Indholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2025 i Adirondack Explorer

2025 EXPLORER TWO FISH SPECIES WITH THE WILL TO SURVIVE Researchers this year uncovered new evidence about the resilient survival instinct of the fish cruising around Adirondack lakes and ponds—for better and for worse. For better: The long-running effort to restore lake trout to Lake Champlain reached a major milestone this year as officials from New York, Vermont and the federal government agreed to suspend the stocking of hatchery-raised trout after one last cohort was stocked in the spring. After 50 years of stocking, the native fish has been restored to the nation’s 13th-largest lake, fisheries managers declared. The decision to end stocking came as the growing population of lake-born wild trout convinced scientists and fisheries managers that the lake’s top predator species can sustain itself without the help of human-reared…

Michael Riley was hitting rock bottom. Efforts to shake the PTSD from his service in the Gulf War were halting at best. And then in 2015 the Navy veteran suffered a traumatic brain injury in a motorcycle crash. But in 2023, Riley, through some fellow veterans in his hometown of Syracuse, heard about Homeward Bound Adirondacks, the Saranac Lake-based program for veterans. The organization provides free assistance to veterans ranging from case management to transportation, mentoring and suicide prevention for those in need. What caught Riley’s attention was the group’s retreats, regularly scheduled on weekends where veterans immerse themselves in the Adirondacks’ unique environment. These retreats are emerging as a hallmark service provided by Homeward Bound. Groups of up to 20 veterans join together from Friday nights to Sunday afternoons…

An environmentalist with a career in the clean energy field, Saranac Lake resident Tim Yeskoo bought a Tesla just over two years ago as his family’s main vehicle. Within the past year, he and his wife drove the car about 20,000 miles, compared to the 2,000 miles put on their gas vehicle. Yeskoo, like many of those interviewed by the Explorer, bought the vehicle for environmental reasons. The cutting-edge technology—including in-car route planning—and low cost of power and routine maintenance are bonuses. “It’s a very high-performing car. It’s better than any other car I’ve driven,” Yeskoo said. “In terms of performance, it smokes any gasoline car, pretty much on the planet.” Yeskoo said the car meets just about all of his needs. In the warmer months, it has a range…

Will Roth had been camping at Giant Washbowl with college students last April when he and another instructor led their charges to a lookout with a fabulous view of the Great Range—and with a cell signal. Roth’s phone began lighting up with texts about Robbi Mecus. “I actually thought that it was good news, and then I read all the messages,” he recalled. Mecus, a longtime forest ranger in the Adirondacks, died in a 1,000-foot fall during an ice climb in Alaska’s Denali National Park. She was 52. Her climbing partner, Melissa Orzechowski, was badly injured. Roth was stunned. After the others returned to their campsite at the pond, he remained at the lookout for 20 minutes, absorbing the news. “I was a little out of it. I just stayed…

For years, I prowled the banks of the Saranac River during the warm months, wondering if I might catch a glimpse of muskrats doing something they’re reputed to do mostly in winter: diving for freshwater mussels. One fall day, I hit the jackpot. I watched a muskrat plunge repeatedly in a section of flowing water where filter-feeding mussels abound. Up the handsome rodent came, again and again, more often than not bearing in its jaws a hard-shelled bivalve of the mussel variety. It dismantled and devoured them, one at a time, in a private spot out of my view. All autumn long at our place, we watch Saranac River muskrats grow fatter by the day. They snack almost incessantly on water smartweeds, sometimes collected by the extravagant mouthful; on the…

On a warm Saturday in mid-September, 45 boaters paddled Forked Lake within view of private property signs. A bald eagle threw a shadow on the water and loons dove and popped up as the “paddlers for wilderness” rallied for nearby Whitney Park, a 36,600-acre estate that’s a mix of wild lands, lakes and ponds with a legacy that dates to the Gilded Age of Adirondack Great Camps. The gathering’s purpose was to push the state to find a way to purchase and protect the Whitney estate, which organizers say is threatened with development. But as the group strategizes its next steps, the future of Whitney Park is as murky as the many wetlands marking the verdant tracts of the estate. The boaters, assembled by the environmental group Protect the Adirondacks,…

Folks have painted outdoors, known as plein air, for centuries, but never so much as today. Plein air festivals around the globe are booming, with a dozen in the Adirondacks alone. European roots How did this all begin? Travelers on the Grand Tour of Europe filled carnets de voyage with sketches. The first Adirondack landscapes were drawn “on the spot” by British officers during the French and Indian War. Explorers, naturalists and expeditionary artists produced watercolor vistas of faraway places. Painting outdoors in oil was the domain of professional artists until the invention of airtight collapsible metal paint tubes in 1841. Professional artists and amateur painters ventured into the wild to celebrate the wonders of creation, untainted by smokestack industrialism. One British tourist visiting Harpers Ferry recalled “the smell…

Katie Rhodes is a frequent visitor to the Adirondacks, bouncing up and over mountains like a kangaroo and steeping herself in local history and culture. There aren’t a lot of ADK angles she’s missed. So when she picked up Sharon McMahon’s “The Small and the Mighty” and read about the meteoric brilliance of suffragist and parttime Adirondacker Inez Milholland, Rhodes was stunned—and maybe just a tad angry. “I was like, ‘whoa, how did I not know about this?’” she said. Milholland has received her due at the local level in the town of Lewis where her family had a retreat. A spectacular little peak was named in her honor in 2019. But the predominant Adirondack peaks are almost exclusively male territory, from (William) Marcy on down. So Rhodes went down…

Intelligent and charismatic, the Canada jay is a year-round resident of the Adirondacks. Exceptional spatial memory allows this boreal bird to remember tens of thousands of cached food locations. Beloved for their engaging demeanor, they make eye contact, study faces (and cars!) and quickly learn to land in a hand for food. Known as the Canada jay from 1831 to 1957, the American Ornithological Society (AOS) renamed the species gray jay in 1957. A campaign by Canadian ornithologists and birders to restore the original name led to the AOS formally changing it back to Canada jay in 2018. Nicknames include “camp robber” for its bold nature in scavenging food from campsites and hikers, and “whiskey jack” derived from the Cree name “wisakedjak” for a trickster spirit! Slightly smaller than a…

The WHOOP UCI Mountain Biking World Series held at Whiteface Mountain in early October was a draw. Thousands of people showed up at the mountain to watch elite cyclists race down a track built on the ski hill. Visitors patronized local hotels, restaurants and shops—exactly the kind of economic boost the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) aims to deliver when it brings world-class events to the region. We all cheer this outcome. But here’s something we don’t applaud: The authority broke New York state environmental law to make it happen. In its rush to prepare the World Cup downhill course, ORDA began construction without the necessary approval from the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The Olympic authority also widened sections of the course and cut 32 trees—actions not included in…

Essex is home to the most gorgeous farm in the Adirondacks, and depending on who’s talking, maybe the entire Eastern Sea-board. Tawny meadows of waving grass slope gently to the Boquet River and the emerald western Champlain hills, which are themselves adorned by the blue majesty of New York’s highest peaks. Lake Champlain sparkles not far to the east, and to the south are miles of protected forest that serve as an avenue for all God’s creatures migrating from Lake Champlain to higher ground in the west. The 1,100-acre, 100% organic farm is also the Adirondacks’ most futuristic. Special European equipment was flown in to build a subterranean infrastructure that lengthens the growing season, drains away excess water and encourages the grasses to develop deep, drought-proof roots probing down into…

When torrential storms dropped historic volumes of rain across the Lake Champlain watershed in 2023, sensors on the edge of Vermont farm fields flashed a bright red warning sign: a pulse of phospho-rus was racing into the lake. Within one week in July, one-half of the lake’s annual targeted phosphorus load from farm runoff and other sources surged in from the lake’s expansive 8,200-square-mile watershed. Phosphorus, which has been the focus of tens of millions of dollars of investment over decades of pollution control work, fuels harmful algal blooms, closing beaches and imperiling safe recreation and public drinking supplies. Scientists at the Lake Champlain Basin Program estimated more than 100 metric tons of phosphorus flowed into the lake on July 11, 2023, alone—the fourth highest single-day delivery of phosphorus to…

For many years Mount Inez was in trail limbo, not quite open to the public, but not quite closed, either. There were no trail markers, but Champlain Area Trails (CATS) would occasionally lead group hikes up what is really a special little peak. Also, from time to time, a stray hiker or two may have become “lost” and wound up on top of Inez, but let’s not dwell on that. The good news is that now the trail has been fully routed, marked and sanctioned by CATS and through the generosity of the owners, the Bunting family of Baltimore. At 1,550 feet, Inez in height comes up shy of the One World Trade Center, but it’s still a stout little hike, gaining about 900 feet in 1.8 miles. To get…

In early September, Tupper Lake’s Gary Koch became only the second hiker to hit a true Adirondack mile-stone: Scaling the 46 highest mountains in New York state, 100 times. And he’s 75 years old. Koch hiked his first mountain at age 6 and in his prime was averaging 250 peaks a year. The big question is: Will he keep going? So far, the answer is yes. “I sometimes only half-jokingly say to myself, they’re like my 46 children,” he said. “That’s what keeps me going; I just love those mountains.” Read the full story by Tim Rowland on the Explorer website. Photos from Koch’s big finish on Whiteface Mountain by Nancie Battaglia…