By Gary Lee
New York State DEC held a meeting of interested parties at the Raquette Lake School on Thursday, December 18 to present a mountain bike plan prepared by the International Mountain Bicycling Association, Trail Solution Program of Boulder, CO.
Forest Ranger Jenifer Temple looking at bike trail maps as DEC spokesperson David Winchell lists comments from public participants.
I attended after reading the proposal to see what others had to say about the proposed new 100 miles of trails in that Unit Management Plan.
David Winchell, spokesman for the DEC Region 5 office in Ray Brook, opened the meeting with a short power point overview of what was proposed.
Winchell was followed by Max Wolckenhauer, a Resource Manager from Albany who talked about the proposal.
Wockenhauer was filling in for McCrea Burnham the contact person for Albany DEC. (Written comments about this proposal can be sent to McCrea Burnham, 625 Broadway, Alabany, NY 12233-4254 or emailed to: Adirondackpark
@dec.ny.gov by January 30, 2015.)
There was a short question and answer period where Eric Kasza, an Albany forester, took questions.
Then the group of approximately thirty broke up into two groups to share ideas about the plan.
Jenifer Temple, Forest Ranger for the Moose River Wild Forest, was also in attendance with planners from DEC for the original UMP.
Preservation groups were well represented, with only a few true mountain bikers that I talked to in attendance: Town of Long Lake Councilman Dean Pohl and wife Donna of Raquettte Lake Navigation, and Ted Christodaro, owner of Pedals and Petals in Inlet.
Also in attendance were two APA employees.
I mentioned at the open question portion of the gathering that I had the first mountain bike in the area and went everywhere on it.
I questioned how these trails were going to be taken care of when the trails—now open to hikers, canoers, snowmobilers and cross-country skiers—can’t be maintained.
They said some of the existing trails that go nowhere, such as those to the ponds in the Moose River Area, would probably be closed and that private groups would have to take care of these new trails.
Most of the trails proposed were around the Eighth Lake and Brown’s Tract Ponds Campsites, with a few in the actual Moose River Area.
Someone asked if these proposed trails had all been walked, or if they were just “pie in the sky” on a map. That question was never answered.
Steve Ovitt, a retired Forest Ranger from Wevertown, asked if outside materials would be brought in during construction of these trails. The answer was no, that only materials on site would be used.
Ovitt didn’t think that the duff and organic materials on site would support biking use.
Much of the materials that were brought in for the handicap trails and sites in the MRRA contained invasive plants which still aren’t controlled.
When the DEC reopens the road to Little Indian Lake in the MRRA, which is still in wild forest and now a bike path, I might look at some of these new proposed trails with more favor.
This is just my personal opinion, but sports-men and women got short changed in the first UMP for the MRRA and they even pay their own way.
Traveling in the MRRA a couple times a week during the summer months and also in the trail system north of Old Forge a few times during the summer I don’t see that much bike traffic to warrant this kind of action.
Some say, build it and they will come. Maybe during September and early October but during June and July, that’s why there is the Black Fly Mountain Bike Challenge.
And when the black flies are gone the deer flies will eat your hands and ears off.
I ride to the ponds and lakes during the summer and the bugs are out there in big numbers.
I guess you could say I’m a tad negative toward the plan and more trails that won’t be maintained.
In the original UMP plan there is a bike path which splits the newly created wilderness area and the West Canada Area.
That trail (road) to my knowledge has never been worked on or improved in four years now they want more.
This was a road which I could still drive on 15 years ago that needed several bridges. But that never happened and I don’t see it happening.
DEC spent I don’t know how much to build a goat path through the woods for a snowmobile trail with 18 bridges connecting the MRRA and Raquette Lake and that isn’t even passable for mountain bikes. When does it end?
Don’t ask me about the new Great South Woods Plan which includes everything south of Route 28 and where they added in Ferd’s Bog. Do they even know where that is?
The concept for the plan can be viewed at: dec.ny.gov/docs
/lands_forests_pdf/mrpwfbike.pdf.
Written comments about this proposal can be sent to McCrea Burnham, 625 Broadway, Alabany, NY 12233-4254 or emailed to: Adirondackpark@dec.ny.gov by January 30, 2015.
