ADK at 100
On a sunny July day in 2007, Seth Jones for the first time stepped atop Mount Marcy. He took in the power of the summit and its seemingly endless views and encountered a uniformed woman.
Julia Goren, an Adirondack Mountain Club summit steward, told Jones about the fragile alpine ecosystem blanketing New York’s tallest mountain and the importance of not stepping on the plants. Being a steward intrigued him. “It had never really occurred to me that that type of work was out there,” he recalled.
The hiker-steward interaction has happened hundreds of thousands of times since the steward program was established in 1989, but on that day two future education directors of ADK stood together on top of New York state.
Entering its centennial year, ADK, which has enabled so many to summit Marcy and other Adirondack peaks, remains committed to the Adirondacks and its future.
The story of ADK’s founding reads like campfire lore: In January 1921, Meade C. Dobson, of the New York State Association of Real Estate Boards, illegally caught a trout near Utica.
He bragged about the fish to his friend, the chief state game protector, earning himself a fine and an audience with state Conservation Commissioner George Pratt—soon to be the club’s first president.
Dobson pitched Pratt the idea of an Adirondack hiking club similar to the Appalachian Mountain and Green Mountain clubs already working on trail and shelter projects in New England. The commissioner, whose
