Adirondack Peeks Winter 2024

Colonel Swan was an impressive in dividual. He was the mayor of Terry town, New York, and a colonel in the Army, serving in both World Wars. His wife was the daughter of the camp’s founder. Next thing you know, I’m at the Harmon train station heading up to the Adirondack mountains for the summer. SR: Did you know any other kids who were going? PC: No, absolutely no one and, sud denly, I’m living in an army tent, sleep ing on a cot, with four other people for the next eight weeks. After an initial adjustment, a feeling of indepen dence began. It was great and every thing just grew on me. SR: Did your parents come to visit? PC: There was one parent visit about three weeks into the session and naturally I received a number of very positive letters from Mom asking me what I’m doing and if I am having fun. SR: What are some of your favorite memories from that first summer? PC: I remember how great it was mak ing friends, learning to swim, and passing the swim test, which was a quarter mile swim in Long Pond. I learned to canoe, and I climbed Giant, my first high peak. I actually climbed eight high peaks my first summer. SR: Tell us about your climb up Giant. PC: The slides impressed me. Of course, the big ones hadn’t come down yet. We camped at the top of Roaring Brook Falls where there was a campsite with a wood frame struc ture that we spread a tarp over. We gathered wood for the fire; it was my first time cooking in the woods. We got smoke in our eyes and all that good stuff. SR: I read in Heaven Up-h’isted-ness the six new slides that formed on Gi ant’s west face were named Bottle, the Question Mark, Eagle, Finger, and Tulip. Apparently, it happened after a

heavy downpour in June, 1963 when the saturated landscape just slid down in huge sections and buried a number of cars on the road below. After Giant were you hooked and officially pursu ing your high peaks? PC: In the dining hall at camp there was a big mountain chart on the wall and once you climbed five high peaks you could sign your name on it and start recording your climbs. After ev ery climb, the minute I got back to camp I would run to the dining hall and check off the mountains that I climbed. SR: What did it feel like to go back to school after a summer like this? PC: My life back home and at camp were two different worlds because the kids back home didn't even know about the Adirondacks and hadn’t done the things I did all summer. It was a more personal experience. I think the biggest thing I noticed was that my Boy Scout program never in cluded any camping in the woods. Once we went outside and cooked hot dogs over a fire, but that was about it. Scouting is supposed to be about the outdoors. What I did at camp Poko dwarfed what I did with the Boy Scouts.

SR: Did you keep in touch with your camp friends during the school year? Write letters? PC: No, I'm a guy, Sherry; guys don't write letters. My parents got one a week because it was mandatory on Sunday. SR: It sounds like a kid’s dream sum mer vacation! So, you got to sign up again the following summer? PC: What really cemented my sec ond year was an offer to participate in the reenactment of a “Super Marcy.” Camp Pok-O-Moonshine was es tablished in 1905. During the camp’s first twenty years there was no trans portation available to take the boys out on climbing trips—vehicles were not available yet—so all trips left the camp on foot to their destinations. A trip to Marcy involved hiking over seventy-five miles in four to five days, hence the term “Super Marcy.” In 1957, the camp decided to reenact a Super Marcy, which involved seven campers and two counselors setting out from Willsboro, hiking through the Jay Range, over Whiteface, and crossing through Lake Placid to the top of Marcy and heading back over the Upper Range to the Garden. I was big for my age, and at the time, the se nior section didn't have a large group

1957 Super Marcy, Age 11

6 | ADIRONDACK PEEKS