ATVs still running amuck
Or so the people over at Adirondack Explorer want you to believe …
It’s a warm and sunny morning on the old dirt road between Harrisburg Lake and Wilcox Lake in Warren County, the sky above brilliant blue, the woods full of birdsong. A beautiful day to be hiking in the Forest Preserve.
Unfortunately, I have to watch where I step. The trail is full of deep and muddy ruts, the ugly kind that can ruin your boots. It takes some of the fun out of hiking.
Muddy ruts are commonplace in parts of the Wilcox Lake Wild Forest, the Independence River Wild Forest, and many other tracts of the forever-wild Forest Preserve. Usually, they have been created by all-terrain vehicles.
Seven years after the state Department of Environmental Conservation banned ATVs from state land in the Adirondacks and Catskills to stop “illegal and inappropriate ATV use … and to ensure that the resources of the Forest Preserve are protected,” trails are still being chewed up by the four-wheel vehicles.