Episode Guest
Chris Rickard, Park Manager at Lake Taghkanic State Park
New York State Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation
Episode Transcript
Missy Rentz:
As we continue to celebrate winter in the parks today, we are exploring New York State Parks. I’m thrilled to welcome Chris Ricard. Chris is the park manager at Lake Taghkanic State Park. Chris, welcome to The Parks Podcast.
Chris Rickard:
Thank you very much for having me.
Missy Rentz:
When people explore New York Parks and winter, what kind of different activities, just broadly throughout the winter, can they expect to see?
Chris Rickard:
Oh, especially in New York State, we have very diverse state. But some of the regular things you would think of just a regular hike, right? Going hiking, whether it be around the lake, a small nature trail. We have small hiking loops. We have really big long loops to hike around my lake’s, about a five mile hike which you can just go hiking, there’s a lot of the trails get packed down. So you can start off with just a set of hiking boots, maybe a set of gators, and some crampons, some small micro spikes in the wintertime. And obviously then we have all the other fun activities with the toys, right? We have sledding in some of our parks. We have snowmobiling, believe it or not. Even here at my park at Lake Te, Konica Small, it’s a good warmup for if you’re gonna go north where we have about 10 miles of trails. So if you wanna get your sled ready for the big runs up north. We obviously have snowshoeing, which is very, you bring your own snowshoes. We do have some facilities in the taco region that do rent, um, snowshoes or do have guided snowshoe hikes. Like I said, sledding is Mills Norrie State Park on the Hudson River is probably the primo, sledding, nice safe area to go. I did it for the first time last year there and was blown away. Reminds me when I grew up in Manhattan, so we had some sledding hills in Riverside Park. Somehow the Hudson River with that valley there you get some really good sledding hills, so some good hills. Even these people wouldn’t think an historic site is a place to have a blast sledding. But believe it or not, you have the gilded age behind you and you’re sliding down the hill towards the river safely. So it’s really really cool. Other activities I can think of. One thing too is we do have hunting in some of our parks. That’s a winter activity. Hunting season just ended for most of New York state. But we do offer hunting during, in season and we obviously usually separate a lot of our popular areas for hiking. We separate the hunting to the more backwoods toward more, wild parts of the park, including mine.
Missy Rentz:
And then New York has, more than 250 parks, recreation areas and historic sites, which that number blew my mind. And so that really it just makes it so that there’s a huge variety of activities. And as we lead into the holiday season and then winter, hardcore winter, what are some of the highlights that visitors can look forward to?
Chris Rickard:
So one of the things everyone’s gotta check out is frozen waterfalls, right? We have something New York State has is amazing waterfalls. Obviously Niagara is the first one on everyone’s list and when it’s iced up it’s pretty cool. But there’s Taghkanic Falls out in the center of the state. We have, a trail close to us that goes out to bash Bsch Falls. It starts in New York and you end up in another state, which is really cool. And it’s only, it’s less than a mile hike. So really cool. Along this beautiful trout stream through this really beautiful hemlock valley. So frozen waterfalls are really cool kind of destination on hikes. That’s a lot of people love, like they say, don’t go chasing waterfalls. Well, hikers love to do that.
Missy Rentz:
We do
Chris Rickard:
in wintertime, it really gives a different. The water’s clear because of the reflection from just the snow. Like you actually look, there’s like blue water. It’s beautiful because of just the reflections they have. So it’s a totally different take on a regular, which you take a summer hike to a waterfall. It’s a really unique experience. I’m trying to think of some of the other things that mentioning of just other state parks. We have, again, we have Fahnestock Winter Park is our premier cross country ski center. It’s only about. An hour and a half from New York City. So when they do finally get some southern snow in the mid Hudson Valley there that’s where you can, it has everything. You can rent snow shoes, you can, rent cross country skis there, both the traditional skis and skate skiing for some folks. That’s a very European way of skate skiing because they do a very professional job of grooming their trails.
Missy Rentz:
Your park is in your region is very active, and so it’s outside activities. But as I was looking at the calendar of events for the holiday season in New York, some of the things I thought were really interesting is there’s a storybook trail in craft outing, which felt very, for the kids. So it’s like, what a great activity to bring your kids to. There was wreath making and the one that, it took me back to my childhood was making pine cone bird feeders and so I think a lot of your parks are really trying to incorporate the kid in all of us of all ages to be able to encourage people to come outside. And a lot of those are guided, which I think if you are new to parks, it’s really helpful to have someone guide you, hold your hand and teach you how do we use our parks and what parks are available for us.
Chris Rickard:
A hundred percent. Our busy season is the summer here. But our neighboring parks Taghkanic State Park, Copake Falls has a wonderful interpreter. They do almost weekly events there. Obviously the First Day Hike is gonna be statewide. There’s all different levels now because it’s gotten so popular. It’s almost every single state park offers some sort of guided hike on that January 1st summer for the morning for the folks that didn’t stay up all night. And they do have some that’s afternoon for the folks that are just waking. But statewide, everywhere from Walkway over the Hudson, which is a pedestrian bridge to, again, to Taghkanic State Park, Copake Falls, which does a waterfall hike, there’s rail trail hikes. There’s small loops that are done, but all are guided. And usually the cool things at the end has some sort of hot cocoa or warming at the end of that. And it’s open to all ages, like that’s a big thing. Some are dog friendly. You can check that. That’s important to a lot of people if they’re well behaved. Sometimes we put dogs in social settings, don’t get along with everyone, so that’s something to make sure that if your dog is well behaved, bring it along, but just check with the park before you go. But again, I don’t know if I mentioned, there’s obviously the Park Explorer app, where a lot of these events can be listed. We do have an app that’s out. Our website was just recently updated to be much more user friendly. That you can use both of those, both the app and the website to really hone in. If you want some more details, you go to the website that has all the listing of the rules and what, and, but the, the Explorer app, it’s called the New York State Parks Explorer app which automatically, if it knows your location, will list parks that are near you. You just quickly click on the park and they’ll actually have the calendar events that are coming up for that park.
Missy Rentz:
And if you go to the episode page on TheParksPodcast.com, I will link to all of these sites that you’re mentioning.
Chris Rickard:
Okay. Awesome.
Missy Rentz:
So that people have an easy link. One of the things I also wanna point out and, every state park does this, but I thought it was really prominent in New York, is the guided activities. You’ve mentioned a lot of the activities, but there’s also programs if you want to learn how to snowshoe, how to bird watch, how to ice skate, which is really, it’s important to, to offer those and that’s really seems to be prevalent and a big priority in New York state.
Chris Rickard:
Yeah, very much so. Rockefeller State Park Preserve down in Westchester County does they have interpreters that will do exactly that. They do bird walks. They’ll do owl walks, and they’ll actually play calls so that you can hear, you can call owls, which is a really cool event. Animal tracks, right? That’s a really cool, fun thing to learn and that’s guided. They do that Taghkanic State Park. They also do that at Rockefeller, that I’m aware of in the region. And again, the historic sites as much as we, some people think history’s dry, especially in the winter with, especially with the holiday decorations right now. Those interpreters just walking and seeing how it was to live back in the thirties and even before that. We have American revolutionary sites. John Jay Homestead is a really cool Philipse Manor Hall just had a huge renovation done to it and does some amazing interpretation with all the different storytellings from the indigenous folks to the enslaved to just really just well put together. And there’s nothing cooler than coming into Yonkers, which is a bustling little metropolis of its own. And there’s this beautiful, historic site that tells really the stories of the manner days back in the time. And what New York City area, or at least the Tri-State area looked like back in the. In the, 17 hundreds, 18 hundreds,
Missy Rentz:
Those have become, it was a surprise to me, but those historic sites, historic parks, have become one of my favorite things to discover. I thought I would be just the nature hiking, camping person, and it’s amazing how our parks and history really do work well together
Chris Rickard:
A hundred percent. And a lot of our parks were formed by these large, very rich landowners that ended up ultimately. Passing on those big lands back to the people, which is, a lot of how New York State parks has been created by just gifts. Gifts and land sales. So it’s. We now all get to enjoy what those people got to enjoy back in the day.
Missy Rentz:
Absolutely. So we’ve talked about, broadly about New York State parks in the winter and the holiday season. We’ve talked about First Day Hikes, how every state is gonna, participate. Let’s talk about your park at Lake Taghkanic a little bit. What do you guys have going on this holiday season in this winter?
Chris Rickard:
So right now we, obviously we do have a layer about, we got about six inches of snow in the last storm. Maybe a little more than that. We sit a little higher. So right now we are open for just for regular hiking. We have a five mile loop around the lake, which is very easy to follow. We do have some other back loops. We have probably about, like I said, about 10 miles, 15 miles of hiking in the park. We also allow snowmobiling, so we have some of those back trails. You can take the lake loop snowmobiling. We don’t get busy, so it doesn’t interfere with our hikers. Really. It’s, we good. We maybe get. I would say a dozen or so snowmobiles a year here. So it’s a testing ground before they go up north. We don’t have enough trails, but it is a place that, that’s just one activity. If you got a new Christmas present and wanted to try it out snowshoeing this is a great park for it. Like I said, we have those back country trails. Ice skating we don’t maintain, but once we get, like right now how the ice is setting up, as long as you don’t get too much snowfall, that will smooth over very nice. And we have, and then ice fishing is huge here. We have great ice fishing on our lake. We perch pickerel, large mouth bass is what we have in our lake. Last year was probably our most, the busiest I’ve seen probably 20 years of folks coming out. The stuff they sell now, they have ice shelters, so it looked like there’s, we had ice shelters all over these throw up tents all over the ice. Families out, multiple families. So we had a group of about four families, just generations of folks that were out there. And it was just great to see because again. With climate change. Some of the winners have not been ideal for that, but it comes in phases. We, again, last winter was really good for ice fishing. We had state troopers here practicing their diving. They cut these huge blocks outta the ice and they were over, almost had almost two feet of ice Wow. On the lake, which is amazing, which we haven’t seen in a long time. Pretty cool stuff.
Missy Rentz:
Yeah, that is really neat. And I know New York Parks can be very busy. I tried to spend more time up there last summer and I’m a last minute planner, so it didn’t work out very well for me. How far in advance can people book reservations at the parks?
Chris Rickard:
So you can do up to, for cottages and cabins and campsites, you can do up to nine months in advance. And that is highly recommended if you want to stay in the parks during peak season, especially the big holidays, which are obviously kicks off and Memorial Day, July 4th, labor Day, those are our busiest, Columbus State falls in there with that beautiful fall foliage. We have people that will sit online, at midnight, to the nine months to the day and still not get the reservation because everyone’s clicking the same time. But during the week, even in peak season, there’s more availability.
Missy Rentz:
You can sometimes get lucky for those short windows. Sure. But it is a good time. Now, just a reminder to be thinking about your spring, summer, fall plans. Yes. And get things, go ahead and get things booked for New York State Parks.
Chris Rickard:
A hundred percent.
Missy Rentz:
Chris, thank you so much for joining us today. I love hearing about New York State Parks. I need to get to you, to Lake Taghkanic, to play in your park sometime soon. But thank you so much for being with us today.
Chris Rickard:
No problem. Thank you for having me.
Missy Rentz:
Happy holidays to you, Chris. Happy holidays to you listeners, and until next time, we’ll see you in the parks.
Speaker:
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please be sure to like and share on your favorite podcast platform. Music for the parks podcast is performed and produced by Porter Hardy. For more information, please follow us at The Parks Podcast, or visit our website at TheParksPodcast.com.