from many years ago (50-70) were reopened and improved with proper erosion control etc. . Stream crossings were bridged not corderoid as per state requirements, and tree tops were properly broken down after saw logs and firewood stems were taken out by a forwarder, not skidded.
All during my time there (retired in 2017 and moved to the ADK’s) we also had up to 5 research groups on the property with year round access to soil and vegetation plots, stream test stations for flow and water quality (USGS) and the the US Forestry service for monitoring the wooly adelgid infestation on hemlocks and the Asian wood borer on ash. Long story short, the logging roads were important to and necessary for access by the the state and research groups for monitoring the health of the land and trees. My owners provided this crucial access that was not possible to this extent in any other area of the Catskills because of their love of the land and interest in preserving it. We created and maintained a good working relationship with all involved, including our local rangers and DEC officials in New Paltz headquarters. I was there long enough to see log roads we had used in different areas grow back in naturally after regrooming them when abandoned. The deer and bear population used many of them to create their own access to different feeding and bedding areas. Others were used for access to research plots on a regular basis, and others were used at different times by DEC to access parts of state land beyond the borders of this private parcel. I forgot to mention that this land has the headwaters of the Rondout creek running through it, which feeds a major NYC reservoir nearby, so, NYDEP was given access to stream sampling as well. In my estimation and experiance with all of this is that if everyone works together towards the same goal of proper land and water management, many functions can take place without interference and the natural functions of nature will continue on their own. We are not smarter the the divinely created functions of the natural world. The moral of my story is leave the roads alone as long as they are not creating an erosion or other issue and use man and machine power where it improves things not creating these stupid unnecessary holes and piles of dirt in the forest that you have to walk around. Thanks for reading/listening to my story.
That sounds like paradise!
Roads always grow back, but it takes time.
A logging road that hasn’t been used in 40 years can still be navigated by competent folks with a UTV and a chainsaw in far less time than hikers carrying rescue equipment.
From the Enterprise:
“The remains were positively identified as DuFour’s, which were brought out of the woods on a six-wheeler and turned over to the coroner.”
Seems like some of that area is still accessible to motorized vehicles
Some, not all. The article states he was found closer to the trailhead than the summit. The rangers had to search all of it.
Do Adirondack land use policies hinder rangers’ rescue efforts?
Well the people who would be able to make that assessment said it did.
The whole thing, as usual, makes little sense. The state builds structures like a huge staircase up ore bed brook, or a “caretaker’s” cabin in Avalanche pass on Wilderness land and they have a problem with a culvert that makes a trail destroy less of the environment?
The Times Union article was weak. It was one-sided, and largely a gripe session free of facts. The Adirondack Daily Enterprise did much better reporting on this matter, filed a Freedom of Information request, reviewed the Incident Reports, and raised questions about decisions by the search teams. The Rangers are questioning Wilderness policy, which is fine, but the Rangers I know would not shy away from tough questions and tough answers. There are lots of questions about the search, completely absent in the Times Union piece, that thankfully were looked at by the Daily Enterprise.
Here’s the Daily Enterprise piece: https://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/news/local-news/2025/06/dec-hikers-remains-were-found-miles-from-last-known-location-near-allens-summit/
There are no easy answers to these questions. Hiking in the High Peaks involves risk and there are tragedies, as we’ve all seen over the decades, some that could have been avoided, some that could not. The Rangers do the Lord’s work, for which I am grateful, but I’m also grateful for Wilderness Areas, and I know about the risks involved in hiking there, especially when solo hiking in the snow in freezing temperatures in December. In these conditions, a hike up Allen Mtn could be considered one of the riskiest in the Adirondacks, regardless of the hiker’s experience level.
The search focused, based on questionable information and judgements, on the summit area of Allen Mtn and in even harder and more remote terrain north of Allen. Why did the DEC focus on the summit area? The deceased hiker was found 2 miles from the trailhead some 40 feet from the trail. Why was there no trailside grid search? The hiker’s family did not notify the DEC about their missing hiker for two days, even though he was out hiking in freezing temperatures in December. Why?
The searchers had little viable information to try and find a lost hiker in one of the most remote parts of the High Peaks in deep snow, a proverbial needle in a haystack. One Ranger told me at the time of the search that the only way they were going to find the lost hiker was if they stepped on him. The searchers covered an impressive area in really difficult terrain, but in the end their search was miles away from where the hiker died, though they may have walked by him again and again on the trail.
The Daily Enterprise also found that the deceased hiker’s body was brought out on a 6-wheeler ATV. Anybody who has hiked Allen Mtn knows that the trail runs along an old road that connects to the active mine area for a considerable distance, practically right up to the river ford. If the DEC could bring a body out at that location on an ATV, why did they not bring people in on an ATV or snowmobile? It should also be pointed out that the DEC helicoptered in and set up a significant base camp at an old logging landing to stage a part of the search, though the searchers were miles away from where the body was found.
The Daily Enterprise piece raises many questions that merit further investigation beyond rewilding of old roads. Searches and rescues, at their root, involve decisions and assumptions, which are often correct, but sometimes are not. More than a dozen hikers and hunters have gone missing without ever being found, despite heroic and methodical searches. That’s part of what the Forest Preserve is all about.
Peter,
I agree, not that anyone cares about my opinion. To me, there are three stories here – one is about rewilding old roads that could be helpful in emergencies. Another is the search management itself. The third is Ranger staffing WRT emergency rescue based on changing UMP practices.
First, the UMP clearly indicates rewilding of roads in many areas. This is a bone of contention and likely always will be. There are opposing views here and all sides have valid points. Indeed, the rescue may have been successful in this case if the roads had been left intact. But would the roads have been maintained to the point of usability – and for how long? And should logging roads be left navigable in the more remote areas of the HPW when trying to emphasize WILDERNESS? There is no clear answer here that would please all stakeholders.
Second, even WITH the roads intact, if the search was focused on the summit, how much would have it mattered? Indeed it would have made things safer and easier for the Rangers and other personnel, and that is an important fact. Time is of the essence in these cases, but so is accurate intelligence. I certainly can’t second-guess the search sequence considering the BEST people available were involved. But I feel the lack of a backcountry road is not the main point here. The HPW has to be staffed and prepared for emergencies despite UMP land management policy. In the remotes areas of the HPW, the UMP is written in a way to keep it remote. DEC needs to figure that into their calculus for staffing WRT emergency response in these remote areas.
Which brings up the third point. Staffing and emergency procedures. Would more searchers have helped in finding the victim in time? Not necessarily. But would it have helped given the length and intensity of a long-term search – almost certainly. Expecting the Rangers to possess superhuman powers of stamina in extreme conditions is unreasonable and unsafe. Was there sufficient staff to relieve stressed searchers often enough to maintain clear heads and safety? I wasn’t there, but that should be a separate discussion as well. This is where a DEC Commisioner stating Ranger staffing is “adequate” rings hollow.
In these days of “dial-up” rescues and reliance on Rangers that no longer can patrol routinely with boots in the backcountry consistantly, Rangers, hikers and all stakeholders have to dig deep to find common ground and support each other. I can understand the frustration of Rangers stuck in the middle of these important issues. When dealing with the backcountry – wilderness or not – there are often no clear answers or procedures that would be better than others. Every situation is unique. Lawmakers and leadership need to be acutely aware of vulnerabilities of backcountry rescue balanced with UMP and funding pressures.
It is unfortunate that there are fatalities and serious injuries in the backcountry – regardless of remoteness and experience. But that is the nature of having relatively free access to the backcountry. We can never control all of the variables, nor should we be expected to. Outdoorsmen/women do the best we can – but it isn’t always enough. Same with rescue personnel. Let’s use this tragedy as a learning opportunity and work together with ALL stakeholders to improve the odds of success next time.
This incident and the McCulley lawsuit against NYS on the illegal actions by the state to close roadways within the park and the ability for emergency personal to access areas within the Park bring up a big question. How many roadways in the Adirondack Park where illegally confiscated and closed by NYSDEC to satisfy the Environmental lobby’s grand plan? Many believe the Jack Rabbit trail is just the tip of an iceberg of illegal Albany skulduggery. The dirty deals done behind closed doors in 1972 are now coming back to haunt us.