Kayla White is the stewardship director at Adirondack Mountain Club (also known as ADK). She graduated from University of Buffalo with a degree in philosophy in 2010 and found her way to the Adirondacks a few years later. Kayla has been with has been with ADK for 14 years, starting as a crew member, and now oversees all trail and stewardship programs. Outside of work, she enjoys paddling, yoga, gardening, and skiing.
I grew up in Marcellus, a small town outside of Syracuse, New York. My family took vacations to the Adirondacks, and every year we went to Limekiln Lake. We did front-country camping. We’d swim in the lake and ride bikes, and all of it was really great outdoor experiences. That was how I fell in love with Adirondack Park.
In school, science didn’t come easy to me, which is funny now, because all I do is talk about science. But I liked reading and writing. I went to University of Buffalo and studied philosophy and minored in comparative literature. After I graduated in 2010, I worked at the convenience store chain Wilson Farms in Buffalo for a few years and ended up as the assistant manager. But I was trying to think about where I wanted to live and what would bring me happiness and I realized that place was Adirondack Park. I told my boyfriend Bobby, who is now my husband, “It would be so cool if I could live and work in the Adirondacks.” And he was like, “Let’s do it.” We both wanted a change.
Bobby and I both applied for jobs at Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) and both got hired on as loj crew. The Adirondack Loj, ADK’s front-country lodge, is spelled phonetically because Melvil Dewey, creator of the Dewey Decimal System, owned the property in the early 1900s and thought that spelling needed to be simplified; the name has stuck. As loj crew members, Bobby and I worked on the hospitality side of things. We made beds, served breakfast and dinner, made trail lunches, and cleaned bathrooms. It was a great way to get a foot in the door. We lived in a tent that summer, and on days off we would go hiking. I didn’t grow up going to the High Peaks, and I wasn’t really a hiker before that, but that summer we hiked more than 20 of the High Peaks. The High Peaks are 46 mountains in the Adirondack Park that were popularized in the 1920s for being over 4,000 feet in elevation. (Since then, surveys have revealed that several peaks are under 4,000 feet, but the original list remains the same.) Mount Marcy is definitely a special place to me – there’s something about the summit and just how large the alpine habitat is there. It feels pretty magical. But I also really like Haystack because it’s so remote and beautiful. Colden is another great one.
The crew member role was a seasonal job, so we went back to Buffalo after. I took a bartending class and did some serving and hosting. We were chomping at the bit to get back to the Adirondacks. When I started at ADK, I learned about the Summit Stewardship Program and thought it sounded like the coolest program ever. The Adirondack Mountain Club is really focused on responsible recreation, and that means building a constituency of stewards. The Summit Stewardship Program’s mission is about protecting New York’s alpine habitat through education, trail maintenance, and research, and the summit stewards’ role is to enlist people in that work. There are 21 summits in the Adirondacks with alpine plants that stewards monitor.
The day-to-day work of a summit steward is to hike to the tallest peaks in New York and educate the folks who come up there, in hopes that they help protect the fragile alpine ecosystem. Stewards ask hikers to stay on trail and on bare rock surfaces, so that they keep off of the plants and soil. Really the goal is to have people fall in love with this really special place, so most of the work is educational, teaching people about the flora and how to protect alpine species. There’s also some high-elevation trail maintenance involved in the role. Summit stewards are involved in monitoring the ecosystem and the rare alpine plants up there and conducting research to make sure that the organization is having a positive impact on alpine areas. There are usually five or six summit stewards each season. After my first season at ADK where I worked on the loj crew, I didn’t know enough yet to do summit steward work; I knew I needed to learn more and also physically prepare.
The winter after my first season at ADK, I volunteered at Buffalo Botanical Center and did educational programming there and also took an ecology class. I worked at Johns Brook Lodge, ADK’s backcountry lodge, the next season, which helped me physically prepare to be a summit steward; I had to hike a lot with a heavy pack to bring food into the lodge. Bobby and I hiked during all our free time that summer, too. In the off-season, I worked at the front desk of the lodge, taking reservations and answering the phone, and then I became a summit steward that spring, so I was a summit steward my third summer with ADK, and became a chief summit steward the following year.
I became the summit steward coordinator at the end of 2016. I oversaw summit stewards and field technicians. The field techs work on our long-term research; we usually hire one tech for botany work and one for photopoint monitoring. The photopoint project, where photos are taken from the same location every year, began in 1999. There are a lot of historical photographs from our founder, Ed Ketchledge. After the 1960s, there was a lot of damage from overuse to the High Peaks, and he worked to revegetate these areas and took photos during the restoration efforts. continue doing photopoint monitoring to see how these damaged areas change over time in response to the summit stewards’ education and trail maintenance efforts. The summits have revegetated over the years thanks to decades of hard work. The alpine population study is focused on 20 or so alpine species. Surveys are conducted to see if their population changes over time as the climate changes. I directly oversaw the Summit Stewardship Program until 2022.
I pivoted a bit and oversaw some other stewardship programs for a few years. The Hurricane Fire Tower Stewardship Program focuses on the history of fire towers and the conservation efforts of the Adirondack Park. A lot of the woods here were either burned or logged and so what people are seeing is a pretty young, recovering forest, and I don’t think a lot of people realize that. And the Route 73 Trailhead Stewardship Program has trailhead stewards stationed along Route 73 educating folks at hiking trailheads and rock-climbing destinations.
I became the stewardship director in 2024, so now I oversee all the folks in our trails and stewardship programs. I sit at a desk more now and make sure that my staff are taking care of themselves during the field season, which can be very physically taxing. Stewardship work can be very physically intense, but also so meaningful, because clearing and building trails makes a tangible difference in the protection of alpine species.
We know that education is the key to protecting these places. There’s just so many special places and educating people about them has a lasting impact. A lot of people will ask questions like, “How fast can you hike the mountain since you do it all the time?” and I try to reframe it and talk about all the cool things I saw on the way. Sure, I can hike it fast – you memorize the rocks and where to put your feet – but that’s not the point. It’s the birds I heard or the sawflies I watched or the changing of seasons I noticed. Those are the things that make it special. I think talking about that can bring someone in. When you see someone have an “aha” moment with it, it feels really special. When someone falls in love with these places, then they want to protect them. That is what this work is all about.