Adirondack Peeks Summer 2025

editor and writer whose work has increased awareness of the recreational magnificence of the Adirondack Park. This award directly emphasized your contributions to the digitized High Peaks map, which you dedicated to your father. Tell us how the digitized map came to be. TG: My father was the original editor of the High Peak map and revised it until I took over on the 11th edition. After the 14th edition, ADK decided against upgrading the map to a digital format due to budget constraints and relied on the National Geographic to accompany the guides. That’s when my brother and I decided we would memorialize my father by reviving the map and paying for it to be converted into digital format. Tony with the ATIS counselors of 2022 at his retirement party. SR: I love my ADK map! What a great way to honor your father! What were some of the challenges of editing the ADK guidebooks and map? TG: At times the biggest problem was negotiating with the DEC. We’d have debates whether a trail was still being My father was the original editor of the High Peak map and revised it until I took over on the 11th edition.

I stood firm about what I was putting on the map because of the facts on the ground.

maintained and whether it should be on the map. They might argue, “Yes, it’s still being maintained,” and I would let them know that I’d been on the trail and it truly had not been touched in years, and no one was using it. I never shut out communications with the DEC, but there were some tense moments. I stood firm about what I was putting on the map because of the facts on the ground. SR: When you are editing these materials, do you consider GPS or the measuring wheel more accurate? TG: I still think the wheel is the most accurate because it picks up every single wiggle up and down on the trail, and it never cuts out because you’ve lost the satellite. If GPS loses a satellite and then picks it up again, it doesn’t give you any warning; it just gives the distance by straight lining between the time it lost it and the time it picked it up. Joe Bogardus, #3342WV, an engineer by training, borrowed my wheel and compared it to two different GPS units that he had. As I predicted, the rougher the trail, and the more elevation, the greater was the difference between the GPS distance and the wheel distance. That’s why I still like the wheel.

SUMMER 2025 | 17