Earlier this year, I wrote about a proof of concept app we had started working on to produce better data about visitor activity in the Adirondack Park. The concept was…
Maintaining wilderness facilities such as trails, footbridges, and lean-tos is an important responsibility for the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), the agency in charge of managing the forever-wild Adirondack…
The busy season in the Adirondacks is winding down, but with a bang. The Coronavirus pandemic, which depressed visitation for the first part of the summer, has clearly caused a…
Part 4 of 4 It has been a slow process, but it has been a privilege to observe these changes over a twenty-year period. Now instead of imagining the future,…
Part 3 of 4 When you walk through the woods for miles at a time, it stimulates blood flow throughout your body. The brain is often a passive beneficiary, and…
Part 2 of 4 The year 2000 was memorable for two reasons: I had met Barbara McMartin that winter and became her newest guidebook assistant, and in the summer DEC…
Part 1 of 4 – Introduction Recent news that the remaining portion of Whitney Park, one of the last surviving private parks erected in the 1890s, is on the market…
A little over ten years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture Phil Brown delivered about his then-newly published collection of letters and essays by Bob Marshall, one…
At Adirondack Wilderness Advocates we refer to our core mission as KEEP: Knowledge, Enjoyment, Expansion and Protection of the Adirondack Park’s wildest places. That goes for the High Peaks Wilderness as much as…
The term “overuse” implies that we have too many people visiting the High Peaks. This term, while convenient and perhaps apt, greatly oversimplifies the problem and solution. Certainly, there is…
The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) recently announced plans to revise the unit management plan (UMP) for the Pepperbox Wilderness, a relatively small and seldom-visited area in the western Adirondacks…
The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) recently announced plans to construct a 4-mile segment of a community connector snowmobile trail through lands classified as the Blue Ridge Wilderness. Adirondack Wilderness…