Adirondack Sports February 2024
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FEBRUARY <strong>2024</strong> 21<br />
■ WALTER GROOMING<br />
PINERIDGE TRAILS.<br />
University of New York at Oswego, Walter<br />
bought a large farm in western New York.<br />
He followed in his father’s footsteps,<br />
planting Christmas trees and supplying<br />
a shopping center in Tampa, Fla., with<br />
thousands of trees over a 10-year span.<br />
Meanwhile, Walter taught math in<br />
Angola and obtained his master’s degree in<br />
Counseling at Canisius College in Buffalo.<br />
He moved to the Capital District in 1964,<br />
earned advanced certification in School<br />
Administration, and met Terri, a research<br />
chemist at Sterling-Winthrop (now<br />
Regeneron), whom he married in 1967.<br />
Two years later, in 1969, Walter<br />
became principal at Berlin Junior-Senior<br />
High School. That same year, he and Terri<br />
bought a house and 10 acres of land in<br />
East Poestenkill. They expanded their<br />
property holdings and deepened their<br />
roots in 1972, purchasing a 400-acre parcel<br />
across the road.<br />
“We tried to think about how we would<br />
share this land with other people, and we<br />
looked at a lot of different options,” Walter<br />
explained.<br />
They considered building a campground<br />
but came up with a new idea<br />
after visiting a small ski center in Carlisle,<br />
Mass., called Carlisle in the Woods.<br />
“We just had such a great time,”<br />
Walter recalled of the day trip with his<br />
wife and daughters, Susan and Heather.<br />
“On the way home, when we stopped to<br />
get a bite to eat, we said, ‘That’s what we<br />
need to do!’”<br />
Aside from skiing to and from school<br />
at age seven, Walter’s ski background<br />
was mainly in alpine as a skier at Kissing<br />
■ LOVELY DAY AT PINERIDGE.<br />
JASON KERSCH<br />
Bridge in western NY and instructor at<br />
Petersburg Pass on the NY/MA border.<br />
With the help of Cross-Country Ski Areas<br />
of New York colleagues, such as Olavi<br />
Hirvonen (Lapland Lake, Northville),<br />
Joe Pete Wilson (Bark Eater, Keene), and<br />
George Heim (Garnet Hill, North River),<br />
Walter began planning trails in 1981 and<br />
opened Pineridge with a new lodge in<br />
place of an old fish-and-game club building<br />
in 1984.<br />
What started with a few kilometers<br />
of winding trails through a dense forest<br />
evolved into 25 trails for cross-country<br />
skiing, backcountry skiing and snowshoeing.<br />
Over the years, Walter and Terri have<br />
purchased four additional contiguous<br />
land parcels for a total of 769 acres along<br />
Poestenkill Creek.<br />
Nestled in the foothills of the Taconic<br />
and Berkshire mountains, Pineridge<br />
boasts 350 feet of elevation gain from<br />
the lodge, and is about a 30-minute drive<br />
east of Albany and 15 minutes from West<br />
Sand Lake.<br />
Walter’s favorite beginner trail,<br />
Meadow Watch, explores an old potato<br />
field with young balsam trees enclosing<br />
both sides of the trail. His favorite challenging<br />
trail, Mogul Twister, took about<br />
three years to create. Its “ups and downs<br />
and switchbacks” lead skiers to the area’s<br />
1,746-foot summit, which offers views of<br />
the Taconic Range and Mount Greylock in<br />
Massachusetts.<br />
The trails are narrow, measuring about<br />
eight to 10 feet wide, and most have a canopy<br />
of trees over them. They are also rich<br />
in history; the Round Top trail follows a<br />
portion of the horse-and-buggy “Albany<br />
to Bath Road,” completed in 1777. One hill<br />
still contains a wooden barrel from that<br />
era, which was built into a spring to water<br />
the horses. Pineridge is home to several<br />
old homesteads and charcoal pits, where<br />
Walter has led hikes for children and<br />
adults to create charcoal drawings.<br />
“We’re not as commercial as most<br />
areas,” Walter noted. “I’ve developed the<br />
trails so that people have a relationship<br />
with the forest.”<br />
After retiring from teaching, Walter<br />
became a certified Master Forest Owner<br />
(MFO) through Cornell University to further<br />
educate himself and landowners on<br />
forest preservation. Today, he meets and<br />
walks with private landowners to discuss<br />
their woodlots and how to care for them.<br />
In the early ‘90s, Walter spent about a<br />
week and a half with his daughter, Susan,<br />
planning a trail under a forked tree.<br />
“We spent a whole Christmas vacation<br />
marking, flagging, doing a little bit of<br />
cutting, not much until you knew exactly<br />
where you wanted it to go, but we wanted<br />
it to go underneath that tree,” he recalled.<br />
Sue’s Trail is still a unique favorite,<br />
and Walter has been creating new trails<br />
up until the last few years.<br />
“As I’m out there and looking around<br />
working in the woods, you see areas that<br />
you want people to visit,” he said.<br />
Walter still works at the lodge every<br />
day it’s open. Until a few years ago, he<br />
was Pineridge’s primary groomer – setting<br />
track and corduroy with a large snowmobile.<br />
As of late January, the Nordic center<br />
was closed due to a lack of snow, warm<br />
temperatures and rain, but they’ll reopen<br />
as soon as they’re able so go visit them!<br />
Over the years, Pineridge has weathered<br />
everything from being open just one<br />
day to a high of 120 days another winter.<br />
These days, Walter hopes for at least 40<br />
days of operation to break even with operational<br />
costs, including employing about<br />
a dozen part-time employees. This year,<br />
he’s expecting less than that. Asked about<br />
the future of Pineridge, Walter wasn’t sure<br />
what is in store.<br />
“A lot of people are concerned about<br />
what’s going to happen,” he said. “It could<br />
be the weather is going to control what<br />
happens… If this continues this way,<br />
Pineridge is going to disappear.<br />
“It’s just so much warmer, and storms<br />
are coming through with rain behind<br />
them or in front of them,” he continued.<br />
On the bright side, owning a cross-country<br />
ski area in the Capital Region has been a<br />
highlight of his life. He remembered buses<br />
of school children coming to ski with afterschool<br />
programs in the ’80s and ’90s. He<br />
and Terri have met visitors from different<br />
states and countries, including Argentina<br />
and Switzerland most recently.<br />
“It’s these people that are coming in,<br />
smiling, and having a good time; that’s the<br />
real reward,” he said.<br />
His grandson, Alex Kibbler, spent his<br />
college winter break working with him on<br />
the trails. Walter noted that his employees,<br />
including Nate Gilbraith and Gerlinde<br />
Wolfe, have brought youthful energy to<br />
Pineridge in recent years. Nate is also a<br />
certified Master Forest Owner.<br />
A longtime member of the town of<br />
Poestenkill’s Conservation Advisory<br />
Council, Walter is a founding member and<br />
former treasurer of the Rensselaer Plateau<br />
Alliance (RPA), which works toward the<br />
conservation of the Plateau’s undeveloped<br />
and unfragmented forests and other<br />
ecologically important areas.<br />
“There’s so many of these things I<br />
knew little about when I started,” Walter<br />
said. “All the emphasis on climate change<br />
has made a lot of people think about really<br />
trying to protect our water, our air and<br />
our forests, and do something about it.<br />
Pineridge has been our attempt to address<br />
these issues, provide conservation of our<br />
forest, and share our forests with our<br />
friends and community.”<br />
Alex Kochon (alexkochon@gmail.com)<br />
of Gansevoort is a freelance writer,<br />
editor, and outdoor-loving mom of<br />
two who enjoys adventuring in the<br />
<strong>Adirondack</strong>s. A journalist and former<br />
ski reporter, she has covered Olympics,<br />
world championships, and athletes of all<br />
calibers. She’s the cofounder of Ride On!<br />
Mountain Bike Trail Guide and assists<br />
authors for iPub Global Connection.