One unmistakable fact about Jim Kobak is that he’s into heavy metal. Among the 10,000 or so stickers on his Subaru Forester are Black Sabbath, Slayer, Overkill and Route 666 (also, Bernie Sanders). When he steps out of the car he’s wearing black pants and a black T-shirt with the slogan “Long Live the Loud.”
And then there are the mountain-bike trails he has spent more than a decade creating near Ausable Chasm, all bearing the names of classic heavy-metal bands and tunes. “That’s what I grew up with,” he explained after we took a ride on Blackened. “I was a kid in New Jersey in the ’80s. I was a huge metal-head.”
Music was not the only influence in his teenage years. He attended Pok-O-Mac-Cready summer camp in Willsboro and fell in love with the Adirondacks. When he returned to the camp as a counselor in
