Each spring, the Finger Lakes State Parks Scaling Teams rappel down cliffs over Gorge Trails, manually removing shards of shale that winter freezing has left perched on ledges. If they didn’t do this hard, dangerous work, called “scaling,” it would not be safe enough for us to walk in the gorges, for fear of falling rock. Scaling must be conducted annually in six state parks in the Finger Lakes region. In this encore episode (167) of Walk in the Park from 2017, we take a close look at the scalers at work on the high cliffs in the upper gorge of Enfield Glen in Robert H. Treman State Park near Ithaca, NY. The scalers tell us and show us what’s involved.
Walk in the Park is a non-commercial, public access, cable television series produced by Owl Gorge Productions, a Finger Lakes Tourism Alliance partner.
