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With snow scarce in much of the Adirondacks, two skiers head to the Cranberry Lake region for a day of backcountry adventure. By Phil Brown As usual, we were chasing snow. In the High Peaks, we didn’t have enough base to ski the backcountry, but we were hoping that a recent lake-effect storm had dumped…
As navigation-rights case heads to the state’s Court of Appeals, both sides get help from interested parties. By Kenneth Aaron For five years, a group of Adirondack landowners has engaged in a legal battle with the editor of the Adirondack Explorer and the state Department of Environmental Conservation over navigational rights on a remote waterway…
By Mike Lynch
Warmer climate bodes ill for Adirondack businesses that rely on winter tourism. By Mike Lynch The most profitable months for the tourism-based businesses in the Adirondacks are without question July and August. This is when families take their summer vacations, the weather is warm, and the bugs are tolerable. But while summer is crucial for small businesses,…
Eight environmental groups want most of the Boreas Ponds Tract added to High Peaks Wilderness, but local officials have other ideas. By Phil Brown In 1936, the conservationist Bob Marshall made a list of forty-eight forested areas in the United States that exceeded three hundred thousand acres and that remained roadless—that is, relatively pristine. Evidently,…
By Tom Woodman In some circles the label peak bagger has a negative, almost sneering, connotation. The criticism is that these hikers are so intent on checking names off lists of mountain ascents that they overlook a deeper experience of being in nature. Spencer Morrissey concedes that at first he might have been a stereotypical…
Coney, Adams, and Treadway reward snowshoers with spectacular views for only moderate effort. By Spencer Morrissey Snowshoeing in the Adirondacks has a long history. Originally a means of travel, it is now a popular recreational pastime. The French called snowshoes raquettes because the paddle-shaped contraptions of earlier times resembled rackets. They were used by hunters and…
By Mike Lynch
Warming temperatures could bring disturbing changes in cold-water lakes and in boreal bogs, threatening such seminal Adirondack species as the brook trout, lake trout, and common loon. By Mike Lynch Sitting beside a small stream in the southwestern Adirondacks, Spencer Bruce clipped a tiny brook-trout fin and placed it in a small container. The fin is…
By Tom Woodman “Lake Placid control: experimental craft, eight, four, one Echo Mike preparing to take off…” Driving to meet Ed McNeil this morning I worried that after thirty-six years in journalism I might be in danger of violating one of my important rules: never whimper. And as I hear Ed’s voice in the headphones…
By Mike Lynch
Will Madison retraced the 1883 paddle of his great-great-great grandfather George W. Sears. By Mike Lynch The nineteenth-century writings of George W. Sears—best known as Nessmuk—have inspired countless Adirondack paddlers. Among the most recent is his great-great-great-grandson Will Madison. In September, the twenty-two-year-old St. Lawrence University graduate retraced much of Nessmuk’s 1883 canoe trip from…
The largely abandoned Wardsboro Road near Lake George connects the present with the past. By David Thomas-Train The midsection of Lake George, known as the Narrows, is so tightly squeezed with steep mountainsides that there are no highways along its shorelines; without such access, most of that stretch of lake is bordered by state land. Roads connecting the north and south basins of…