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After too much overtime and too many missed bedtimes, it was time again to plug into America off line. Our goal was Chimney Mountain, one of the Adirondacks’ more fascinating freaks of geology. Chimney has a maze of caves, a jumble of boulders fit for a Road Runner cartoon and an immense rock tower narrowing to the sky that gives the mountain its name.
The fire observer who staffed the tower on Mount Adams must have been one lucky fellow. The 3,540-foot mountain sits smack dab in between the eastern and western High Peaks, affording an intimate perspective on both sectors of the Adirondack Park’s largest wilderness. By Phil Brown
You might say I’ve come full circle on Azure Mountain. When I was 12 or 13, a friend and I climbed it and then clambered up the fire tower’s rickety stairs. The fire observer, a slim and grizzled but cordial old-timer, pointed out landmarks on his table-mounted map and showed us how to ascertain the location of a suspicious wisp of smoke.
Looking north, we see nothing but hills and trees and clouds and blue sky for 60 miles. The High Peaks outline the distant horizon. We’re trying to make out the slides on Gothics.
Imagine you put in your canoe along the Moose River at Old Forge, paddle through the Fulton Chain of Lakes in a northeasterly direction, and you just keep going and going and going . . .
As you drive away from Whiteface Mountain, heading north on Bonnie View Road, you get the feeling you’re leaving the High Peaks region behind. Make a left onto Silver Lake Road and head west, winding uphill. As you approach Taylor Pond, the rocky spine of a long mountain looms on the right.
Marsh madness By Mark Bowie What intrigued me most about the 1965 aerial photograph by Adirondack photographer Richard Dean was the foreground: a wildly vibrating, curvaceous channel, which led my eye toward a tiny, tear-shaped bay—Dunham—in a large lake sprawling obliquely into the distance. Here, in the southeastern corner of the Adirondack Park, as part…
By Phil Brown We had been driving for nearly two hours when Martha, my 13-year-old daughter, started complaining. “How much farther?” she wanted to know. “I’m bored.” Fortunately, we were approaching Cathedral Pines, a stand of giant white pines just off Route 28 between Inlet and Raquette Lake. I pulled off at the trailhead, and…
‘The worst lake in the Adirondacks’ A family bushwacks to Merriam Lake to discover the truth By Lauren Otis We walk single file along the soft forest floor through the dappled sunlight. Cady, my 12-year old daughter, leads the way followed by my 8-year old son, Oberon. I bring up the rear. We crest a…
An ode to pond hopping By Akum Norder I don’t get to the woods much. I feel sheepish admitting this fact, especially in an Adirondack newspaper. I rarely camp, rarely even go hiking. I’ve always been more comfortable with a city’s structure, noise, and people sheltering me: I can pretend I know where the edges…