INDIAN LAKE — His childhood days as a Voorheesville Boy Scout made Greg George want to become a state forest ranger. After 29 years in the field, he was recognized this year with the annual Hodgson Award for his region — the Central Adirondacks. George was honored for his leadership, heroism, and commitment to public service as a ranger.
A major part of his job is search and rescue. Seventy to 80 percent of the land in Indian Lake is state owned, George said. His territory, which is the whole township, transverses 93 square miles that he "knows the ins and outs" of, he said. He has undertaken white-water, rock-climbing, and forest rescues.
Most of the time, rescues involve finding people who are lost, he said. Half the people who enter the wilderness do so unprepared, George said. "Most of them get out with dumb luck," he said.

Search and rescue

The biggest danger to nature-adventure-seekers can be themselves. Hikers regularly head out without watching the weather or the time, and lose track of where they are going, or wander off a trail, he said. They think they will only be gone for a few hours and they have no safety-prevention kit, no way to build a fire, no extra provision of food or water, and no flashlight, he said. And, usually, the people who get lost are the ones who don’t even sign in at a trailhead registry, so it takes a couple of days, before George is notified someone is missing. It can be many days before a person is found, he said.

Just last week, George was scouring the Adirondacks for a man from Stillwater. He went missing on Friday and was reported missing on Tuesday. A friend found his parked empty truck and searchers started looking from there. It is believed that he had gone fishing — they never found him.

On average, in Indian Lake township, there are 10 search-and-rescue missions a year, but there are about 250 searches per year in the whole Central Adirondack region, which rangers join in to help each other. Searches are very intensive, George said.

Rangers prefer searching for lost hunters at night, he said. While calls about missing hunters are often received as darkness falls, the night actually helps in the search, George said. The forest its quieter at night with animals asleep so calling out and waiting for a yell back is more practical. Also, no other people are in the woods, and the missing person is most likely not moving in the dark and will remain in one spot. And fires or flares are more visible.

Jack of all trade

George is trained as a wilderness first responder, which is one step below an emergency medical technician, he said. Rangers are not necessarily experts at rock-climbing or white-water boating, George said, but they know the best access points, the best ways to reach and rescue.
"We don’t normally climb up to rescue someone" on a cliff’s edge, George said. Instead a ranger is lowered from the top, down to the subject, which is much easier and safer, he said.

Being a ranger, George said, is a jack of all trades. He is an educator on such matters as fire prevention. He also does trail clearing and maintenance, trail marking and lean-to-repair. And, he monitors remote campers, those who hike four or five miles into isolation and then set up a private camp.
State Forest Rangers, hold "peace-officer status," so they have the ability to enforce environmental laws, such as logging and fire regulations. There’s a lot of public relations in being a forest ranger, he said.

George also works to educate and prevent bear and human interaction.

While black bears in Canada have attacked humans, the black bear in the Adirondacks for some reason have been docile in nature, George said. He has been at Indian Lake with his wife and two children for 23 years; their son is 26 and their daughter is 21. Bear attacks are so rare that he can only remember one incident where a woman was scratched by a bear. She got in the middle of a fight between a bear and her dog, George said.