Bigger isn’t necessarily Wilder

NOLS-Northeast is celebrating fifteen years in the Adirondacks this fall, but after completing my NOLS Instructors’ Course nearly fifty years ago, I came back to the Adirondacks hoping to do the same thing. It didn’t happen for a number of reasons, with the biggest having to do with perception, an East versus West perception.

It wasn’t openly talked about but was certainly part of cloistered discussions. The Western perception was there isn’t any wilderness in the Northeast. The fact that there are over a million acres of designated Wilderness in the Adirondacks, and thousands more of de facto wilderness, doesn’t impress Westerners. About the only thing that does is when they hike off trail for themselves.

I’m reminded of my childhood years when I spent the entire summer with my Great Aunt Marnie. At least once a week we went for a drive. I remember one particularly adventurous trip out to Bloomingdale, over the backside of Whiteface Mountain, to Lake Placid, back to Saranac Lake. As we headed down the Franklin Falls Road driving through thick forest she exclaimed, “You don’t want to go into those woods. They go on forever and if you get lost in there you may never be found.” She repeated her admonition at least five more times before we got home. As a ten-year-old I found flaws in her statement: Forests don’t go on forever. If I hiked into one I’d eventually come to a road.

As an adult I know I was right about the first part of her statement, but she was 100% correct about the second. After all, since the 1970s there have been a dozen lost backcountry travelers in the Adirondacks who have never been found. Even if you considered one or two to be victims of foul play, and perhaps another abducted by extraterrestrials (the odds are about the same), you still have a reasonable handful that just plain got lost, never to be seen again.

What’s my point? The point is the Adirondacks may not be as big and wild as what you find out West but just because the farthest you can get from pavement here is about 9 miles doesn’t mean it isn’t wild. Ask anyone who has bushwhacked the Sawtooth Range how challenging and remote the Adirondacks can be.

There’s the case of the young man who a couple of weeks ago wandered off the Van Hoevenberg Trail near Marcy Dam. The Van Hoevenberg trail is one of the more heavily used trails in the High Peaks yet he still got lost. You don’t need the wildest forest to get lost. Two rangers found him and helped him find his way out. The hiker had a map and compass, but didn’t know how to use them. Which goes to show that even having the right equipment can’t save you…if you don’t know how to use it.

The classic story of how wild the Adirondacks can be is from 1971 when 8-year old Douglass Legg got lost north of Newcomb. Legg had followed his uncle on a hike around the property but was sent back to camp to put on long pants. Somewhere along the half-mile stretch between his uncle and camp, he disappeared. It triggered the largest search in Adirondack history involving nearly 1,000 people including some from the Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps.

The boy’s wealthy family even paid to have the Sierra Madre Search and Rescue Unit of California flown to the Adirondacks to assist in the search. The group was considered among the best in the world. They declared the region the most impenetrable and challenging they had ever encountered and departed in frustration. Search efforts lasted a month. Sadly the boy was never found, the case remains open, and the story remains one of the great Adirondack mysteries of the twentieth century.

I was asked recently if I’d ever been lost. I responded, “If anyone says they’ve never been lost they’re either a liar or they haven’t spent much time in the woods.”

There’s nothing to be ashamed of in being lost. The key is being able to get unlost.