Adirondack Peeks Summer 2025

Club people who had been toying with the idea for years. Nothing having been done about it, however, I took the initiative by suggesting that the Keene Valley Chapter of the ADK, of which I was then the trails chairman, would be glad to construct the trail. However, Harold Weston, Secretary of the ATIS, thought understandably that it would be more appropriate for the ATIS to construct the trail since it was in the territory normally served by that organization. Anyway, given that the trail was to be constructed, and since I had been ATIS trail crew foreman during the previous years, I was the logical person to direct Giant Ridge Trail operations. We finished the trail in nine days. Due to its shorter distance to the summit, fewer vertical feet of ascent from Chapel Pond, and spectacular views on the way up, the Giant Ridge Trail soon became the most popular approach to Giant’s summit. I wish now that I had known enough to install a lot of water bars on the steep section above the Nubble Trail which has since eroded badly. In 1966, my son, Tony, Burns Foster, and I constructed the Alfred Weld Trail to Gothics over Pyramid Peak from the Lower Ausable Lake with its side extension to Sawteeth. Though there was a general desire among ATIS people for a trail up Gothics from the Lower Lake, it was I who conceived the plan to run the trail into the Pyramid-Sawteeth Notch so that it could go over Pyramid Peak as well as reach Sawteeth by a side extension. Harold Weston in “Freedom in The Wilds” suggests that it was he who conceived the route of this trail which was, in general, true. However, I ignored his request to follow his descent route from the Gothics-Pyramid col. With Foster joining us halfway through the operation, it took us fourteen days to complete the project. For understandable reasons, certain people, including our good friend, Trudy Healy, complained that by cutting this trail over

Pyramid we would be opening up to the public one of the last spectacular views not serviced by a trail. In fact, Trudy predicted that in no time people would probably be playing radios on the top of Pyramid Peak. I, of course, scoffed at her remark, commenting that it would not be that bad; but fate played the joker sooner than anyone could have believed. Learning that the trail had just been completed to Gothics, Landon Rockwell, and a friend climbed Gothics, while Burns Foster and I were completing the Sawteeth extension. Meeting Rockwell and his friend in the notch at the end of the day, Rockwell commented: “You know? As we reached the top of Pyramid, a guy was sitting on the summit playing his radio!” Thinking that Rockwell had heard of Trudy’s comment and knowing his habit of liking to kid me, I refused to believe his report; but a few days later, a man actually called at our house on Interbrook Road and proved in his conversation that he was the “culprit.” A General Electric engineer, he played his radio while climbing because he was scared of lightning and wanted to be warned by radio of its near presence. Trudy was prophetic! Looking back from the objectivity of 1990, one side of me regrets that I ever helped bring more people to out of the way places in the mountains by constructing trails and describing routes to trailless peaks in guide books. If only everyone visiting these places were a William James! Enough may now be enough. But my other side argues that our good Lord created the world to be used by mankind and that we must be willing to share the good things of life, even though they get tarnished a bit in the process. Effective leadership in educating people to use the out of doors wisely and appreciatively can limit the amount of tarnish, and I am encouraged to see how successful, so far, education has been.

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