‘There’s nobody here’: Log Bay Day ban goes as planned

Stephanie Fitzgerald and Dylan Till went to Log Bay Day last year — by accident. 

The Glenville couple hiked through the woods with their dogs to get there, but they didn’t stay long.

“It was crazy,” said Fitzgerald, 25. “We couldn’t even get in the water because there were so many boats around.”

On Monday, they returned with their dogs to the shallow waters near Shelving Rock Road to find a different scene. 

The only boat in Shelving Rock Bay — the area next to Log Bay where the annual party had migrated over the years — belonged to the Warren County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies were using the boat for dive training exercises while also retrieving debris from the water. 

“It’s very calm,” said Fitzgerald, whose family had a camp on nearby Buttermilk Falls Road when she was young. 

Calm is what local law enforcement and parks officials — who were out in full force Monday — wanted. 

Log Bay Day was started two decades ago by about 20 hospitality workers looking to unwind, but the gathering had grown to accommodate hundreds of partiers. It was formally banned last week following the death last summer of 8-year-old Charlotte McCue. 

McCue was killed the night of July 25, 2016, when Alexander West drove his powerboat into an antique Gar Wood driven by McCue’s grandfather. West, of Lake George, had spent the day drinking and doing drugs at Log Bay Day, according to trial testimony. He was sentenced in June to five to 15 years in state prison for second-degree manslaughter. 

“It’s going exactly as planned,” Dave Wick, executive director of the Lake George Park Commission, said about 2:45 p.m. “Usually by now there would be 200 to 300 boats packed into the bay, and we’d be having trouble by this time.”

Seventeen patrol vessels were on Lake George to enforce the ban, which involved closing the bays to the public for the day. Some boats were buoyed just outside the bay area, and police officers were prepared to turn boaters away. But for the most part, they didn’t have to, Wick said. Law enforcement personnel planned to be there until midnight.

“The only people that are approaching the bay are the people who are curious about how it’s going,” Wick said. “Some are coming up to say ‘Thank you’ to the officers, which is nice.”

There was one exception. When a vessel carrying six revelers was told the area was closed to boaters, they asked if they could bring their fun to Sandy Bay, Wick said.

“The officer said, ‘Of course. Just make sure you have a designated driver,’” he said. 

While the bays were closed, the state parkland around them was not. Fourteen state Department of Environmental Conservation forest rangers, five Washington County sheriff’s deputies and state troopers patrolled the area on land. Six West Fort Ann firefighters also responded, with an emergency trailer parked at the foot of the trail that leads down to the bays. The total police presence, by land and sea, was higher than last year’s Log Bay Day, Wick said. 

“We didn’t know if there was going to be anybody coming in for the first year, so we came as usual,” West Fort Anne Fire Chief Mitch Beck said.

For the volunteer fire department, the last Monday in July has meant providing emergency medical service to people who partied too hard.

“Just mostly cut feet and drunks. Intoxications,” Beck said, adding: “We had some serious injuries.”

This year was quiet and did not require any rescue efforts, the fire chief said about noon. His crew arrived at 10:30 a.m. and didn’t plan on staying much longer. 

“There’s nobody here,” he said.

Lt. John Solan, a state forest ranger, said the area attracts a large crowd on most weekends during the summer, “but they’re a little different type of person that comes on Log Bay Day.”

“They were here to party, drink, get drunk, versus people that wanted to come, sit by the water, have a nice day,” he said. 

Solan said the publicity around the annual party being canceled must have kept people away.

“I think it’s quieter than a normal Monday, even,” he said.

A couple miles up Shelving Rock Road, where the bumpy dirt road meets Hogtown Road, a forest ranger and a group of Washington County sheriff’s deputies greeted drivers, asking them where they were headed and if they had any alcohol or drugs in their cars. 

”People can go down,” Undersheriff John Winchell said. ”It’s a day use area, so we’re just trying to curtail any mischief.” 

By 1 p.m., about the same number of cars had come through as in previous years, “but most of the ones we’re getting this year are legitimate hikers,” he said.

“It’s a lot of families hiking today, which is great,” he said. “But on a regular Log Bay Day, families and Log Bay Day don’t mix.”

One car, a low-riding Ford Mustang weighed down by four occupants, stuck out. Winchell said deputies told them their car wasn’t fit to drive on the rocky road, but they drove down anyway. 

“That’s a lot of the problems,” he said. “You get people that don’t know the area that show up for this, and now people are showing up and they had heard that it was canceled, but they’re still showing up. We haven’t had any problems so far.”

Winchell said deputies get to the checkpoint at 9 a.m. and warn visitors that they will be there until 11 p.m. — and to make sure they have a designated driver. Not everyone listens, and the department usually makes six to 10 DWI arrests, he said. Last year’s Log Bay Day resulted in five DWI arrests made at the top of Shelving Rock Road, he said.

Winchell said he hopes the unified enforcement effort puts an end to the day of partying in the bays for good, “because we don’t need any more deaths attributed to it.”

“On a normal hiking weekend, people get hurt, so when you put an influx of intoxicated people in there, it’s only gonna get worse,” he said. 

Wick said the park commission is prepared to work with local law enforcement over the next several years to ensure Log Bay Day never comes back.

“It’s going to slowly become a memory,” he said. “I think we’re going have to stay on top of it, and we’re ready to do that.”

Categories: News, Schenectady County