Planes buzzing ADK summmits.

And then there was the time I was just starting down Tucks from the summit when some maniac launched himself from the edge of the parking lot in a parasail and glided down toward Pinkham.

jrbren said:

I disagree. Planes or any motorized vehical is going to have a much greater impact on the surrounding environment then any hiker. I think we need places to escape the mechanized world. I have never heard even the loudest loudmouth from several miles away, which you can easily hear planes from that distance. I assume a helicopter would have equal rights as a plane ? These are even louder, and probably better for sightseeing because they can hover and some have see through floors. If planes are let in, why not helicopters (that debate would surely surface)? I know these tours do exist in the Canadian rockies. Would your statement also apply to ATVers wishing a ride to the summit ? A bit off topic maybe, I am not trying to dump on you, just taking your statement at face value.




Who do we need to be ?

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My statement at face value stands!
THe mountains do not belong to hikers. We share them with everybody who enjoys the outdoors. Skiers, snowmobilers, hunters, hikers, sightseers. If someone wants to see it from a plane good for them. Leaving the mechanized world is a great thing, but speaking for myself an airplane's noise for few minutes is not taking away a thing. I am not meditating on the summit. Maybe some of these sightseers need to leave thier urban world and the plane is the only way they can do it.
The envrinomental impact of an airplane is what? Buring some fuel, (which we all do to drive to the trail head), and some noise pollution. I am not a pilot and really don't know of any other environmental impact a plane might have, unless of course it crashes.
As for "who do we need to be"..... I know I have no right to tell somebody they can't enjoy going in a plane b/c a few hikers don't like the noise. If you think you are that important of a person to tell people they don't have the right to enjoy the outdoors, well then you go ahead. What if someone thought hikers should stay out of the woods b/c trails are not natural and the impact hikers have. It is called sharing. A little give and a little take. Put someone else shoes on and see their side.

i don't mind too much seeing an occasional small plane fly around, definately would hate to see them land on lake colden.but i do remember one really cool experience in the middle eighties. i was just below the summit of phelps on a very quiet day mid week when suddenly i heard this tremendous roaring,thundering, exploding sound that seemed to be all around me.i thought it was the end of the world.i then saw three fighter jets( f 16's ? ) only about two hundred feet above my head and barely above the summit soar over in perfect formation, drop down below me and into avalanche pass through colden and flowed lands and rise back up and then out of sight in a matter of a few seconds.then all was perfectly tranquil again.my friend and i just looked at each other totally amazed. i read years later that many of the fighter pilots in the first gulf war trained in the high peaks.i'm glad this doesn't really happen any more, but it was really awesome too.

ripple said:

My statement at face value stands!
THe mountains do not belong to hikers. We share them with everybody who enjoys the outdoors. Skiers, snowmobilers, hunters, hikers, sightseers. If someone wants to see it from a plane good for them. Leaving the mechanized world is a great thing, but speaking for myself an airplane's noise for few minutes is not taking away a thing. I am not meditating on the summit. Maybe some of these sightseers need to leave thier urban world and the plane is the only way they can do it.
The envrinomental impact of an airplane is what? Buring some fuel, (which we all do to drive to the trail head), and some noise pollution. I am not a pilot and really don't know of any other environmental impact a plane might have, unless of course it crashes.
As for "who do we need to be"..... I know I have no right to tell somebody they can't enjoy going in a plane b/c a few hikers don't like the noise. If you think you are that important of a person to tell people they don't have the right to enjoy the outdoors, well then you go ahead. What if someone thought hikers should stay out of the woods b/c trails are not natural and the impact hikers have. It is called sharing. A little give and a little take. Put someone else shoes on and see their side.

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Clearly we disagree on almost everything on this topic. I fail to understand why some one needs to be in airplane or an ATV, or whatever machine to "enjoy the outdoors" as you phrase it (actually someone in a plane is indoors in my book, but that is just semantics). Your terminology is loaded. The plain and simple fact is that machines are everywhere. You do not have to go to the "wilderness" or high peaks to enjoy them. As for "enjoying the wilderness", there is no wilderness once machines are brought into the fold. That is why everyone needs to work together to have regions where various outdoor activities can be enjoyed, because like it or not, they are mutually exclusive activities, no one lives in a vacume. The sharing is impossible when it becomes machines vs. a "wilderness experience". There are very few places for the latter in this world. You trivialize the environmental impact of an airplane and I can't say much other then I disagree. The noise pollution is significant. Would you also support jet skiing on any lake ? The topic of this thread is airplanes in the Adirondack high peaks, which is one of the few areas devoted to "wilderness".

I usually enjoy seeing planes of one sort or another; it's interesting.

Years ago when the military used to fly low over the central Adirondaks, the A-10s would occasionally fly low over Gore Mountain while I was patrolling. That was a rush!

Regarding the many opinions on this thread: all interesting points of view. I recommend that we be careful not to blur together "environmental impact" and "aesthetic impact."

Regarding environmental impact, I could argue pretty well that hikers, and certainly hiking trails, have a dramatically greater impact than any number of overflights. A hiking trail is a fairly large and obvious disturbance of the natural conditions. A plane would probably have to crash to make that much of a disturbance.

Regarding aesthetic impact, yes planes are visible and loud, at least for a minute or two. But we should be careful of the ground we tread. For the plane sightseer, hikers on a summit may be very visible. I could envision a thread on the "Views from the Plane dotcom" about how disappointing it is to see the wild summits with hikers all over them.

TCD

There are two different things here intertwined. 'What should a hiker expoect' is one, but the more important one is what should be allowed in Wilderness areas. The difference is that one's emphasis is on the hiker's experience, and the other on what should be done to maintain wilderness.

Now, if the question was worded, "Should planes be restricted from flying too low over wilderness areas?", it does not get into the area of the mountains being just for hikers, of my rights vs yours. We're talking about the Wilderness (Note there is a federal definition of Wilderness (capital W).

Is it Wilderness if planes can fly over it? Is it Wilderness if we put a road through it? Is it Wilderness if it has cell phone coverage?

Is Wilderness what we want, or do we just want an "extreme" playground?

Is wilderness worth fighting for?

So, now I will ask the question, If an area is declared to be a Wilderness area, should planes be allowed to fly over it?

Ripple, jrbren,
I think you are both right - in some ways.

I believe there indeed are some places that should be designated as free from motorized or mechanically assisted propulsion. In the ADKs they are "wilderness zones" They don't need to take up the entire outdoors though.

There are plenty of mountains whose summits may be legally reached by motorized means and Ripple, that is cool with me. In fact, most of the great outdoors may be travelled upon using ATV's, motor boats, dirt bikes, snowmobiles and what have you. However, there are so few remaining places where one can be free from the internal (infernal?) combustion engine's noise and smell that these should be diligently protected.

(FWIW, there are a couple of parks in Canada that not even commercial flights at 30 000 feet are allowed to fly over. The airlines had to route their flights accordingly.)

Pete_Hickey said:

So, now I will ask the question, If an area is declared to be a Wilderness area, should planes be allowed to fly over it?

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Initially I would say, simply "no".

With a bit of thought to it, I would say "it depends". I would like to have places where there's no intrusion from planes above, but I don't think every wildernes area needs such protection.

And I think it's a selfish reaction as one of the first questiosn that came to my mind was "how would I get to the Alaskan lake that is only accessible by plane".

Pete Hickey said:

So, now I will ask the question, If an area is declared to be a Wilderness area, should planes be allowed to fly over it?

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I think that the federal regulation that aircraft must maintain a 2000' limit is reasonable, perhaps even raising that a few thousand feet. Part of me says yes our Wilderness (and wilderness) does derserve some special consideration on these matters. But, I don't know that I would say that that protection should come at the cost of a potential HUGE negative impacts to the commercial airspace industry (i.e. and elevated costs associated).

So, yes........ our wilderness would benifit with some relief from low level, non-vital aircraft travel, but should high level commercial craft have to duck and weave at 10000-20000 feet in order to maintain no-fly overflight rules, heck NO. That's silly and potentially dangerous........

Pete,

That's a good question. I think the answer depends on why we want to have wilderness areas.

If we want wilderness areas to preserve the natural environment undamaged, then I think some degree of overflights would be fine (obviously, buzzing the peregrine nests would damage the environment, whereas a 30k' commercial airliner would not; somewhere there's a line).

If we want wilderness areas so we can have a "wilderness experience," then we're into aesthetics. If we're going to search the sky with binoculars for that commercial airliner, while standing on a trail, with signs and markers, then we have an inconsistency. Again, there's a line. I personally have no issue with signs and markers, even though I hike off trail more than on. But you can measure the aesthetic "impact" of signs, markers, leantos, etc. We obviously have drawn a line there, and allowed a certain amount of "improvements" to our wilderness, at least here in the NE. You could probably develop a similar measure of the impact of overflights, and draw the same line.

If we want the wilderness areas to preserve wildness, and have a place that's like the world used to be 1000 years ago, then overflights must be banned. And trails, markers, signs, and leantos must be banned.

And maybe we need to build a big Faraday cage around it to stop the cell phone and GPS signals, too.

TCD

Im going with the crowd that says they should be allowed to keep flying. I am of the mindset that everyone is entitled to enjoy the enviroment however they see fit as long as they are following simple rules of not disturbing it in a major way (like paving a road through the wilderness would do.) It may not necessarily be our cup of tea, but it would be unfair to deny others that type of enjoymet as they see fit. I came to this mindset a couple of years ago when, on another internet BB forum I visit, I had a gentleman post that he felt hikers should vacate the woods during huntin season because we only get to hunt a couple of months out of the year, but hikers get to be there year round. While debating with this fellow it made me look kinda hard at my stance and I realized that a group of people (i.e. hunters or hikers or fishermen) can sometimes be a selfish breed. The world is here for everyone to enjoy, not just one group. Denying someone the use of the woods for 2 months while we hunt would just plain not be fair. Just as denying someone the enjoyment of sightseeing from a unique point of view (and if you have not been in a small airplane it is indeed a unique point of view) would be unfair. Yes, limiting enviromental impact can be a great thing (even though as stated above overflights probably do less damage than hikers do anyways.) But here is another question......is it possible to go too far? I think so. But, alas, this is just my humble opinion.
Brian

This discussion has drilled itself down to the nub of my question (great job Pete H.) which could have been much better framed as was pointed out by Dick. The voting shows a 15 - 20 point lead for those "in favour" of the planes so that what I set out to find out I now know.

There was one earlier post that I would like to reply to:

Doc McPeak said:

It takes a lot of nerve for someone who hikes up Wrigcht Peak and steals a piece of the downed B-47 for a souvenir to complain about anything to do with airplanes! I've never been buzzed on any summit. Maybe they leave those of us who practice LNT alone?!

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No nerve needed. I just don't like being buzzed (and we were buzzed on Marcy a couple of Saturdays ago) on a summit in the High Peaks Wilderness Area. I aired my complaint and was curious to see what others think. Now I know.

The wording in the above quote makes it sound like I went up with malice aforethought and pulled (stole) a piece right off the wreck. In fact, and I indicated it in that thread (Oct or Nov '04), I chanced upon the chunk while ascending Wright’s slide. It lay in a crack under some foliage 1/2 way from the top and it was incredibly flukey to spot it.

liesure aircraft are one thing...

... but military aircraft are another. I loved seeing military planes fly as close as they could get to me, especially when the Plattsburg base was in use; until last summer. I was on a very long ladder doing some painting when an a-10 roared very close to the camp. It really put me in danger and then I realized that there is more to it than watching neat machines, or the debate about the right to peace and quiet. These planes can cause alot more trouble than its worth, for them or people who like their company.

Also last summer a Blackhawk helicopter showed up at the lake, at 3 o'clock in the morning and ever so slowly floated along at about three hundred feet. It was incredibly loud and unnerving. I don't know what they were thinking, but it was awefully disturbing.

Neil said:

The wording in the above quote makes it sound like I went up with malice aforethought and pulled (stole) a piece right off the wreck. In fact, and I indicated it in that thread (Oct or Nov '04), I chanced upon the chunk while ascending Wright’s slide. It lay in a crack under some foliage 1/2 way from the top and it was incredibly flukey to spot it.

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Not malice. Just good old selfishness. People have been hiking past bits and pieces of that wreckage for decades. Many have checked them out and left them for others to enjoy. And there are those who grab them and throw them in their packs, proud of their souvenirs. The fact that you're actually trying to defend your actions certainly illuminates which type of hiker you are.

Hike your own hike.
Gripe your own gripe.
Pockets full or empty, your choice.

The LNT ethic is pretty straightforward and has helped make many areas as nice as they are. Luckily there are many who try their best to follow along. A little respect towards others goes a long way. www.lnt.org

Doc McPeak said:

The fact that you're actually trying to defend your actions certainly illuminates which type of hiker you are.

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I'm merely setting the record straight. I don't need to defend my actions. It's my personal business what I do when I see a chunk of plane wreckage or a pair of antlers. Like you say, hike your own hike, I'll hike mine. I assume the LNT "ethic" is behind your agressive tone. If you want to take this further PM me.

Begging the indulgence of all here, and please forgive me if this has been said before, but in real wilderness, planes are about the only way that people see or visit them (e.g., Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, Antarctica, etc.) as trails, roads and railroads sort of defeat the whole concept of wilderness.

If the plane is disturbing a fair number of people, than is it in any way a wilderness (i.e, can it be any kind of wilderness with that many people in it?)?

Few people here actually used the "W" ("wilderness" -- please, no political panics!), but isn't that sort of implied in the outdoor experience?

So, for a real wilderness experience, is at least seeing a plane (if not arriving in one) almost required?

afka_bob said:

So, for a real wilderness experience, is at least seeing a plane (if not arriving in one) almost required?

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Not according to the Federal Government. Wilderness act of 1964:

"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this chapter an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value."

Pete,

Maybe I should have put quotes around "wilderness experience." How do most folks get to distant back-country in the wildernesses I mentioned above? Admittedly, they aren't the Big Leagues compared to the Adirondaks or the Whites, but they serve for some -- I'd say many, but that would sort of argue against the wilderness aspect.

afka_bob said:

If the plane is disturbing a fair number of people, than is it in any way a wilderness (i.e, can it be any kind of wilderness with that many people in it?)?

So, for a real wilderness experience, is at least seeing a plane (if not arriving in one) almost required?

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I read somewhere that in the wilderness man is a visitor but does not remain. I think there was some other stuff about construction. I use to take a train into the CDN wilderness a couple of times a year. No one questioned the fact that where we were going was the Wilderness. Yet there was a train track running through it. The high peaks wilderness region, in spite of its encoded designation, is not my idea of wilderness. Too many people, too many internal combustion engines (mine included), too many rules, too much human pressure.
Such an elusive entity to define.

Wow, I'm ripped in half on this one!

Being a 115'er and a person who has 'buzzed' a summit, I'm really torn here. Our views from the plane of "unnamed mountain" were spectacular, and included rare wildlife, sunset vistas, in short "unforgetable".

And I have to say that being under the jets and experiencing the sight and SOUND of those bad boys screaming thru the mountains at once annoys and thrills me!

I guess I'm sort of resigned to planes being everywhere. I've read that there is literally no place on earth where you can go and NOT hear/see planes/jets passing overhead. In most cases, the planes are only there for a few minutes at most, and then "we now resume our normal wilderness, already in progress".