Essex Chain’s deteriorating logging roads: Missed recreational opportunity in an Adirondack landscape long shaped by human activity

Essex Chain road surface

I am a wilderness advocate and am not in favor of roads being built or maintained in wilderness areas. While I don't necessarily believe bicycles are anathema to the wilderness experience, I am ok with them not being allowed on hiking trails in wilderness areas. With over half the Adirondack Forest Preserve being open to bicycles, there is plenty of space for everyone to have a slice of the pie. From a personal perspective, I am never about denying other user groups access. I am more for everyone respecting the access rights of other user groups and doing their part to make it all work. 

However, you absolutely can, even in wilderness areas, allow bicycle travel via linear recreation corridors or bicycle corridors (as they are implemented within the Catskills Forest Preserve). These corridors wouldn't necessarily be on hiking trails (in the Catskills some are and some aren't but they also go over mountains in the Catskills whereas you could route them on logging roads in the Adirondacks) and wouldn't infringe on anyone's wilderness experience. In a lot of wilderness areas these corridors actually already existed as logging roads. Wilderness is more a state of mind then a reality. Virtually no area of the Adirondacks is untrammeled by man. And no matter how we try to cover it up, the signs of man will always be there by those with a keen eye. So spiting recreationalist and also dividing them into worthy and unworthy user groups with the concept that their 2-10ft wide sliver of infrastructure (trails and logging/woods roads) is going to ruin the environment and wilderness experience, is simply gaslighting. It just gives groups an excuse to be recreational bigots. Like anything, if you give someone the moral high ground to justify exclusion, they will likely fight to stay on top of that hill. 

In the case of the Essex Chain, it's a low use area with a massive logging road infrastructure that could have been phenomenal for family bikepacking, canoe camping, and backpacking. Being a relatively small unit, especially without the proposed bridge over the Cedar River, it's not a place the more hard core recreational users will ever flock to. It's also difficult to get to and then into (especially if paddling). The upside, it came pre-built with all the infrastructure necessary for ideal recreation for equestrian, XC skiers, and the disabled.  Instead, through a series of compromises they made Essex Chain as unfriendly as possible for everyone. As a result the roads weren't intentionally rewilded and bikes were allowed to access them, but they were not longer maintained at all beyond the MAPWD section (which is in phenomenal shape, despite and in part motor vehicle use beyond it's locked gates) to Fifth Lake. In many areas, especially closer to the Cedar River, these roads are no longer followable at all. This was a huge loss in a place (the Adirondacks) where even cutting a standard 2-foot wide hiking trail requires years of studies and then approvals, followed by the inevitable years of legal battles. Imagine having trails already cut and then deciding to abandon them simply to achieve a made up ideal in an area massively trammeled by man but even with (minimal) road maintenance would have still mostly reverted to nature within the unit boundaries, aside from the linear recreational corridors.  

I understand there is very small subsegment of folks that believes that our wild lands should be completely undeveloped. I respect that. For the folks that despise recreational infrastructure, they simply can choose to avoid it. In total, recreational infrastructure probably occupies less than 5% of total forest preserve and easement land area. That means that the small subsegment that eschews infrastructure has unfettered access to 95% of the forest preserve. Lands we all pay taxes to keep. Lands that are for all residents to use. 

This post isn't arguing we build more trails (at least not without any oversight) bur rather that we maintain and redesign existing trail beds. Even if every feasible snowmobile trail in the Forest Preserve was hardened (this merely means avoiding or bridging swampy sections that are frozen in winter) and maintained for 4 season use, likely no additional trees would need to be cut. And in essence no new infrastructure would actually be built on untrammeled lands.

Hiking trail as wide as a road (photo: Adirondack Council)

Pragmatically looking at it on a grand scale those roads are about as insignificant as anything that could be done to develop the Adirondacks, but would have made a huge difference in dispersing use and helping to protect other areas from looking like tanks rolled through. It also would have made more of an economic difference to local communities whom tourism is at least somewhat important. 

When you look at the trails in the High Peaks Wilderness, you realize bikes and logging roads aren't the bad guy. You realize that without properly designed trails, hikers are just as destructive and capable of creating, merely with the soles of their boots, a path as wide as those logging roads that were incongruent with nature. A trail or roadbed is merely a linear recreational corridor that concentrates use, preventing the rest of the forest from being impacted. It's a sacrificial sliver of our public recreational lands. It's not the end of wilderness or the death of our environment. 

This hiking trail, which likely never
saw a bike, has nearly 3ft of erosion
(photo: Adirondack Council)

Hardened trail being built in the largest wilderness area in NY
and the east coast. This is actually the approved surface by the
most restrictive protection group in the Adirondacks.
It doesn't look very wild to me.
(photo: Protect the Adirondacks)