Hamlets to Huts’s goal is to connect Adirondack villages and outposts via people power in all seasons, allowing them to experience the backcountry without lugging all the gear. It’s patterned after European hut-to-hut systems, and the yurt trails of Vermont and Colorado. In the Adirondacks, the emphasis is community-based lodging, in part because new structures are prohibited in the state Forest Preserve.
Broadband access improving in the Adirondacks
Need proof that getting universal high- speed broadband internet access in the Adirondacks is a vital piece of the region’s economic jigsaw puzzle? Just ask Suzanne Hurtado, who lives on Lost Pond. Within days of getting fiber-optic access in 2017, she was able to live video chat several times a day with students she teaches in China.
With land swap languishing, mine sheds more jobs
Seven workers at the wollastonite processing plant in Willsboro were laid off by owner Imerys on Friday. It’s the latest setback for workers at a mineral operation where a state land swap approved by New York voters has failed to materialize.
Federal board orders status report in 2019 on Tahawus rail line
Federal authorities have halted consideration of whether the 30-mile rail line from North Creek to the former Tahawus mine in the central Adirondacks should be declared abandoned, ordering the current owner and a potential buyer to file a status report by Jan. 22, 2019.
DEC backs extended hunting camps leases, land offset
The original 1999 easement, for which the state paid $1.7 million, allowed six hunting camps in perpetuity, requiring removal of 30 others from the tract in Colton within 15 years. That deadline fell three years ago.
Whiteface ATV tours a prelude to land-use amendment?
ATV rides abruptly ended at Whiteface after environmental watchdogs raised concerns to state officials, and after the Adirondack Explorer inquired about the propriety of the rides.
Former AP president to lead Adirondack Explorer board
Tom Curley, a part-time Tupper Lake resident who retired from AP in 2012, replaces another retired news executive, Charlotte Hall, in leading the 17-member board.
DEC puts 90-day hold on request for Tahawus line abandonment
New York officials said the Tahawus line has no active shippers and the owner has “no reasonable prospect for developing future freight service.” That permits a federal finding of abandonment under the test of “public convenience and necessity.”
An in-depth look at conservation easements
Most new land preservation in the 5.8-million-acre Park over the past twenty-five years has been done through state-purchased easements, now covering 781,000 acres, or about 13 percent of the Park. About 98 percent contain working forest, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Timber managers say cutting promotes forest health
The two timber investment management organizations together currently control almost two-thirds of all 781,000 privately owned acres of Adirondack timberlands that are covered by state conservation easements. The agreements call for sustainable forestry, essentially cutting less timber than the tracts grow as measured over ten-year periods.