Machines in the Preserve It's hiking, not snowmobiling, that

[john]

This is good and right on..

By Jim McCulley
Lake Placid Snowmobile Club

When Gov. Pataki announced the Snowmobile Plan for the Adirondacks, the snowmobile community looked at it as a positive step. We felt that finally someone understood the importance of our sport, and since 55 percent of all businesses in the Adirondacks close for the winter, the economic benefits for the region would be dramatic.

Unfortunately, honesty has been removed from this debate and from most aspects of environmental debate. If the environmental community told the truth it would be asking that only snowmobiles be allowed in the forest preserve. Because it's the environmentalist form of recreation that is creating the most damage in the forest preserve and stressing the wildlife.

The very act of hiking leads to erosion that is so dramatic that one environmentalist argued that a photo I had taken of a hiking trail was a river bed! When you couple that with the fact that the DEC is shooting wildlife because they are a "nuisance" to the hiking community, you must step back and question your preconceived notions about who is damaging the forest preserve.

After all, snowmobiles ride on snow, putting only a half-pound per square inch of pressure on the snow, and our so-called large groomers put only two pounds per square inch on the snow. A hiker compacts the soil at five pounds per square inch and removes an ounce of soil per step. Please go to You Tube and view our movies and you can compare a nice grassy path that a snowmobile trail is in the summer to the mosh pits that are called hiking trails.

My favorite complaint about the plan is that cutting 12-foot-wide trails would make the trails just like roads. Peter Bauer of the Residents' Committee to Protect the Adirondacks said, "The foot trail experience is greatly diminished when you're walking on a dirt road in the sun as opposed to walking on a trail under a canopy." Bauer is either intentionally deceiving the public or has no knowledge how nature works.

Anyone with common sense knows that if a trail is cut to 12 feet wide for safety that within four or five years the tree branches surrounding the trail will grow towards the sunlight and close the canopy. Interestingly enough, there have been no complaints about the 13- to 49-foot-wide back-country ski trails on Mt. Marcy cut, of course, for the safety of the skiers.