Missed opportunities
After riding my mountain bike a few miles up the D&H Road, I turned off onto an old logging road and pedaled a few more miles to a large clearing with scenic views of the Loon Lake Mountains and Plumadore Range. Beyond the clearing, the road was a mess of logging debris, mud, blow-down and thorns—not bikeable.
It was not what I expected.
In 2009, the state Department of Environmental Conservation released an interim recreation plan for the Sable Highlands that called for connecting this logging road with another to create a 6.5-mile mountain bike trail that would circle a small unnamed peak. The plan also promised a hiking trail to a lookout on the peak. That trail does not yet exist.
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At the time, DEC received hosannas for the plan, the most complex and ambitious of its kind for conservation-easement lands in the Adirondack Park. The department proposed creating a variety of hiking and biking trails, parking areas, canoe put-ins, campsites and other amenities.
“It’s a new experiment,” Neil Woodworth, then the executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club, had told the Explorer. “We never had a recreation plan for such a large unit of easement lands before. This will be a very good test.”
More than a decade later, most of the work has yet to be done.
Peter Bauer, executive director of Protect the Adirondacks, is not surprised, noting that DEC also is years behind in writing and implementing management plans for state-owned forest preserve tracts. “Recreation management on conservation easement lands has always been given short shrift,” he said.
In an email to the Explorer, a DEC spokesman said the department “looks forward to continuing to improve upon the recreational opportunities.” In earlier emails, the department offered no timeline for when projects will be undertaken or when a final recreation plan will be released.
The Sable Highlands
