The Adirondack legacy of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is more than just a land acquisition and a failed snowmobile master plan. The one project that can be fully attributed to Cuomo involved a mine, a protected wilderness, and a highly controversial amendment to the state’s constitution that allowed one to gain access to the other.
Trails in the Mountain Pleasure Grounds
Part 2 of 4 The Laws of 1895 authorized the state to lay out paths in the newly created Adirondack Park. There is little evidence that anything was done at that time. In 1909 Governor Hughes advocated trails and roads to give greater access to the “mountain pleasure grounds.” As it turned out, recreational trail building by the state began a few years later, not because of Hughes’ plans, but in a rather circuitous way.
Join AWA for Second Wilderness Webinar
Join us for our second Wilderness Webinar, beginning at 7:00 pm on Wednesday, September 1, 2021. Long-time AWA member and board member Ari Epstein will walk through the proof-of-concept Visitor Use Management Tool he has been developing, which could someday be implemented at popular trailheads to support adaptive management in the Adirondack Park.
A Short History of Adirondack Trail Building
Part 1 of 4 Hindsight is wonderful! With what we know about the Adirondacks today and what we know about building trails, we could devise the most wonderful trail network, one that would protect the fragile slopes of the High Peaks, take hikers to mountaintops all around the Park, and ameliorate problems of overuse and under-use.
A Message to the Adirondack Wilderness Community
When I moved to Upstate New York in 2013, acquaintances kept telling me about the Adirondacks, how magical they are, with their steep-sided mountains and layers of forest, mirror-calm lakes and clear-flowing creeks; bears, moose, loons. Having lived most of my adult life in the West and coming to New York from interior Alaska, I was skeptical, but hopeful. Could there really be such a large protected area in the Eastern U.S.?
Exciting Changes on AWA’s Board!
Adirondack Wilderness Advocates (AWA) is announcing three new changes to its leadership positions, including a new chair of its Board of Directors, a new addition to the Board, and a new technical advisor. These changes add a wealth of knowledge and professional experience to the organization.
Cotton Lake: The Wilderness No One Knows
The preferred method for preserving the “Cotton Lake Wilderness” as a state-recognized wilderness is to remove the quotation marks – for the APA board to take definitive action and reclassify the land per the procedures set in place by the SLMP. Doing so would elevate Cotton Lake to equal status with the nearby West Canada Lake and Ha-de-ron-dah areas.
The Company I Keep
As he ate the moose slowly moved toward shore, unperturbed by his mucky environment, his ears occasionally flicking away a nuisance fly. From what I could make out through the camera’s viewfinder his bulbous nose spent much time in the water. Then he would lift his head up, displaying his broad rack like hands splayed in supplication. They looked ponderous, an evolutionary over-indulgence, even if I already knew that evolution had produced much larger racks on other cervids lost to extinction.
Hiker Dispersal – Take the Survey!
Dear AWA Supporters: The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the Adirondack Mountain Reserve (AMR) have enacted a pilot permit program at the AMR. This brings to the…
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Remembering Paul Schaefer: Camp Life at the Cataract Club
The Cataract Club was not a formal organization with charter members and bylaws. There was no tar-paper cabin standing on a paper company lease. The camp was a surplus Army squad tent erected each season on the same campsite located high in a valley on the back side of Eleventh Mountain.
Ecosystems, Diversity, and the Wilderness Experience
To figure out solutions to protecting the High Peaks Wilderness, first we need to fully understand what is threatening it on an ecological and social basis. Those threats might include some aspects of high use, such as improper disposal of human waste and trail erosion in sensitive habitats, but if we choose to only focus on these impacts we run the risk of fixing a leak in a dam that is about to burst.
Wilderness in the Presence of History
The legal definition of wilderness in the Adirondack Park, since 1972, has in part read “an area of state land or water having a primeval character … [which] generally appears…
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