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Alan Wechsler Timothy Macveigh was enjoying his ATV ride in eastern Rensselaer County last Sunday morning. Until he ran into Ranger Joseph Hess. Hess caught Macveigh, 47, of Stephentown, operating an all-terrain vehicle on a public highway — an illegal act — just down the road from a hiking trail to the Taconic Ridge, the mountain range that separates Rensselaer County from Massachusetts. Fresh tracks showed that someone — draw your own conclusions — had driven a vehicle high up into the woods, which is also illegal. Macveigh slowed his ATV to a stop. Hess stepped out of his pick-up truck. "How you doin'?" Hess asked. "Fine," Macveigh said. "Until now." In this rural part of the Capital Region, the mountains rise a thousand feet above wooded hollows populated by a sparse group of locals. Residents have been using these woods for generations. But the rules have changed. Beginning 22 years ago, the state has been buying up what was private land in the mountains, where a 35-mile hiking trail called the Taconic Crest runs the length of the range. And ATV riding was no longer allowed. For years, the state's efforts to keep riders out of the Taconic Ridge State Forest were limited to the occasional ranger patrol. The fact that part of the forest is in Massachusetts and Vermont also has made it hard to enforce the law. But within the past year and a half, the Department of Environmental Conservation has ramped up its effort. That's because dirt bikes, four-wheelers and even trucks have decimated the Taconic Crest – their knobby tires tearing paths into trenches, carving side trails and turning damp soil into mud bogs wide enough to float a canoe through. Things began to change after Adirondack Mountain Club Executive Director Neil Woodworth held a meeting with DEC officials in March of 2007 to ask for help. "We saw the land and it was getting trashed," Woodworth said. "Nasty, nasty damage. Hikers who were trying to do the trail had to walk through muddy, wide areas where the ATVs had just turned it into a quagmire." In response, the DEC brought some equipment into the mountains to drain or fill some of the larger bogs. They sent out details of up to four rangers and EnCon officers into the woods, some driving ATVs themselves, to look for illegal riders. They held a trail maintenance day, where a dozen hikers helped plant hundreds of new saplings on bootleg side trails. But mostly there's only one person trying to enforce the state's laws without angering locals — Hess. He's devoted more time to the Taconic Crest than any other park in his territory. He's been known to hide behind a tree for hours, sometimes building a fire to stay warm, in order to catch illegal riders. He's busted beer-bashes with 40 teenagers, who drove a dozen vehicles into the woods, and gangs of dirt-bikers clad in more armor than a group of Road Warrior extras. But at the same time, he makes sure not to be heavy handed — giving out one ticket when he could give out four, for instance, and trying not to make the guilty party angry, in order to stay on the good side of locals. "You have to treat people with respect," he said. "Hopefully, you'll get that back." The Taconic Crest was created decades ago, long before the state bought the land. Today, it attracts dozens of visitors each weekend. One popular destination, the well-known Snow Hole, got 650 people in the past three months, from as far away as New York City, Toronto and even Europe, according to the trail register. "We're working on getting more people hiking on the trail and making them aware of it," said Adirondack Mountain Club member David Pisaneschi. who led 13 hikers along the ridge last week. Another group, the Taconic Hiking Club, has 150 members and holds trail maintenance days every year. Taconic member Colin Campbell, who organizes the trail work, said he's invited ATV groups several times to help. But no one's ever come. "They've always seemed to have some excuse," he said. Hess' efforts may be paying off. He's seen a huge decrease in ATV use in popular places like Berlin Mountain, located a few miles south of Petersburg Pass on Route 2. But he wonders if riders are just riding elsewhere on the ridge. There are 143,000 registered ATV owners in New York, and an estimated half a million including those who don't bother to pay the $10 annual registration fee. In the past 22 years, the state has raised $17 million from this fee– yet has put none of the money toward building any ATV routes in New York, said Bob Ski, director of the New York State Power Sport Dealer Association. Thus, ATV owners have two choices: find places to ride on private land, or break the law. "Unfortunately, they ride where they can," Ski said. Recent efforts to create places to ride have not been successful. A plan to open a private ATV park in the southern Adirondack village of Warrensburg was abandoned due to the significant regulatory hurdles and concern from neighbors. And a state park built for ATV riders in the Berkshires, Savoy State Forest, was closed after a YouTube video surfaced of ATVs taking turns hot-dogging through a huge mud pit on the property. The lack of riding places is having an impact, Ski says. Thirty ATV dealerships, out of 230 in the state, have gone under in the past two years, he said. And most people who put their own ATVs up for sale do so for lack of places to ride. "We're still trying to find some common ground here," Ski said. Back at the trailhead, Macveigh sat sideways on his vehicle and waited for Hess to write him a ticket. Macveigh, who has a prosthetic leg and lives just down the road, talked with Hess for a few minutes about local bear damage and how the deer signs were – hunting season begins soon. It might have been a casual conversation between neighbors. Except Macveigh, technically, was under arrest. "I've lived here for years," Macveigh said "The only ones that're hunting are the four-wheelers." "That's changing," Hess told him. "We don't want people to stop hunting. We just want them to leave the ATVs somewhere else." Though Macveigh had no registration and insurance and wore no helmet – all required by law – Hess only gave him one ticket. "Have a better day," he said, as he handed it to him. After the ranger left, Macveigh made no apologies for his alleged trespass. "Now you know why we bitch," he said, pointing out that hikers pay nothing for their trail access. "Fair's fair, the way I look at it. We've got a lot of state land in this valley. And we can't ride none of it."
Source: http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=738316&category=MULTIMEDIA&BCCode=&newsdate=11/11/2008&TextPage=1 |
