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July 1, 2017

North Country Cycling Guide

For many years the Laurentian Chapter has featured cycling trips as part of its outings program. About five years ago the thought occurred to Tom Ortmeyer, one of our leaders, that it would be a good idea to document the routes and that it might potentially form the nucleus of a cycling guidebook. Tom shared the idea with John Barron, another leader, and the concept of a cycling guide to the North Country was born. Now, after about five years of development it has come to fruition in the form of an electronic publication, Cycling Routes of the St. Lawrence River Valley and Northern Adirondacks, released by ADK Publications in May and now available for purchase.

We (Tom and John) began by reading cycling guidebooks to other regions, to serve as models of what information to include. Detailed route information was clearly needed, along with maps. Descriptions of features that made the routes appealing was important. So were photographs, featuring cycling, scenery, culture, and sometimes other outdoor activities. As it was hoped that the guide would attract cyclists from other places, it was also important to include lodging, restaurants, and information of a tourist nature.

When we started we already had quite a number of routes we knew well. Using the details from those routes we developed formats and layouts. As we continued to enter trips, we found five areas emerging that could serve as chapter titles: the Northern Foothills of the High Peaks; the Northwestern Adirondacks; Massena/Cornwall area; Potsdam/Canton area; and the Thousand Islands.

In some places we had enough routes to cover the area well. Where we were short of material, we often planned and scheduled new chapter trips and collected information during our outing. The routes vary in length and difficulty. About a quarter of them are in Canada. Water seems to be a unifying scenic theme: rivers and streams, lakes ranging from small ponds to Lake Ontario, and even man-made canals.

The ADK Publications Committee warmed to the idea of being our publisher. ADK professional editors and various reviewers improved the guide very much. One of their requests was for GPS waypoint data to be included; we were able to obtain and verify the coordinates using Google Maps. It was decided to publish electronically only - a first for ADK Publications. This leads to very low costs and makes specialized, low-volume publications economically feasible. Everyone was pleased with the final outcome, and the ADK hopes it will serve as a prototype for more activity guidebooks at the chapter level.

Cycling Routes of the St. Lawrence River Valley and Northern Adirondacks comprises twenty-seven ride descriptions in six chapters. It is available online in ePub and Mobi file formats for computer, tablet, and smartphone compatibility at www.adk.org/product/cycling-routes-of-the-saint-lawrence/ for $4.95. The book has a facebook group at www.facebook.com/groups/501999636619781/. We encourage you to become a friend of the book and post your bicycling adventures there.

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