NEW SCOTLAND — High-ranking state parks officials knew that the cliffs at John Boyd Thacher State Park were dangerous nearly two months before falling rocks struck and seriously injured a hiker there last summer.

According to a May 22, 2017, report by Andrew Chouinard, a regional safety manager for the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, concerns over the stability of the cliff above the popular Indian Ladder Trail were raised that month by Dean Bardwell, the regional parks safety manager responsible for Thacher.

At Chouinard's request, a state crew from Ithaca spent four days at Thacher between May 15 and May 18, finding "an abundance of loose material on the escarpment face," according to a copy of Chouinard's report obtained by the Times Union under the state Freedom of Information Law.

That report indicated that because of "time restrictions," the crew removed loose rocks only from parts of the cliff deemed most hazardous before returning to Ithaca.

The crew also estimated how long it would take to stabilize the cliff above the entire 2.5-mile hiking trail at the base of the escarpment. However, the very next sentence in the report — after it indicates how long a complete removal job might take — was redacted by the Counsel's Office of the parks department.

Also blacked out was the one and only recommendation in Chouinard's report.

The Indian Ladder trail remained open after the crew's visit. Some six weeks later, a 61-year-old Bethlehem woman, Nancy Ladd-Butz, was stuck by falling rocks and became paralyzed from the chest down.

This was the only report on Thacher cliff safety provided by the state under the Times Union's FOIL request, which sought all such records going back to 2012. Chouinard's report does not include any distribution list of who received it or how many decisions were implemented.

The report also indicated that Bardwell had cliff crews use only their hands — rather than tools — for removal of loose rock at the cliffs on May 18, the final day of work, "to avoid closing the trail for the weekend because of potentially dropping debris on wooden structures."

Ladd-Butz suffered severe spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries while hiking with her daughter on July 2. She spent 18 days in critical condition at Albany Medical Center Hospital.

After numerous surgeries and therapy, she decided earlier this year to sue state parks officials for negligence. Ladd-Butz said the popular trail was crowded with other hikers, some of them children, at the time she was struck.

READ PAUL GRONDAHL'S APRIL INTERVIEW WITH LADD-BUTZ

The state immediately closed the trail to the public after the accident and kept it closed for the rest of 2017 and the start of this year's season.

The Ithaca-based state crew returned to Thacher in June 2018 to remove loose rock from the rest of the cliff, a process called scaling. Armed with fiberglass and metal pikes, workers rappelled down the escarpment to pry off tons of loose rock.

At the time, crew members were prohibited by Thacher Park Manager Maureen Curry from speaking with a Times Union reporter who was covering the work atop the escarpment, although the crew was speaking freely with passersby who were using the trail.

According to Chouinard's May 22, 2017, report, Bardwell contacted him earlier that month to see if the Ithaca scaling team "was available to check a few areas of concern at John Boyd Thacher Park," including an unspecified "big rock."

The FOIL request by the Times Union also sought records of communications on cliff safety issues prior to the July accident between Chouinard, Bardwell, Capital/Saratoga regional Parks Manager Brian Strasavich and regional Assistant Park Manager David Barone.

Beyond the sole reference to Bardwell's request in Chouinard's report, the agency provided no records that any of the four men had communicated about potential safety concerns prior to the accident.

Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Records, said parks officials can exempt the recommendation in the Chouinard report under the FOIL law, although such redactions must be justified under specific sections of that law.

In releasing materials under the Times Union request, the park's Counsel's Office did not offer any rationale for the redactions or indicate that an appeal to the decision is available under the FOIL law.

The Times Union appealed Monday to the office to release the blacked-out portions of Chouinard's report, but received no response.

The agency released an email from Strasavich sent on Aug. 30, 2017 — nearly two months after Ladd-Butz was hurt — in which he sought to hire the outside consulting firm Ameritech to develop an annual cliff scaling program at Thacher.

In that email, Strasavich wrote that the state was conducting "initial research into developing such a program."

He also wrote that such work would have to be done each spring following the winter thaw, adding that the state crew based in Ithaca could not do such work "on a sustained basis" because of responsibilities for cliff stablization work at parks in the western part of the state.

The park agency's press office did not respond to requests for comment on the agency's prior knowledge that Thacher's cliffs posed a risk to hikers below. It could not be immediately determined whether any park officials had suggested the potential closure of the Indian Ladder trail before or after the May report.

The state cliff scaling team has been part of the parks system since the 1930s. The crew routinely works cliff faces at parks in the Finger Lakes, but has also worked in the Niagara region.

Part of a 400-million-year-old seabed, Thacher's striking limestone cliffs were carved out about 25,000 years ago by glaciers. Limestone is a soft sedimentary rock that is highly vulnerable to erosion.

Stretching 6 miles, Thacher's cliffs are some of the richest marine-fossil-bearin­g formations in the world, drawing experts to study its geology.

Limestone is inherently unstable and can crumble without warning. Some of the trees along the Indian Ladder Trail, which has drawn many thousands of visitors over the decades, show scarring from being struck during previous rockfalls.

The limestone beds at Thacher are layered, making them even less stable. That, coupled with the freezing and thawing of snow and ice at the park during the winter, can weaken the layers.