Tony Goodwin delivers his "From Axe Blazes to Highlines" presentation in Lake Placid on Wednesday, Jan. 15. Photo by Chris Gaige

LAKE PLACID — When it comes to the history of the hiking trails in the Olympic Region, you would be hard-pressed to find anybody who speaks with more authority than Tony Goodwin.

For starters, Goodwin has edited not one, not two, but five editions of the Adirondack Mountain Club’s “High Peaks Trails,” widely considered to be the most comprehensive guidebook on hiking trails in the region, covering not just the 46 High Peaks — both those with official and unofficial routes — but many other smaller area trails.

Goodwin, who lives in and currently serves as the town of Keene’s historian, spent over three decades as the Adirondack Trail Improvement Society’s executive director. He also held a number of other outdoor leadership positions throughout his career.

Goodwin’s roots in the region run deep. His father, Jim Goodwin, originally cut some of today’s most popular trails in the High Peaks — a mission that Tony often joined him on, instilling in him at a young age his lifelong passion for trails and trail maintenance work. His great-grandfather, Charles Alton, built and owned Camp Undercliff — on Lake Placid’s remote northwest shore in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Tony Goodwin was in Lake Placid to kick off the Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society’s 2025 Winter Speaker Series. Held at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, the series brings in local experts to present on their various niches of the Olympic Region and greater Adirondacks.

A slide from Goodwin's presentation showing the elaborate rope systems trail crews often used to move rocks and other materials around their work sites.

While this week’s Visiting Lake Placid Column departs from tradition in that it covers a speaker’s presentation rather than a site, my hope is that it provides visitors and residents alike some insights into the history and story of the trails and outdoor spaces so many of us take to during our time — no matter how long or short — in and around Lake Placid.

The series’ topics are wide-ranging and often explore the intersection of local history and culture. Held at 7 p.m. on the third Wednesday of each month, January through April, there are three more lectures scheduled for this year. All lectures are held at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, located at 17 Algonquin Drive. For more information, visit tinyurl.com/sraknu5f.

All speaker series events are free and open to the public and, in my humble opinion, they are well worth attending for anyone curious to learn historical nuggets of such a storied area — especially for those within a forgiving commute distance to the Lake Placid Center for the Arts.

Admittedly, for those visiting Lake Placid from afar, attending in person may require some schedule maneuvering, given their middle-of-the-week timing. However, the Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society had the cameras rolling during Goodwin’s presentation. That — along with all of its speaker events this year — will be uploaded to the society’s YouTube page, allowing for a virtual “Visiting Lake Placid.”

Although the video was not yet uploaded as of press time Tuesday, once it goes online, it can be found — along with other past recordings — at tinyurl.com/3zxd6n63/

The Lake Placid Center for the Arts, where the Winter Speaker Series takes place, is seen on Tuesday, Jan. 21.

“From Axe Blazes to Highlines”

Goodwin began his presentation, “From Axe Blazes to Highlines,” by emphasizing how “behind the times” trail construction in the Adirondacks was compared to other popular hiking areas around the country, such as New Hampshire’s White Mountains or the Appalachian Mountains.

“Old Mountain Phelps (an early Adirondack guide) constructed the first trail up (Mount) Marcy in 1861,” he said. “In 1861, there was a carriage road up at the top of Mount Washington to serve the two hotels that had been built there — and eight years later there was a cog railway to the summit of Mount Washington!”

Goodwin said that many of the early routes built in the Adirondack Mountains did not take into consideration sustained public use, which led to areas of poor drainage and rapid erosion. In many instances, Goodwin said this led to ecological damage in many areas.

His presentation included several images of bogs that had been muddied from people trampling in a myriad of directions and paths to try to find the ever-changing and relatively speaking ‘driest route.’ Other images showcased steep slopes with gaping gashes of erosion from trails that went straight up the hill, rather than following a gentler “switchback” approach.

Two editions of the Adirondack Mountain Club's guidebook for the High Peaks region, which Goodwin edited. Photo by Chris Gaige

Goodwin showed comparison pictures — often of the same area years later — where trail improvements, such as bridges, rock staircases and strategic re-routes had improved the scene.

“Where there was a good boardwalk, where there was a good bog bridge, grass would grow back up again,” he said. “As soon as it ended, you were back to mud. … As long as we could build enough of these boardwalks, we could at least get the black marshy areas covered.”

With the benefits of their work evident, Goodwin turned to describe the herculean task trail crews had in front of them as they toiled to create more durable and desirable routes up the peaks.

He described one instance of a trail crew that he was part of building a bog bridge on one of the trails to Mount Marcy, which he labeled as “the ultimate boardwalk” that the Adirondack Trail Improvement Society had constructed.

“This was 3,200 feet of planking that was flown in to cover 1,600 linear feet of Marcy swamp,” he said with a picture behind him of piles of timber boards that had yet to be installed. “It was dropped, of course, a third of a mile away from the trail where we needed it.”

Goodwin said it took about eight days to move the timber into place, followed by about three and a half weeks to build the bridge itself. A lot of it, he said, was a dirty job.

“But, of course, it does rain, and Marcy Swamp is wet,” he said wryly. “Much of the material had to be hauled, basically wading knee-deep through the water the next spring to get it to the trail.”

He showed a variety of other grueling photos that captured the trail crew’s grit. Those included extensive digs around massive boulders that looked more like an archeological excavation than trail work. Goodwin said that it’s important for trail crews not just to find stones for the staircase, but to find relatively flat ones that people will actually walk on — as opposed to around.

Goodwin said these ideal specimens are hard to come by in the Adirondacks, and finding the right one requires digging around them to see if one face is flat enough that may not be visible from above, as well as to gauge the rock’s true size.

“Not an easy solution,” he said. “It requires a lot of work to make stone steps into something that people are going to want to use.”

He shared pictures of elaborate rope and pulley systems designed to help crews move and position rocks into the ideal location, with trail crew members taking turns between the “easy” but important job of operating the systems’ levers, and the more physically intensive work of placing the rocks.

“I ensure that by the end of the day, she would have the chance to get those nice clean white pants quite dirty,” Goodwin said when showing a picture of a trail crew member operating the levers.

Goodwin said that a key consideration of trail crews is to design improvements in a way that will nudge people to actually use them, rather than go around them. He said stone staircases posed an especially tricky case, as people tend to prefer the ground’s steady incline to having to lift their feet up steps. He illustrated the deterrence measures trail crews use to avoid such issues.

 “We put rocks next to it,” he said. “Believe it or not, all of those rocks were placed there for just that reason. In other words, almost as much work went into making sure people used the staircase as (went into) building the staircase to begin with.”

He showed pictures of how vegetation had regrown around the trail in various steep sections where stone staircases and ladders had been placed, which guards against erosion and other ecologically deleterious impacts.

“This is all for the good,” he said.

Goodwin detailed the ditches and water bars — diagonal channels built across the trail to divert water — that trail crews have focused on over the past several decades to try to mitigate mud and erosion from runoff. Notorious for mud, given the combination of a wet climate and original trail paths that did not take drainage into account, Goodwin said improving drainage had been a high priority since he began serving as the Adirondack Trail Improvement Society’s executive director.

“That’s been the name of the game ever since,” he said.

Although some improvement efforts are more durable than others, Goodwin said that keeping the trail improvements functional is and will continue to be an ongoing effort.

“One thing that has become evident in the last couple years is with all of these good structures that have been built, someone has to maintain it. So, it becomes that the number of trail workers needs to continue to expand.”

Goodwin finished off his presentation by highlighting the new east-side trail up Mount Van Hoevenberg, which begins at the base of the mountain’s Olympic Bobsled Run, as the pinnacle of a well-constructed trail, which took into account all of the best practices of trail building.

“You can see that this is not like any other Adirondack trail that you’ve ever experienced,” he said. “Now, it all looks nice and smooth and easy, but it’s not.”

He detailed the extensive foundational work to create such a level trail, with large boulders being placed on the downward side of the trail before being backfilled by smaller pebbles and crushed stone to create stability and good drainage.

“I actually counted,” he said. “There were 1,800 of those boulders per mile that had to be set.”

Goodwin said they often had to use a sledgehammer to break up larger rocks to have enough stone crush to finish the trail. He said stone steps were precisely placed on the trail, with workers using carpenters’ levels to ensure they had the steps at the optimal angle. Goodwin said he counted 742 stone steps along the trail, which is just under 2 miles from the trailhead to the summit.

“If I count again, I might count a little different,” he said. “But, you get the idea.”

Goodwin said that while the work was slow — beginning in 2018 and finishing in 2021 — the intensive effort to build the trail properly will yield future dividends, as it will need much less maintenance to remain pristine than the patchwork of improvements on some other trails, which can quickly relapse to their state before the improvements were put in.

“That (Van Hoevenberg trail) has to be the standard going forward,” he said.

For more information on the Adirondack Trail Improvement Society, including ways to become involved, visit atistrail.org.