What's Your Nature?
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WINTER TRACKING
The ICNC hosts a wonderful array of interesting animals and fauna throughout the year. Peter O'Shea, local naturalist and author, will lead the group in identifying various creatures by their tracks and other unique features. If snow is sufficiently deep, trackers can bring their snowshoes or borrow them from the Nature Center. If no snow, we'll scout the trails on foot. Dress appropriately.
Leader: Peter O'Shea (315) 848-2178
Date: Saturday, January 5th, 2019, 10:00 to noon.
Black Pond & Bridge Brook pond trail
This is a nice 4 mile round trip to two remote Adirondack Ponds. This is located in the Horseshoe wild forest on RT 421. It was a nice day for a snowshoe trip, and the terrain is fairly friendly for snowshoes. You can see Mt Arab and the fire tower from Bridge Brook pond.
Coney Mt -Tupper Lake
A bit windy & chilly- but a beautifully clear day to hike one of the three Tupper Lake Triad mts. This trek has a lot of bang for the buck, some of the best views VS effort around.
North Country Voices: Bill (Dick) Hollis
Bill (Dick) Hollis has been a duck decoy carver in the Ogdensburg area for over 50 years. Hollis first learned to carve from his father, and has now won numerous awards for his work. He estimates he has made 1500-2000 decoys throughout his life. Despite technological innovations, Dick is one of few decoy carvers in the North Country that continues to carve with hand tools. We caught up with Dick to learn more about his craft.
Pine Grosbeaks
One of the largest irruptions of Pine Grosbeaks in many years is happening this season due to a poor cone yield in Canada. Keep an eye on ornamental fruit trees for these birds, as hungry flocks of grosbeaks will gorge themselves upon the fruits (and will probably be unconcerned by your presence).
Multiplication Gully Ice Climbing
This is a classic moderate multi-pitch climb near Whiteface Mountain.It sets up differently as the season progresses, but this day it was sketchy and thin with sections of ice breaking apart under me. The hardest parts had the best ice--luckily. It's one of the venues with a deep backcountry feel even though it's only a 10-minute walk from the Ausable River. See the following link for a video filmed during my January 2018 climb.
https://www.facebook.com/LaMountainImaging/videos/405743213218514/
Wild Eats: Tea Time
Have you ever wandered through the woods, looked at all the plants surrounding you, and wondered, “are any of these edible?” Good news: there are many species of edible plants found in the wild all around us! With a little knowledge of how to identify and prepare wild edibles, local forests become a bountiful place to explore.
Gothic North Face-November 2018
Ranger Scott and I tagged Gothics’ North Face yesterday. I’ve never gotten on it during November so this was quite a treat. We took a chance and had a great day as a front moved in. I feared it would be covered with some un-bonded snow, but we found a mixed back of snow climbing, ice climbing, and scratching up bare rock. The approach involved breaking through a couple feet of virgin snow from the Orebed Trail to its base. Clouds enveloped us and strong winds pounded drove the spindrift as we climbed the top 400’ to the ridge where we found 4-5’ of snow.
Cathedral Rock
A nice but chilly snowshoe trek to the Cathedral Rock fire tower. There was well over a foot of snow so it was tough breaking trail.The storm broke for a little bit and showed some great blue skies and great views of Cat Mountain over 4 miles away.
Huckleberry lake
A gloomy day, but still a nice day to trek back to Huckleberry Lake. It's between seasons , some snow and the lake has some ice. Not quite winter or fall either. We saw a bald eagle flying in the area, always a treat.