Sabattis Scout Camp

[billconner]

I was not surprised but very sorry to read the council is closing this camp on Lows Lake. I was a scout there in 1960s for a short time, visiting my troop after a summer on staff at Camp Woodland. Regrettable it's all too common. The troop I was with in Illinois had a long tradition with a camp there - leaders who went there as Scouts with same troop, staffed it, and returned. Very sad.

[stripperguy]

Bill,
To be clear, are you talking about the adventure camp on Bear pond?
You're not talking the scout camp on Lows...

[adkh20]

https://www.adirondackexplorer.org/stories/sabattis-boy-scout-camp-to-close

[Wldrns]

That is sad. Patriot's Path Council (with the other "Sabattis" camp) has alrady previously been slated for closure with a potential buyer/developer. Last I heard I thought that the Longhouse Council had found the funds to extend the Lows shore Sabattis resident camp for at least another year, but the generators (there is no incoming commercial power) were failing and very expenive to repair or replace. I have never stayed there as a scout or adult leader, but for 40 years it has been our dropping off and launch destination on Lows for the ffield training portion of the BSA National Camping School High Adventure Trek Leader "Voyageur" Guide training program. I have been an active insttructor in that program utilizing Lows Lake and wilderness environs, including to the Oswegatchie, for 30 years..

[billconner]

Bill,
To be clear, are you talking about the adventure camp on Bear pond?
You're not talking the scout camp on Lows...

I think I am. Was on Onondaga Council camp when I was a Scout. Woodlands was the other one.

[DSettahr]

There's some discussion about the situation on the Reddit thread on this subject. In particular, someone there suggested that the closure is likely linked to the fact that this is a "patrol cooking camp," where each visiting scout troop is responsible for preparing/cooking meals for themselves. Sounds like there's been decreased interest in these types of scout camps in recent years, with most scout troops these days opting to instead visit scout camps that have on-site dining halls where meals are prepared by camp staff for them.

[adkman12986]

What is truly sad is the fact that the state will end up with it and like Lowes when it first opened was turned into a dump. DEC was taking 2 and 3 truck loads of garbage out a week. I worked there and seen it. Sometimes theese places are better off in private ownerships.

[Wldrns]

Every spring, so I heard, an adult and boy crew would take the camp motorboat (an allowed use) to make the rounds of campgounds and collect garbage on Lows Lake (not misspelled as Lowes), I was told that they would fill the boat in more than one trip with many full large garbage bags.

As far as non dining hall camps, Cedarlands suffered the exact same fate when it was forced to close. You either love it or hate it. Too much work and bad self-cooked food results for some.
When my wife worked at dining hall Camp Russell as offfice manager in the early 1980s we processed over a thousand scouts in attendance during the July-Aug season. When numbers dwindled in later years, the number of weeks was cut back. The city council camping committee members in Utica decided to close both Cedarlands and Russell, claming that those camps were "far up in the Andirondacks, and no one wanted to travel that far). Truth is, those paid scout administrators did not want to travel from Utica to support those camps, unless it was for the weekly giant free BBQ meal that I always saw them attend week after week. Further truth is, every BSA Council was asked to cough up millions of dollars to pay to BSA National for the decades old youth abuse law suit cases. The only way many could oblige was to sell off properties and close camps that had high expenses with fewer and fewer boys attending.

[electbc]

Sad but true.

[billconner]

It was encouraging that they didn't seem in a hurry to sell and wanted to preserve the ability for Scouts to use it. Seems like it's not part of the settlement. I don't know how many councils merged to Longhouse, but several I'll guess, each with one or two council camps. In my limited experience, was typically one offering patrol method dining (as they do at jamborees) and one dining hall camp.

[craigmcg]

It's been sold to OSI: https://www.adirondackexplorer.org/s...p-on-lows-lake

[BillyGr]

There's some discussion about the situation on the Reddit thread on this subject. In particular, someone there suggested that the closure is likely linked to the fact that this is a "patrol cooking camp," where each visiting scout troop is responsible for preparing/cooking meals for themselves. Sounds like there's been decreased interest in these types of scout camps in recent years, with most scout troops these days opting to instead visit scout camps that have on-site dining halls where meals are prepared by camp staff for them.

That wouldn't be surprising at all.

Having been for many years to our local camp just outside Albany, which offered those Troop attending the option of either meals in a dining hall or cooking their own (to the point that a Troop could switch back & forth for any meal, even with a larger group split and have some for each option), our group (especially when we had a large attendance and did that split option) tended to be the only one cooking for most of the meals. Some groups would do a meal, maybe two, during the week (out of 15 possible), but even that was the exception (maybe 1 or 2 others out of the dozenish sites available any given week).

Some may have simply figured that they get to do enough cooking on other trips during the year and just wanted to focus on the things that camp offers (badges, activities etc.).
One thing that was actually kind of helpful is that when you ordered food, they would (fairly) often forget something, which was a good lesson for what to do in that case.

[Wldrns]

Camp Russell, a dining hall BSA resident camp, had a weekly "Iron Chef" competition. Every troop was handed a milk crate of food, all containing the same variety of food to cook, plus one "secret ingredient", along with as many iron Dutch ovens as they wanted. to use. They had to come up with their own recipes with the ingredients given. They were given a time limit to create the best meal they could. The staff would then visit each with a clipboard of evaluation criteria (appearance, taste, innovativeness, use of secret ingredient, etc.) while one scout would describe their meal presentation. Some turned out spectacularly good, tasty, and inventive, while others were just as spectacular in the opposite direction of edibility. My favorite deserts were during fresh ripe berry season, when the chefs were free to utilize the abundant local nearby woods sweet foods. Winners were awarded the coveted Iron Chef medal for the week.

One long time adult scouter sometimes showed up demonstrating as many as 8 stacked Dutch ovens all cooking something different at the same time with hot charcoal between each oven in the towering stack.

[TrailBlaser]

What is truly sad is the fact that the state will end up with it and like Lowes when it first opened was turned into a dump. DEC was taking 2 and 3 truck loads of garbage out a week. I worked there and seen it. Sometimes theese places are better off in private ownerships.

Interesting, I've been paddling Lows since it was first opened to public and worked as an AFR one summer in the early 90s. Back then, float planes were allowed in and those companies were storing boats and camping gear at different campsites on the lake. There were frequent landings and take-offs that disturbed the peace and quiet (and the loons). It became a totally different experience after the float planes were banned. As an AFR, each week I would patrol and visit all the unoccupied campsites. I saw very little garbage being left (compared to when there was float plane access) and what there was, I removed. The most pervasive problem was campers dismantling fire rings (for some unknown reason) and scattering the rocks around the campsite. I couldn't even count the number of times I had to rebuild fire rings. Even though it sees much more use (especially since Covid), in the early and late season, it still offers a great experience with quiet and solitude.

[Wldrns]

Float planes.....
I've reported on this before, but this may be a good time to repeat my float plane encounter experience. On a solo trip I had planned to bushwhack to some of the nearby remote ponds on the northwestern side of Lows, I had a personal experience with one float plane and its occupants on Memorial Day weekend near the end of when float planes were still allowed to utilize the lake. I had heard that they virtually claimed one or more campsites for themselves and their clients. Unfortunately they apparently never vetted nor infirmed their clients of environmental laws and ethics. How difficult would it be to say "I see you are planning on going fishing, do you know what the state fishing refulations and seasons are for each species you may catch?". Simple helps among general rules and regulations for camping and wildlife.

I had earlier landed my canoe at a primitive site on the sloped hillside (good as a private hammock site) a quarter mile from designated campsite #32. While I was standing in a clearly open area enjoying viewing a pair of happily swimming loons at campsite #32 on the north end of the Grass Pond bay of Lows a float plane approached low from the north and flew directly overhead me. Even though I did not have a campsite set up with tent or visible gear other than the daypack I was carrying, I am sure I could be clearly seen standing under the open sky there overlooking the lake and loon pair as if I was established camping on that site. The plane made a 180 over the main lake and proceeded to land toward me, pulling up to a grassy shore landing nearby. The pilot and two clients proceeded to unload a ton of gear on the grass. I could clearly see the company name as Payne as it began to taxi out. Then I witnessed a strange sight as one of the loons began apparently chasing the moving plane, loudly crying as it went. I could only assume that its nesting site had been disturbed or destroyed.

I decided to leave them alone and headed off for my bushwhack exploration for a couple of hours. Upon my return, I saw a sloppily set up tent with a large floppy blue tarp extending from it. I noted a roaring fire was burning nearby and a 3/4 gone bottle of Wild Turkey stood on a stump. Because of the apparent unattended fire, I shouted out "hello" several times before I heard snoring coming from the open flap on the tent. Peering inside, a man was sleeping on a cot with a rifle propped up against another cot.

Down at the plane's landing site a man was shouting "I've got another one!" as he began running up the slope toward me at the campsite. He was carrying a stringer of still live smallmouth bass, even though bass season would not be open for another couple of weeks. i was dressed in khaki colored hiking clothing, so I may have appeared to be a DEC official as I reminded the man that bass season was not yet open and he must release those fish. "But there a lot of them there" he replied as I insisted that they must be released, which he did.

I then headed off for another bushwhack trip. A couple of hours later I came back again to see him cleaning fish in a bucket. They were bullhead, perfectly legal, so I greeted him and headed off to my primitive campsite nearby. Later, I wondered how that plane could have flown with carrying all the lead being fired from the men's campsite. I worried about the loon pair as targets and the possible remains of their nearby nest.

From my private campsite I then saw a DEC motorboat heading toward them and it departed a short time later. On my way out the next day, I stopped at my friend AFR Dawn Andrews home that I knew was on a short path from the lake near site #12. I told of my encounter while visiting with Dawn and husband Greg (the Sabattis BSA camp custodian/manager) She said that her boss, ranger Will Benzel, who from SAR I also knew well, was in the motorboat the evening before, but she said he did not note any obvious violations at the time. Dawn concluded with stating that "Payne was a known pain".

[DSettahr]

Trash can be a tricky impact to quantify. My master's thesis work (which was eventually published) was in monitoring of campsite impacts- I applied multiple different methods to the same campsites to see if they produced similar results. Trash was initially an aspect of my research but quickly abandoned as out of all types of camping impact, I found trash to be the most variable and difficult to accurately quantify (not just between separate individual campsites at the same general location, but also over time in any individual campsite). Both the DEC and the public will somewhat regularly undertake efforts to carry trash out of the backcountry- and accordingly, just because you walk into a campsite once to find it pristine and clean doesn't mean that same campsite isn't also regularly one that gets trashed.

I know that the float plane companies will themselves undertake occasional cleanup efforts in the backcountry at locations they frequently visit. Not sure how much of this is the result of DEC encouragement vs. self-realization, but in any case there is the obvious understanding by the float plane companies that their continued ability to access certain spots is dependent on those spots remaining somewhat clean.

I haven't undertaken clean up efforts at Lows Lake specifically, but I have done so at other backcountry locations that see similar levels of use (without float plane access). It's not unheard of to see as many as 100+ lbs of trash hauled out of the backcountry from a lake that has some 20+ campsites on it, after a single clean-up visit.

[billconner]

On the patrol dining vs dining hall, I suspect the troops that camped a lot - last involved camped at least one weekend each month - are the ones that liked dining hall summer camps and have survived where many troops gone. Ours was clear the summer camp was for fun and earning merit badges and patrol cooking got in the way of classes. Wednesdays were eat in camp - labor laws and kitchen staff time off were reason.