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More than 150 of the 428 licensed guides from across New York state will convene at the Lake Placid Club Resort next weekend — April 30 through May 2 — with the intent of forming a professional organization.

The Department of Environmental Conservation has been licensing guides in the Adirondacks and the Catskills since 1923. In May 1981, the department stopped issuing licenses and embarked on a comprehensive study of the guide licensing system.

With the help of a 10-member advisory committee from the guide community, the DEC has developed a proposal for a new guide-licensing program that will establish better definitions of guide qualifications and will offer procedural improvements.

DEC Commissioner Robert Flacke will address the convention during the Saturday night buffet, where he is the featured speaker.

Competitions will be held for the guides in the fields of archery, fishing, casting and boating, weather and ice conditions permitting.

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Lake tours rejected

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The proposal by Mirror Lake Inn owner Ed Weibrecht to place an electrically operated tour boat on Mirror Lake was scuttled by the Lake Placid Village Board Monday night.

Seven persons attended the meeting for the specific purpose of speaking against the proposal and to deliver petitions to that effect to the board.

Weibrecht, who attended the meeting, asked the board to delay a decision on the matter until he could talk to some shoreowners whom he believed favored the project. He said that the tour boat was important to the community since tourism was the only local industry.

Retired North Elba town Supervisor Jack Shea, speaking as a member of the community, criticized Weibrecht “for not doing his homework first” (talking with the shoreowners about the boat). He urged the board not to delay its decision.

Residents expressed concerns about the parking problems that may be generated along the road near the Mirror Lake Inn while they rode the tour boat.

The decision to reject the proposal was unanimous.

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No parasailing, either

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Rather than leave him up in the air, the North Elba Town Board said “no” last Tuesday to Dan Bowler’s proposal to operate a parasail business on Lake Placid this summer.

Bowler, who has operated his parasail business on Mirror Lake for the last three winters — since the 1980 Olympics — met with strong opposition on his latest proposal by the board.

All five board members stressed the fact that the location of the operation, directly opposite Holiday Harbor, would put the parasail enterprise in the busiest part of the lake.

They also noted that many of the people who live on the lake had residences there because they wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle.

Bowler countered that his operation on Lake George was in one of that lake’s busiest areas, near the Million Dollar Beach, and it had operated successfully for several summers.

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Female bobsled license

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On Friday, March 5, the bobrun announcer’s voice echoed a familiar phrase across Mount Van Hoevenberg’s wooded hillside: “The track is clear from the half-mile for Cain and Hudson.”

For Cathy Cain, the woman driver of that two-man bobsled, it was a moment she would never forget — the half-mile trip that would earn her a license as a bobsledder.

A resident of Lake Placid since 1975, Cain’s interest in bobsledding dates back to that first winter in Lake Placid.

And her enthusiasm for the sport increased during the 1979-80 season. For while she was at the bobrun, she met Canadian bobsledder John Guest, whom she had known several years before when he was a motorcycle racer.

One day in December 1979, Guest’s team needed a fourth person to take a trip down the run, and that elected Cain to fill that spot.

“According to the men, women are not allowed to slide on the runs in Europe,” Cain said.

At Mount Van Hoevenberg, women have been sliding there since the run opened 50 years ago. And last year, half a dozen women joined the drivers’ school to earn their licenses.

Can decided to try the sport.

“I paid $50, half the required fee, at the bobsled office and became a pupil in the bobsled drivers’ school,” she said. “The other $50 was payable when I earned my license.”