Adirondack Sports February 2024

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