Grace Hudowalski Charitable Trust

06/11/2026

AU SABLE FORKS | Researcher and historian Don Wickman will speak on "The American Revolution in the Champlain Valley 1775-1783" on Monday, June 15, at 6:30 p.m. in the Community Room at the Au Sable Forks Free Library.

06/11/2026

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The hike honors John Brown’s legacy in the movement to end slavery and recognizes his historic connection to the Adirondacks.

06/01/2026

We’re helping to spread the word about this Friday’s jam to honor Dan Duggan

05/29/2026

Sarah is in her second year with the Museum adding her technical expertise to supporting the exhibits and all important publicity and social media! This little video about the on premises fire tower is a great sample of the touch she adds to what we like to call “the little museum that did!”

Make sure you come see the permanent exhibit “Hiking the Adirondack High Peaks” and if you are not a 46er but know one drag them along. They get in free and can bring up to 4 guests on their free entry all courtesy of the Grace Trust and Stephanie Douglass’ Charles Douglas Trust.

Come get to know your mountains. It makes climbing them like visiting old friends!

Good Climbing!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYczvmwpEIl/?igsh=MXhkY3cxMWxrdGd5dA==

05/29/2026

Grace had the growing hiker impact on her mind through the years although pretty quiet and discrete about what she thought. But every now and again she would share her thoughts, sometimes thinly veiled in a letter to a climber.

She did just that with John Winkler ( #1279) who she followed through his first round, and then in his Bushwhacking round and beyond. In the course of the bushwhacking round Grace wrote to John on August 25, 1985 about a traverse between Tabletop and Phelps, once a favorite traverse of the early climbers, about drinking water and Giardia which was then a hot issue.

"Maybe you are immune to Giardia - some are and I wouldn't;t know about it but it doesn't sound very pleasant. Even Pete Fish, of all people, got a dose of it. You want to remember you are hiking in practically unknown territory where people - the worst offenders, I believe - do not go. But perhaps we are over zealous, I wouldn't know, I only hear about cases and the climbers I know don't seem to gripe about the extra water they have to carry. Of course, this may be one way of cutting down on traffic in the high peaks! Frankly I doubt it. Come and state your gripes to the 46ers at meeting September 14th."

The deadline to comment to the State about restricting access is approaching - June 1st!

Adirondack Mountain Club has a position - they prefer that the state not restrict access (they have a revenue stream coming in from their massive parking area at $20 a car per day - some of us remember the days when the lot was a sliver between the hiker building and the trailhead and ADK members parked for free).

Surely other groups with high peaks interests will take a position. Not sure if the 46ers will but probably not.

Here is your change to take part in a debate that has been simmering for decades. Giardia did not stem the tide.

Good Climbing!

05/28/2026

AND . . . Who among us remembers these??

🤣😂🤣😂. Those large ADK 46er emblems were put to a myriad of creative uses well beyond the intend use of the bags themselves! Ah the memories.

These were a late 70’s early 80’s initiative.

05/28/2026

Be-Trailing the Trailless Peaks - 1966.

By the time the Spring 1966 46er meeting rolled around there were some 346 registered club members. 26 years had elapsed since the original 13 of 26 people who were known to have ascended the 46 high peaks gathered and voiced concern to the State about be-trailing the untrained summits. And once again the issue was a hot topic that prompted a roundtable discussion. The names, familiar to he who is writing, will be unfamiliar to most readers, but they were the champions of their day and a few lasted to see the dawn of the 21st century.

The issue continued on for several decades, last grappled with by the club in the 1990s and as the summit canisters were reluctantly removed pursuant to State edict.

We think Ditt (Ditt Dittmar ( #31 - who finished in 1945 and served as treasurer forever) made a good point.

"To set new rules now for becoming a 46er is unfair, but we should try to change the attitude."

How do you change or encourage a change in attitude when the generation now leading the club has no (or little) institutional knowledge and has lost touch with the philosophy that was the foundation of the club they now lead??? If you do not know what it was, how can you advocate for a return to the wilderness that existed for generations but is now at risk and prompting State action to restrict access?

Challenges worthy of people who have climbed 46 summits we think. But when was the last time the club as a whole even considered the impact? Probably close to 3 decades we suspect.

Are the 46ers as an organization offering input in the present controversy over limiting use? What is that input, if any? And if not, why not?

Good Climbing!

05/27/2026

A great day of document mining at the Adirondack History Museum today. Second installment an earlier example of the emphasis the 46rs placed on wilderness.

The very first meeting of 46rs (persons who had climbed the 46 high peaks - as opposed top the 46rs of Troy where that was not a requirement for membership) was held October 13, 1940 at Adirondack Loj.

Here is the invite sent to Herb Clark and the action taken but the group of 13 (there were 25 or 26 known 46rs at the time) who attended.

What was their major concern? That the 21 untrailed summits remain trailless!!!! That would become a recurring theme within the 46er organization for the next 50 years.

And who led that charge? Well Grace did. And this a few years before he entered state service with the Commerce Department.

As an aside, the 46rs of Troy had already established a relationship with Lithgow Osborn. Then the Commission of Conservation, later appointed ambassador to Norway by FDR during WWII, Osborn had been invited to attend one of the 46r of Troy living room meetings in the 1930's. Can you imagine that? You send an invite to the NY State Conservation Commission to have dinner at so and so's house and they accept and attend!

Times have changed. But the concern has not. Wilderness.

Good Climbing!

05/27/2026

Embarked on a two week "in residence" at the Adirondack History Museum in Elizabethtown today and in the first couple of hours happened upon another Grace chestnut that we thought worth sharing.

In sharing this we are mindful of the 46ers having held their annual Spring meeting on Sunday evening at the Cambria in Lake Placid with 175 in attendance. And we note that this year the number of registered 46ers broke through the 17,000 mark. We just took a peek and the number on the internet register stands at 17,065. Ten years ago that number was 10,136. Twenty years ago . . . 6,002. It took 85 years to reach 6,002. And in 20 years 11,000 plus have been welcomed into the club.

And now the State is considering using parking limitations and possibly other means to limit the number of persons entering the high peaks wilderness.

So it is with these things in mind that we thought it might be worth sharing Grace's thoughts to a Roger Freeman (who did not complete and register) from her letter dated March 14, 1949 (note it was written from Grace's professional office with the State Commerce Department, something she did quite frequently in the early days of the Adirondack 46er club). Parenthetically, when Grace wrote to Roger in March of 1949 - 77 years or so ago - there were a mere 66 member of the club that had formed less than a year earlier.

"I was very interested in your wanting a trail up each of the 46 and hasten to disagree with you and state my reason. The challenge of doing the 46 is greatly enhanced by the fact that 21 of them have no trails and must be climbed by map and compass. If there were trails up all of them, climbing them would not present the challenge that it does today, nor would it call into play real mountaineering adventure. I think one of the biggest kicks I got in climbing them, and I was the ninth on the list, was the fact that I had nothing to go by except the Marshall's little booklet which you spoke of and the various USGS sheets. Frankly, it was a real thrill to be able to map my own course and find my way without benefit of a well marked trail. I know that the Adirondack 46ers are very opposed to the building of of trails on the 21 trailers peaks and, in fact, there would be little use in doing it because most of them offer no view whatsoever.

I am sure that once you start out to do the 46 that you, too, will agree that it is fun to map your own course and see if you can find your way without getting lost. It is nice to know that there are places in New York State that are still "wilderness."

We hang long and thoughtfully on that last sentence.

Times have changed. Challenges abound.

Good Climbing!