A Legacy of Trails: Dan Smith’s Chester Challenge
Panther Mountain
Adirondack historian John Sasso says there are 15 Panther Mountains in New York State and 11 in the Adirondacks, so I should state clearly at the outset that the peak we’re talking about here is the 1,506-foot prominence that overlooks Chestertown, the main hamlet in the Town of Chester.
To get to Chestertown from the south, you can take either of two routes. One is to come up the Northway to Exit 25 and head west for 1.6 miles on Route 8. The more scenic option is to come up Route 28 from Warrensburg and take a right on Route 8 in Wevertown. That will take you east across the Hudson River at Riparius and along the southern shore of Loon Lake.
Chestertown hosts a great farmer’s market each Wednesday during the summer at the base of Panther Mountain in front of Town Hall. That’s one good reason to visit.
Another is to sample the array of scenic, family friendly hikes that former Chester Town Supervisor Fred Monroe and veteran trail maker Dan Smith introduced in 2015 in the Chester Challenge, a creative packaging of family-friendly trails modeled on the "Saranac Six.” There are signs along Route 8 for the Panther Mountain trailhead near the North Warren School. You can pick up a Chester Challenge brochure at the Visitor's Center at Dynamite Hill.
To create the circuit, Monroe negotiated trail easements to open some of the town's most scenic private lands to the public. Smith, at that time data collector for the town assessor’s office, worked with the landowners to select routes that would minimize the impact on their woodlands and delight out-of-town visitors with a variety of easy and moderate hikes with great Adirondack scenery. Smith also constructed most of the trails, designed and installed most of the signs, and created the maps for the trailheads and trail descriptions for the Challenge brochure, which you may pick up at the Visitors Center at Dynamite Hill.
From the start, Monroe and Smith had wanted to feature Panther in the Challenge, but its inclusion was delayed due to an issue with the landowners, Smith says. Two years ago, those issues were resolved and the landowners came on board. Town Supervisor Craig Leggett asked Smith in late May of 2023 if he could prepare the trail by the town’s annual Summer Fest celebration in July. He made the deadline.
“The Pereau family has owned and maintained trails on Panther for generations,” Smith says. “They were used for multiple purposes, including hunting and ATV riding. Surprisingly, despite ATV use, the trails were in great shape.”
“It was nice to be able to bring Panther into the Challenge in memory of Fred,” he adds.
If you’re fortunate to hike Panther on a clear day, you’ll be treated on its summit to a view like this. Gore Mountain, with its ski trails, is easy to spot at center. Eleventh Mountain is the long, caterpillar-like plateau to Gore’s left.
View from the summit of Panther Mountain
An Early Start in Trail Making
Dan Smith on the summit of Green Hill
“I was always into building trails,” Smith says. As a kid, he recalls building a trail through the woods from his house near Brant Lake to his aunt’s and making repairs with mud. He and his cousins also would build dangerously steep bike trails.
”I’ve taken different courses over the years, but most of what I know about trailbuilding I’ve learned on my own,” Smith says. ”I worked on the Van Hovenberg trail because I wanted to learn some of their techniques for the work I’ve been doing at Green Hill,” located at the Stone Bridge and Caves in Pottersville.
“That’s my Cadillac trail, if you want to call it that.”
Smith has brought in a power wheelbarrow to assist in that project. “All you have to do is balance it, and it'll bring a load of gravel wherever you want. Going uphill it’s especially handy.”
“A huge amount of trail building is simply moving materials,” he continues. “The less time spent traveling back and forth, the more actual work gets done. To maximize efficiency, I keep tools in four different spots along the trail. I’ll hike partway up, work on a section, then continue to the next. By the time I reach it, I’m ready to tackle another stretch. This way, even the walk up serves a purpose.”
“At the end of the day, this is a one-person passion project, so I have to be smart about how I use my time and energy.”
For More on Panther Mountain…
See Tim Rowland’s story of his hike up Panther here.
…see this entertaining feature that Tim Rowland has just published in Adirondack Explorer.
“Among its other attributes, Panther is certainly in the running for the trailhead closest to a Northway exit,” he writes.
He continues:
“History does indicate that Chestertown of today is in ways similar to what it was 150 years ago. At that time the great influx of greenhorn visitors known as Murray’s Fools was tumbling off the train at North Creek and stampeding off to seed future population centers in Long Lake, Schroon Lake and North Elba — leaving some of these beautiful little east-central communities in Warren County largely unmolested.
“It is much the same today, as spots like Schroon and Gore Mountain attract all the attention, while the trails around the sweet little community of Chestertown (don’t tell anyone, but it has restaurants and nice ones at that) remain lightly trafficked.”
