LOCALadk Magazine

42 Summer 2018 LOCALadk Magazine LOCALadk tertainment. To be sure, rafting guides have been known to ham it up, but today there's more to it, said Bob Rafferty, whose family owns and operates the Adirondac Rafting Com- pany along a wild stretch of the Hudson in the central Adiron- dacks. "Initially we were all entertainers, but the longer you do it, the more you become an ambassador," Rafferty said. " We have people from all over the world, and it's a great op- portunity to discuss the environment and the Adirondacks." In 1983, when second-generation guiding was taking hold, whitewater rafting was relatively new to the Adirondacks. "No one really had any knowledge of the river," Rafferty said. "It was an adventure for the guides as well as the guests." Unlike, perhaps, ice climbing, whitewater sports wouldn't have entirely befuddled the guides of old. There were stories of brave men running rapids in canoes, but just as many men were prepared to stand up and call them liars. Upon hearing a tale of someone running Buttermilk Falls near Long Lake, one guide cast doubt by saying he'd seen five ducks go into the falls and only three come out alive. Regardless, Rafferty appreciates the guides of old. "Can you imagine how rugged they were back then? " he said. "I don't feel we're as hardy, but in a lot of ways we're ver y sim- ilar; people are seeing a wild environment for the first time, and we're responsible for their safety and comfort." And when people are seeing a wild environment for the first time, there are bound to be stories. No surprise, the best are often fish stories. Pete Casamento runs the Adiron- dack- Champlain Guide Ser vice from his lodge on Long Pond, near Willsboro. Most of Casamento's clients are seasoned fishermen from New York and Pennsylvania who sign up to go out with one of his guides at fishing expositions in the cit- ies; most of them become repeat customers. One fisherman made it to Casamento's doorstep each year despite being all but blind. When he was ready to fish, the guides would have to point him in the direction of the water, with var ying levels of success. Once Casamento walked up as the man was reel- ing in his lure, accompanied by a weird tinkle-clink-tinkle-tin- kle sound. Somehow he had cast his bait behind instead of in front, and was reeling it in on dr y rock. Worse, from the standpoint of keeping a straight face, was a solemn and sacred moment between father and son, short- ly after the man handed down his best, time-honored Rapala to his boy. Many a lunker had been hauled in with the prized heirloom, but on the son's first cast, a fish hit it, shredded the knot, and never looked back. The poor man had little to say the rest of the outing, as Casamento tried to keep his suppressed laughter from shaking the boat. Fishing has changed, in that the clients have more sensitiv- ity toward the environment. Those coming up from the south where lakes and rivers have been fished out appreciate the bounty of the Adirondacks and wish to preser ve it. No lon- ger are there long evenings of cleaning fish, Casamento said; most all of his clients release their catch back into the water. Somewhat in the same vein, Pat and Tony Salerno of Mo- riah have let many an eight-point buck in its prime pass on by. The Salernos – dubbed the first family of New York deer hunting – hunt deep in the bush at 2,000 to 3,000 feet of elevation where the monsters lurk. These cagey old sur vi- vors are on the downside of their lives, but present one of the greatest and most rewarding challenges in hunting. This means bushwhacking five miles in, setting up a walled tent with a woodstove and using it as a base camp for stalking their prey. " We do the same thing the old guides did back in the day," said Tony Salerno. What's new is the technology – and the fact that their ap- proach is so demanding few hunters would be willing to sign up. So the Salernos guide for the Live the Wild Life television series, and – rather than taking clients into the woods per- sonally – guide virtually, through shows and DVDs (the bar- rels of their guns shoot video as well as shells). Salerno says he thinks about the hunters who have gone before him when he's out in the woods, in a time-honored contest between man and quarr y. "I'll be out where it's re- mote, lush, and beautiful, and I'll bet that a guide or a Na- tive American saw the same thing," he said. " We do the same style of hunting that they would have done." As with fishing, Salerno said he has noticed a decline in young hunters. "Young people are more into indoor games than outdoor games," he said. Or they are gravitating to new outdoor sports, such as rock- and ice-climbing. Which is where climbing guide Will Roth of Saranac Lake comes in. Like many guides, Roth patches together jobs so he can live where he loves and do what he loves. He teaches college-level outdoor skills, and has guided for a number of outfitters. Roth says rock and ice climbing is for people for whom hik- ing to the top of a mountain is not enough. The adrenaline of the sport creates considerable enthusiasm, and occasionally befuddlement. Roth said one of clients is a first-generation immigrant in his early 20s "who comes back ever y summer and is super psyched ever y time." Once he brought his father, who stared at his son's activity, and for the life of him could make no sense of the activity's appeal. Bob Rafferty

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