UPDATE: Development Continues on AWA’s Visitor Use Management App
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…
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Wilderness Drop Zones: A Poor Management Practice
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…
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Protecting the Wilderness with Positive Reinforcement
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…
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Wilderness Visitor Management: There’s an App for That!
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…
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AWA Takes an Active Role in High Peaks Visitor Management
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…
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Adirondack Explorer – It’s Debatable: No To Permits
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…
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On Russell M.L. Carson and Peaks and People of the Adirondacks
The following are excerpts from the essay, “On Russell M.L. Carson and Peaks and People of the Adirondacks,” published in Wander-Thrush: Lyric Essays of the Adirondacks (Ra Press, 2018) and…
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Reasons Not to Open Boreas Ponds to Motorized Access
During the course of the last year, much has been written about why the Boreas Ponds Tract should be classified as Wilderness by the Adirondack Park Agency (APA), but it…
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Adirondack Love Affair
Although I have lived in the Adirondack Park for the last 5 years, my love affair with the Adirondacks goes much further back than that. I have been coming to…
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An Unselfish Wilderness Advocate’s View
After attending APA public hearings and reading articles from Access the Adirondacks, I can’t help but question, “Am I the bad guy thinking the Boreas Ponds Tract should be a…
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High Peaks Wilderness Gateway
This proposal is a companion piece to the Adirondack Wilderness Advocates’ proposal for a true Wilderness classification for the Boreas Ponds Tract with Gulf Brook Road closed at the gate. …
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A Perspective from the High Peaks
By all accounts, it takes effort to get to the summit of Mt. Marcy. Even the easiest route to the top of New York State demands an exhausting climb up…
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