The first rope tow on Mount Pisgah was built in 1938 at Frank Baker’s shop at 119 River Street; it was made from a Ford truck. A joint venture between Charlie Keough and Hector Wood, the tow was sold to the village and used for a number of years. George Ducket, in knickers, and Charlie Keough, at right. (Enterprise photo)

I spent a lot of time at Mt. Pisgah back in the 1950s and ’60s with the family learning to ski, including me, and later as a village official.

As village manager, I had the idea to build the tubing run, which the village board then approved. After all the paper work was finished, I jumped in a village truck with Wayne Voudren, the guy who kept all the village equipment repaired and running, and we drove to New Hampshire to pick up the mechanical apparatus that would operate the tubing run. The inmates from Camp Gabriels worked with our village crews to build the run. And you know what else … I got to operate a small bulldozer during the construction.

Wayne is an all-around good guy; he has served as a member of the Harrietstown Town Board and is the longest serving village employee ever … about 54 years. The village should give Wayne much more than a gold watch when he retires. Wayne is the only employee with a license to drive a tractor-trailer size vehicle; he is a professional water dowser; one who finds underground water with forked stick; but Wayne is sharp and honest and never speaks with forked tongue.

Well, now let’s get back to Mt. Pisgah. But wait, if I have space, there is a have a great story about Wayne and me driving west of Toronto at 3 a.m. one day to pick up the new village sidewalk plow.

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Pisgah peak old as any the world

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“The rock formation of Mt. Pisgah indicates the peak is as old as any in the world, Stanley Worthington, amateur geologist, informed members of the Kiwanis club at their dinner meeting last evening in the St. Regis Hotel.

“A member of the faculty of Saranac Lake High School, Mr. Worthington has as his hobby the study of geologic structures and has made a comprehensive study of rock formations in the area surrounding Saranac Lake.

“The Pisgah formations, he said, indicate that an ancient sea once inundated this part of the continent over a thousand, million years ago. As the waters receded the rocks were settled until finally the present peak evolved.

“As soon as the area was lifted above the sea, the action of rain and other weathering effects began sweeping them down again to the ocean. “We can witness that now by watching the Saranac River after a heavy storm. At Plattsburgh, it deposits formations in Lake Champlain.

“Steady low temperatures may again produce glaciers that swept over this area between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago, he said. If the mercury hovered continually at zero or below during the winter and around 60 in the summer, another glacial era, he predicted, would start.

“Rock specimens collected by Mr. Worthington on his geologic field trips were shown to the Kiwanians.”

I am always amazed that what seems to me as a basic part of many stories is that the reporter misses the punch line. Not a word about what kind of rocks he displayed for the Kiwanis Club members.

Researching the HSL Wiki site we found the following:

“Mount Pisgah is primarily composed of gneiss bedrock, which is a metamorphic rock characterized by its banded appearance. Specifically, the mountain includes garnetiferous bands and cyanite with the gneiss, indicating a history of high pressure and high temperature metamorphism. The gneiss contains abundant garnet and cyanite crystals.” [I already knew all of that, ha, ha.]

Here is a teaser for part two of the Mt. Pisgah story coming next week.

“The first downhill ski area was developed in 1938 as Charlie Keough and Hector Woods opened ‘Sky View’, a slope located on the hillside above Donnelly’s Corners on Route 86.”

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The rest of the Toronto trip story

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So, back to Wayne and me leaving Saranac Lake at 3 a.m. on that day more than 20 years ago to pick up the aforementioned plow. We took turns driving and, of course, my shift came as we were going through Toronto at the rush hour. On the return (I’m trying to cut to the chase here), Wayne was driving as we decided to cross back into the states at Buffalo. The truck line was backed up for a mile, so I say to Wayne, “Let’s just go through the car lane, we’ll be in that truck lane for an hour.” Wayne replies, “I don’t know about that. I say, “Trust me, it will be okay.”

The guy in the booth at the car lane looks at the village seal on our truck and pretty much waves us through. “See that,” I brag to Wayne.

We both go to work the next morning, tired, but at our regular hours, and Wayne comes “striding” into my office about 11 a.m. – and if you don’t know Wayne, he’s 6’5” and bulletproof. “Well, smart a** (I believe he meant to say ‘smart aleck’), I’ve been on the phone all morning with the Canadian border officials trying to explain why I crossed the border illegally with newly purchased equipment and avoiding the truck lane. They obviously had all the paper work ready, waiting for us to cross and the only name on the paper work was Wayne Voudren.”

So, after a few minutes, I got out from under my desk, “put on my small shoes,” as they say, and apologized to Wayne. We are still buddies.

(Part II on Mt. Pisgah next week.)