On August 13 and 14, a major slide occurred on Mr. Dix, making the Boquet look like espresso coffee for a week. The BRASS phone rang often as worried residents sought information. About once every forty years there is a slide of this proportion in the Adirondacks. Whole sections of mountain, containing 4-5 feet of top soil, forest duff and trees, crash down slopes leaving a solid rock scar.
Obviously, if slide material enters an upland headwater stream, eventually the downstream river feels the impact. On the Boquet, about a week's time is necessary to begin to clear heavy sediment impact during summer discharge flows. But, slides near headwater areas will continue to affect water quality with every rainfall and snow melt. Because the slide occurred so late in the season, the Boquet will probably see periods of heavy turbidity until next August when the slide materials should have established a protective vegetative layer. Gary Randorf, Adirondack photographer, has just taken aerial photos of the slide for BRASS. Gary went up in Ted Merle-Smith's 1941 piper cub. It was perfect for air photos, says Gary. The whole of one side of the plane folds away so you don't have to shoot behind window glass. And Ted flew very close. We were almost kissing the mountains.
BRASS, never much of an organization for kissing mountains, found good, from-the-ground locations for photographing the slide.