SPRING 2019 Vol. LVI No.1 AdirondackPEEKS MAGAZINE OF THE ADIRONDACK FORTY-SIXERS

ContentsContents

2 President’s2 ReportPresident’s – Siobhán Report Carney-Nesbitt – Siobhán Carney-Nesbitt#5930W #5930W 4 Musings4 on aSkylight Disappearing Has a RockAdirondack Problem Artifact – Kayla –White Chuck and Schwerin Tyler Socash #942 #6026W 7 Fire Towers8 –Talking A Symbol Points: of the A Conversation Adirondacks with – Bill Scott Frenette van #216Laer 9 Five Fire12 Tower The Peaks Compass in a Day- A Tool – Jim Few Pugh Understand #320 – By Charles Kerry Skee #1783, NE111er 10 Talking14 Points: Straw A Conversation Into Gold – with Robin Margaret Wall Kimmerer H. Murphy #7644 14 A Day in18 the Mountain Sentinel Range: Vignettes Linking Slide, Kilburn, Sentinel, and Stewart – Kevin MacKenzie #5430W 20 Mountain Vignettes Around the Mountain – Elie Rabinowitz Relapse and RevivalPi-Day – (3.14.17)Robert P. in Hunter the Seward #7905 Range – Christian Guertin #10921 A Peak RelationshipHidden – JackGems Warnick of Whiteface Mountain – John Haywood Anniversary28 Boulder Finish to Reporta 46er Quest – John – SassoTom McNair#7130W 28 Club News32 Finishing Class: 2018 and Sketches ADK55 46ers InClark Memoriam & Marshalls’ 100th Anniversary Celebration August 3-5, 2018 – Mark Simpson #6038 Peak Branding – Michael Keenan Outdoor Skills Workshop 2018 – William Lundy # 3310 and Don McMullen #224W Trailmasters Report – Tom Fine #7138, Sam Eddy #3393W, and Joe Bogardus #3342W Anatomy of a Lean2Rescue – Peter Davis 41 In Memoriam

Front Cover: Mount Marshall from the Opalescent River outlflow from Flowed Lands.Photo credit: Johnathan Esper #3187W, www.WildernessPhotographs.com Inside Cover: Buck Pond sunrise, Onchiota. Photo credit: Joseph Rector #7648 pile of stones high enough to again make Skylight higher than Haystack. Making up 36 feet was clearly impossible, but such Skylight Has a Rock Problem an impossibility hasn’t stopped hikers in Maine from trying to build enough of a cairn (40 feet, I think) to make Katahdin Legend states that if a climber one mile high.” fails to carry a rock from timberline to place on the summit cairn, it will surely rain. —Rev. Ernest Ryder #7

Skylight’s rock pile grows with every addition, it threatens more than New York’s rarest ecosystem. On one of the Northeast’s most secluded peaks, the wild character of a mountain is beginning to change.

View of Skylight from Mt. Marcy, New Year's Day 2012. Photo credit: Justine Mosher #7207W Tradition

Adding rocks to Skylight’s summit cairn is not a new phenomenon. The Adirondack Mountain Club’s own guidebook says, “Legend states that if a climber fails to By Kayla White and Tyler Socash #6026W Alpine Azalea flowers are only a quarter of an inch wide. carry a rock from timberline to place Photo credit: The Summit Steward Program on the summit cairn, it will surely rain.” Rev. Ernest Ryder #7 (and co-founder of the Forty-Sixers of Troy) is credited with here is no easy passage to Mount Sky- It must be a curious sight, after all of that can Adirondack hikers admire the only creating that legend. However, there Tlight. Encircled by an intermingled hiking, to come upon a group of laboring state population of fragile Alpine Azalea are other theories on why hikers started tangle of spruce and fir krummholz (Ger- summit stewards in this transition between (Kalmia procumbens). Alpine Azalea carrying a rock to Skylight. man for “crooked wood”), the summit is the krummholz and the alpine zone. Inter- blooms in the first week in June after the “As for how that ‘tradition’ started, I as geographically isolated from civiliza- estingly enough, these stewards aren’t car- snow has finally melted, expending only seem to recall my father saying that there tion as any place can be in New York rying rocks up Skylight towards the sum- enough energy to flower for a week. were those for whom Skylight was the State. Determined peakbaggers must rise mit—they are bringing them down. Their small stature and short blooming favorite of all the High Peaks,” says Tony out of the valleys of Panther Gorge, brave Skylight, the fourth-tallest high peak, period make them a hard plant to spot, Goodwin #211, referring to his late father the floating bog bridges of the Opales- is a favorite among Adirondack hikers but botanists and stewards always try to James Goodwin #24. “By the 1902 maps, cent, or even climb up and over the state’s and 46ers. Whether influenced by the make the trip. Most hikers will miss this Skylight was the third highest at 4,920 tallest peak just to have an opportunity mountain’s innate beauty or challenging natural wonder of the plant world below feet, compared to Haystack at 4,918 feet. for a summit push. Scrambling out of the remoteness, many 46ers save Skylight for and instead be increasingly distracted by The 1953 series of topo maps, however, Four Corners junction, the trees become the final peak in their quest. The summit is the looming silhouette ahead. The once reduced Skylight to fourth at 4,924 feet gnarled and stunted and the well-earned broad and open, with a sky that seems to go modest summit of Skylight has morphed compared to Haystack that ‘rose’ to 4,960 mountaintop goal is finally within reach. on forever. Upon its crest, and only here, into a gigantic, unsightly rock pile. As feet. The idea supposedly was to build the 4 | ADIRONDACK PEEKS SPRING 2019 | 5 Damage to Alpine Plants seem like a big deal, but when this effort impact of Colvin’s historical survey bolt, moment of summit solitude, the massive Summit stewards primarily use rock summit. If you must bring a rock, consider is compounded with hundreds, if not informative trail junction signs, and subtle rock pile is a jarring reminder that you for their trail work in the alpine zone. taking it back down with you when you Skylight is one of only 21 Adirondack thousands, of people the impacts multiply. scree walls that concentrate hiker traffic are not alone. Thousands of hikers have When approaching any project, stewards leave. ADK, in conjunction with NYS DEC summits to have alpine vegetation growing This rock pile is now so large that it spills on durable surfaces while protecting climbed this mountain before. While that carefully consider how their actions and the 46ers, will be working to finish above its tree line. The Adirondack alpine onto alpine plants, crushing the plants the alpine resource. While certain will always be true, you can choose to join affect the wild character of the mountain. removing the rocks this year. Please spread zone is home to 27 rare, threatened, or in its immediate vicinity. Hikers are also infrastructures must be in place to aid the stewardship movement to help ensure Summit stewards use rocks to build small the word that bringing a rock to Skylight endangered species of alpine plants. Only trampling alpine plants to navigate around people in recreating safely and protecting that primeval characteristics remain at scree walls that delineate the trail. These is no longer the preferred behavior. By 173 acres of this unique ecosystem exist the rock pile, causing further destruction. the resource, it is important to balance large in places like Skylight and beyond. are placed in precise locations where choosing to preserve the natural scene, in the state, all of it located amidst heavily Alpine vegetation can only handle being the wildness of a place. Laura and the Are these places not worth our best efforts alpine plants have been damaged in the you are doing one small act to protect used hiking trails and popular summits. stepped on a handful of times before late Guy Waterman #670W, both avid to defend? past, visually reminding hikers to walk only Skylight’s wild legacy. These thoughtful Skylight features a mere ten acres of alpine being killed off, leaving exposed soil to wilderness preservationists and staunch on bare rock surfaces. Summit stewards acts of stewardship add up, too. habitat on its summit, which surprisingly be eroded quickly away by wind and rain protectors of the wild character of the Summit Steward Trail Work also brush in areas to aid in restoration Decades from now a hiker may toil ties it with Iroquois as the fourth-largest until only bedrock remains. northeast Mountains, wrote extensively and pack loose soil with rocks to prevent through Panther Gorge and head ever alpine summit in New York. Protecting on the need to consider preserving the With Skylight’s rock pile toppling over, erosion. upwards from Four Corners. With sweat these “islands in the sky” has been a Spirit of Wildness spirit of wildness in places like Skylight’s hikers have found other places to put rocks. Since most of the rock above tree on their brow and determination in their massive undertaking by organizations summit: These surplus rocks have been used to line is already stabilizing shallow soil, heart, this aspiring 46er might be your like the 46ers, Adirondack Mountain Even though Mt. Marcy saw its create rock stacks (hiker-made rock piles) stewards need rocks carried up. The future great-granddaughter, or perhaps Club (ADK), New York State Department first recorded ascent in 1837, decades Being intangible—more a perception than and rock art (designs made using rock). Summit Stewards’ Carry-a-Rock program merely a stranger destined to be labeled of Environmental Conservation (NYS passed before the same could be said anything else—wildness is far more fragile Rock stacks should not be confused with encourages hikers to bring fist-sized rocks an “unnamed woodsman.” Cresting DEC), and the Adirondack Chapter of the for neighboring Skylight. There was no than alpine flowers, the boot damage to cairns, which are navigational markers to Marcy, Algonquin, Wright, Colden and Skylight in an increasingly populated and Nature Conservancy (TNC). The Summit rock pile to be found when Verplanck which we can measure, monitor, and at- that are professionally built by summit Cascade—but not Skylight. There are developed world, these unyielding souls Steward Program is a partnership of the Colvin pounded his surveying bolt into tempt to control. Wildness is imperceptibly stewards. These cairns are designated signs at the Heart Lake Program Center find themselves above the krummholz. latter three and has been supported by Skylight’s crown in 1873. At that moment, eroded away. It is chipped at over time by to be placed in specific locations by the trailhead asking hikers to grab a rock, and Enraptured by wildness, even with subtle the 46ers since the program’s inception Skylight became the last major mountain those who want to build a hut at a quiet view NYS DEC land manager to keep hikers leave it at the summit of those particular guidance owed to a few modest cairns en in 1989. The Summit Steward Program’s to be climbed in the northeastern United spot, or locate a trail up a hitherto pathless on bare rock and off alpine plants. When mountains. This program involves hikers route, the mysteries of the natural world mission is to protect New York’s alpine States. In the wake of Colvin’s ascent, ridge, or construct a bridge where none had building cairns, summit stewards quarry in the management of the alpine plants, thrive. Skylight appears untrammeled, been deemed necessary in the past… Each habitat through education, trail work, and change has been favorably slow to come rocks from below tree line or find rocks giving them a tangible connection to unchanged, and these visitors are allowed must be carefully weighed; measured against research. to the mountain. Even in our increasingly that are sitting on bare bedrock to ensure the alpine zone, and has proven to be to mentally embrace the intangibles of what is gained and what is lost in terms of Skylight’s rock pile has become a populated and developed world, one can no damage occurs to fragile plants and an excellent avenue for stewards to wildness. Perhaps they’ll wonder at the mountain solitude and wildness. Wildness, burden to summit stewards, hikers and enjoy the increasingly rare feelings of soil. Cairns are specifically designed to make direct contact with the people remoteness and the vastness of their it seems, is expendable. But once spent, solitude, tranquility, peace and smallness withstand intense weather conditions like alpine plants alike. Over the years, hikers like time itself, we can rarely gain it back. participating. view. Maybe they will sit in awe of the adding stones to the summit cairn on atop Skylight. In recent years, however, hurricane-force winds and snow storms. stillness unlike anything experienced in Skylight has caused damage to the alpine the toll of visitation is adding up. The When thinking about the wild character When built correctly and left undisturbed, Future civilization. Or perhaps they’ll marvel at a plants. When dealing with impacts to the amassing pile of rocks on the summit, of Skylight, it is important to consider cairns should last forever. Unfortunately, tiny blossoming Alpine Azalea, springing resource it is important to think about much like the frequency of spotting how the aesthetics of a massive rock pile summit stewards have to rebuild cairns With all of these impacts in mind, it like eternal hope. Wildness, though the cumulative effects. One person unburied toilet paper below tree line, can detract from a hiker’s experience. over the years due to hikers dismantling or is important to consider breaking the modest, endures. putting one rock on a summit doesn’t continues to rapidly exceed the visual Although you might be enjoying a adding rocks to them. tradition of bringing a rock to Skylight’s Interested in learning more about protecting alpine plants? ADK is hosting the Northeast Alpine Stewardship Gathering on October 25-27, 2019 at the High Peaks Resort. The Gathering is an opportunity for alpine researchers, planners, land managers, hiking clubs, stewards, and interested parties to meet to share information and improve the understanding and management of the 2018 Before and After pictures alpine areas of the northeastern United of the rock pile on Skylight. States. This event provides a forum for the Stewards relocated over three discussion of challenges and opportunities tons of rock. common to all northeastern alpine areas, as well a chance to celebrate the qualities that make each of these areas unique. It will also be a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Adirondack High Peaks Summit Stewardship Program. To learn more, visit www.watermanfund.org/alpine Photo credit: Chuck Pacer Photo credit: The Summit Steward Program -gathering/. n

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