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It was a Saturday in November 1994 that I met Victoria Rinehart to take her and a group of her nursing students on a walking tour of the cure cottages of Saranac Lake. As we tramped the streets, I told her what I could about Saranac Lake’s history as America’s pioneer health resort for the…
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Barbara McMartin is an Ivy League-educated mathematician. I recall her mentioning once that she began hiking the Adirondacks systematically and obsessively as relief from preparing for doctoral orals at Columbia. I raise this not so much to assert how smart she is as to suggest that it is in her nature to seek a closed…
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How can one man do so much in just 97 years? Clarence Petty is of one of the most interesting and important people ever to carry a canoe, bushwhack through the backcountry, or dedicate his life to protecting the Adirondack wilderness. And he has lived through a period of high drama in Adirondack affairs. As…
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My first view from an Adirondack summit was at the tower on Goodnow Mountain near Newcomb, and I can still recall the thrill. I was 11 or 12, and some friends and I were staying at a summer camp on Long Lake. The tower, maintained by the state College of Environmental Science and Forestry, offers…
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Adirondack outdoor types tend to be sort of gear crazy. An avid hiker might own two or three pairs of boots, for use on different kinds of trail. No garage is complete without a kayak and a canoe. It’s not uncommon for snow mavens to own three sets of skis, with a pair of snowshoes…
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To broaden one’s horizons, try the Quiet Water Canoe Guide: New York. Here everything is our oyster—literally, from the oyster beds of Long Island to Coles Creek on the St. Lawrence River, from East Bay on Lake Ontario to the Erie Canal and onto Lake George. Here is complete how-to and where-to information for over…
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If you are not in to risking your neck, the perfect paddling guide is Barbara McMartin’s Fun on Flatwater: An Introduction to Adirondack Canoeing. This is my favorite sort of adventuring, for contrary to what seems to be the vogue these days, true adventure does not require a near-death experience. Pity those compelled to trek…
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Alec C. Proskine’s Adirondack Canoe Waters: South and West Flow, published in 1985, expands on Jamieson’s efforts, which had left three of the five Adirondack basins uncovered: the Black River Basin (West Flow) and the Mohawk and Upper Hudson Basins (South Flow). Proskine’s book includes the potentially dangerous water of the Boreas, Hudson River Gorge,…
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Paul Jamieson’s Adirondack Canoe Waters: North Flow, first appeared in 1975 and quickly set the standard to which most subsequent guides adhere. It has gone through many editions and picked up a co-author, Donald Morris, who has expanded the book’s reach, in part as a result of his greater experience as a whitewater paddler. But…
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Mount Marcy has been a prime focus for Adirondack climbers ever since that day in 1837 when William Redfield and company first ascended the peak and ascertained that it was indeed the highest mountain in New York. Since then, many pages have been written about Mount Marcy, but until now no one has set out…