Acid Rain

“Ya gotta drive a bit just to git to the trailhead.” From downtown Cohoes head up the Northway to Warrensburg, then over NY 28 to North Creek and up NY 28N to just before Newcomb. Jog right onto Blue Ridge Road and left onto the Tahawus road through the remains of the old Tahawus village, up the dirt road to the “Upper Works”. From Cohoes, it’s about 110 miles to the end of the road - then the real work starts. Hike up the Calamity Brook trail to Flowed Lands, around Flowed Lands to Colden Dam, up the Opalescent River to Feldspar Brook and up Feldspar Brook. It’s about 8 miles and over 2500 feet of climbing to get to a little flat spot below three of the highest points in New York state. The flat spot is marked as 4325 feet of elevation on my map and is nestled between Mt Marcy (5344 feet) Mt Skylight (4926 feet) and Gray Peak (4840 feet) - the first, fourth and seventh highest peaks in the Adirondack mountains. Here in this flat spot, some of the rain and snow melt that runs off Marcy, Skylight and Gray pools up in a shallow pond called Lake Tear of the Clouds.

Lake Tear of the Clouds is the highest source water of the Hudson River. Surely this far from the road and this high up, it would seem that the impact of man should be lessened. The loggers, railroaders, miners, and road builders never got this far into the forest. But the trappers, fishermen, hunters, surveyors, and hikers certainly did. This is where Teddy Roosevelt was hunting when he got word that McKinley had be shot in Buffalo. But the biggest impact on this puddle comes from the sky. The sulfur dioxide in the smoke stack emissions in the Midwest combines with rain drops to form Sulfuric acid that then falls onto mountains ending up in ponds, lakes, streams and rivers. The acidity has fundamentally changed aquatic ecosystems affecting plants and fish, and the animals that live off them.