National Trails Day events: June 2

This Saturday, June 2, is the 20th annual National Trails Day. A number of local organizations have scheduled volunteer trail work projects and events to introduce people to natural places. Following is a partial list:

Wilton Wildlife Park & Preserve, Scout Road, 10am – 3pm. WWPP’s Lupine Festival will be held at their Camp Saratoga parcel and is expected to coincide with the peak of the wild blue lupine bloom and the first brood of Karner blue butterflies for 2012. Events include nature walks led by DEC and Nature Conservancy personnel and presentations with live local reptiles, amphibians, and birds of prey. Children’s activities include nature craft projects and pond exploration with dipping nets. The recently restored Cornell Hill fire tower will be open. Check their website for directions and a complete list of activities.

Wild blue lupine

Haystack, Basin and the last snow on Marcy? 05/27/2012

Mount Marcy and its snow bowl, viewed from Haystack's summit

My wife Beth and I have a deal: when there’s an opportunity for her to get another peak towards her 46, she gets to hike. On Sunday Beth teamed up with three of the women she hiked with last summer to tackle Haystack Mountain in the upper Great Range. Haystack is often cited as having the best view of all the High Peaks, not only for its close-up perspective on surrounding peaks like Marcy and Gothics, but also for its feeling of all-encompassing wilderness. As a bonus, the view on Sunday included what may be winter’s last remaining snow in the Adirondacks.

North Creek summer 2012 update

The Saratoga North Creek Railway recently announced their summer operating schedule for 2012. Daily passenger service will begin this Saturday, May 26 and continue through late October. SNCR and its parent company, Iowa Pacific Holdings, expect ridership this summer could approach 24,000 passengers – double last summer’s number - due to a longer season and expanded schedule.

2011-12 Ski Season Wrap-up and Highlights

You wouldn't necessarily know it from the title of my article in Adirondack Almanack earlier this week - 2011-12 Ski Season the Worst in 20 Years - but I actually had a very good, maybe even excellent, ski season. Of course, that article was more about the decline in skier visits at Adirondack ski centers (and nationwide) than about my own personal experience this winter. To some extent, a skier's season is what he or she makes of it.

“Grossly" unprepared lost hikers should be fined

Yes, there’s a pun in the title, but the subject is serious.

Last Thursday, May 3, a group of 5 hikers became lost in the High Peaks. When they were reported missing at 11pm, state police and DEC officers launched an overnight search. The missing hikers were found by rescuers around 10am the next morning, after they spent a cold, wet night outdoors. According to published reports, the hikers were grossly unprepared. They lacked essential hiking gear like a map and compass. Their "plan" had been to hike from the Upper Works trailhead to the Ausable Lakes and back – an illogical route of at least 30 miles. As if to underscore their lack of preparedness, they informed DEC officers that they had urinated on each other to keep warm overnight. That gives something of a new meaning to the phrase “grossly” unprepared, doesn’t it?

Inside The Blue Line

I have a lot of friends who are hikers and even 46ers, but Bob Marcellus is in a different category altogether. A self-described “hiking machine,” Bob has polished off three rounds of the 46 in the last 5 years. Bob’s latest project is a self-published book, Inside The Blue Line, in which he shares 156 of the images he’s captured while hiking in the High Peaks and elsewhere in the Adirondacks.

Jeff: I’ve known you as a telemark skier for more than 20 years, Bob. When did you get into hiking?

Bob: I first hiked in the Adirondacks as a kid with my Dad, and his stories of climbing the Trap Dike in the 1950s have stayed with me ever since those first early hikes. As an adult, my choices took me in other directions, such as skiing and cycling, and hiking trips to the mountains were few and far between. The spark was re-ignited during the winter of 2007. A friend had climbed Cascade, and told me she was thinking about doing some more peaks solo. I told her I didn’t think hiking alone was a good idea, and offered to go with her.

Climbing with kids at the Gunks (Peters Kill): 04/28 & 04/29/2012

Although I call myself a climber, the truth is I logged just a single day at the cliff last year. Once a climber, always a climber I suppose. Beth’s climbing roots run deeper than mine: she started climbing more than 20 years ago and is a bona fide Gunkie. Finding any time to climb at all in recent years has been a challenge with our two young kids. But kids are natural climbers, and when we saw how much fun our kids had scrambling on the rocks when we hiked Owls Head last fall, we figured they were ready to try some roped climbing.

This past weekend, we headed down to New Paltz with the kids and flexible plans to either hike or climb. Peters Kill had been recommended to us as a good place to climb with kids, and turned out to be a good choice. Peters Kill features the same high quality quartz conglomerate rock found just down the road at the Trapps, but is uncrowded and features easy access to the cliffs.