The Moose River Plains are the remotest place in the southern Adirondacks you can get to by driving.
The Limekiln Lake-Cedar River Road is 40 miles of mostly dirt road through deep forest, lined with primitive roadside campsites and short trails to lakes and ponds.
A new land use proposal by the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the Adirondack Park Agency would recognize that intensive camping goes on there, while also reducing access in the more remote southern part of the 50,000-acre Moose River Plains Wild Forest, and building a new snowmobile trail.
Public hearings on the plan are slated for mid-August.
Hearings will be held at Indian Lake School at 1 p.m. Monday, Aug. 16; Inlet town hall at 6:30 that evening; and at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 18, at DEC headquarters in downtown Albany.
The proposals include shifting 15,000 acres in the southern part of the plains from Wild Forest to the more restrictive Wilderness category, and adding to the adjoining West Canada Lake Wilderness.
A new Intensive Camping Area along the road through the plains would be established, recognizing the amount of camping that occurs there.
But two spur roads off the Limekiln Lake-Cedar River Road would be closed to motorized vehicles.
They are Otter Brook and Indian Lake roads (no, not that Indian Lake; different Indian Lake). The remote lakes those roads led to, including Beaver, Squaw and Indian, would be made accessible by float plane.
The proposed plan also calls for a new community-connector snowmobile trail between Limekiln Lake-Cedar River Road and Lower Sargent Pond, which would then link to Indian Lake, Inlet, Raquette Lake and Long Lake.
Large parts of the draft plan can be reviewed at DEC's website, and CD copies are available at DEC offices in Albany, Ray Brook, and Lowville. They're also available for review at the town halls in Webb and Ohio in Herkimer County, and Arietta, Inlet, Long Lake, Lake Pleasant and Morehouse in Hamilton County.
Not everyone has heard of the Moose River Plains, of course, but they got some unexpected attention this past spring when DEC made plans to close the interior roads because of lacking of maintenance money. A deal was quickly struck, however, for local municipal crews to take over road maintenance for this year, keeping the camping areas open to the public.
