Bill, for thinking critically, you get 1000 Bonus Points.

In response to Bill's statement about the ecosystem being "sensitive and rare". We can all sense the sarcasm in there, but really it makes no difference if it is rare or common. It is not your property to do with as you see fit. If you don't see it as sensitive and rare that's fine. I think we all agree that it is special for one reason or another. If you didn't then you probably wouldn't be a member of the Preserve in the first place. Peace dude

Of the very few FAs I've done, I was never putting in a route for anyone else but me! There was one particular "new" route at Seneca - a less than mediocre 5.5, that, like many other routes there, showed some signs of ascent from Army training in the 40's - thus, we never reported it. I was pissed that another FA party was credited with the route when the new guide was published. They gave it a dumb name, too.

What's the "I'm an ass level" difference from demanding that route be recorded that one has done vs. demanding a route not be recorded by anyone else after one has done?

Short answer? Zero.

Julie...the prospective "project" sounds exciting. I guess it begs the question; Is there anyway around damaging the tree, bushes, etc. to attempt the route?

I think so - I don't think it's as heavily vegitated as some of y'all might be thinking. I (only) got one look at it on rappel last weekend. My intent, as I said above, is to squiggle up it myself doing as little disturbing as I can (I think I can do it without much) and see whether it's worth it to do a bit of cleaning, such that other people might be enticed to climb it in the end.

It's something I always assumed was a route that had suffered neglect, but when I looked more carefully in the book, the route I thought it was, is distinctly not-it.

I just wanted my name in the guidebook! I was pissed at myself for not having reported the FA, not the party that eventually did so. The bigger point being, the motivation of the FA was entirely selfish ego-stroking. (They still picked a dumb name - ours was better!)

If it gets climbed once, and then forgotten again, is it a big deal? Sounds like the biggest problem would be telling everyone you climbed it.

why not just wrastle through the bushes like the rest of us?
keep telling people about it, and eventually the bush will "go away."

The Gunks ecosystem is shot.

Like just about every deciduous hardwood forest ecosystem from Maine to Florida and west to the Mississippi, it's in critical arrest not from climbers or hikers or bikers or ATVs or any number of kinds of recreation overuse - though fragmentation and overuse contribute to the problem - but from super-abundant white-tailed deer. The Gunks chestnut oak forests can't regenerate, wildflowers can't bloom, ground-nesting birds can't breed, and deer-resistant natives and invasive species are aggressively, quickly consuming the understory. The ridge we know and love won't be the same ridge in less than a decade. It's on the cusp of collapse. It's becoming a living graveyard.

Benign neglect? The Biodiversity Partnership is attempting to deal with this through a three-year, $150,000 DEC-funded grant to reduce the herd. But unless they take way more deer than they did last year, and start specifically targeting does, getting the herd down to where it registers no debilitating impact on the understory, and keep it down, it's over.

Recreation overuse contributes to the problem because disturbed habitat - roadsides, carriage roads, parking lots, cliff-bases, cliff-tops, hiking and social trails - are the corridors where invasives take hold and spread. From there, it's an easy route into the understory and fields browsed out of seedlings, saplings, native brush, and wildflowers. We carry their seeds on clothes, shoes, and gear - through the understory and onto cliffs and ledges.

Don't ask, don't tell? Cut or pull a native sapling or tree, plant an invasive.