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By Phil Brown
Henry’s Woods on the outskirts of Lake Placid is a popular destination for hikers even in winter. I stopped there Tuesday afternoon for a lunch-hour ski trip, figuring the trails would be well packed and slick. Indeed, since the big snowstorm last week, the trails have seen a lot of use from skiers, snowshoers, and…
By Phil Brown
I had hoped to ski Mount Marcy last week, but work and travel got in the way. I expect we’ll have other chances before the winter ends. Meantime, I put together a five-minute video of a Marcy ski trip from a few years ago. It contains snippets shot with a helmet cam while descending…
By Phil Brown
It’s been another frustrating winter for backcountry skiers. We haven’t had a big storm. Just as the snow starts to build up, we’re hit with a rainy thaw. That was the case again this week. Following an icy rain, we got a few inches of heavy, wet snow in Saranac Lake. This afternoon I skied…
By Phil Brown
On Saturday, my girlfriend Carol and I skied up the unplowed Whiteface Veterans Memorial Highway. From the tollbooth to the end of the road it’s a 5.4-mile climb, long but not very steep. It took us roughly three hours. Of course, the descent is the fun part. It normally takes less than an hour. Because…
By Phil Brown
The Adirondack Explorer has published a multisport guidebook to the former Finch, Pruyn lands to let people know of the many recreational opportunities on tracts that had been off limits to the public for more than a century. 12 Adventures on New State Lands: Exploring the Finch, Pruyn Tracts has something for everyone: the hiker, the paddler, the…
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…
DEC creates a trail for skiers that loops through former Finch, Pruyn timberlands near the Goodnow and Hudson rivers. By Phil Brown Since the state purchased the Essex Chain Lakes a few years ago, I had been meaning to try out the ski touring in that region. My initial idea was to ski on old…
In a time of low snow, skiers find ideal conditions on frozen ponds in the Fish Creek area. By Phil Brown The winter started out promising with a good snowfall in December, but later in the month rains washed away most of the snowpack. We received a bit of light, fluffy powder the week after…
By Phil Brown
On Friday afternoon I checked out the cross-country trails at Dewey Mountain in Saranac Lake. As expected, the groomed trails were in fine shape, but I was more interested in the ungroomed, rougher trails that lead to the top of the mountain as they more closely mirror conditions likely to be found on many backcountry…
Low snow, high hopes When most of the Adirondacks had nary a flake, the Cranberry Lake Wild Forest held out the promise of fresh tracks. By Phil Brown Early January, and we had hardly any snow in Saranac Lake. Meanwhile, Tug Hill west of the Adirondacks got clobbered yet again with a lake-effect storm. Upon hearing that the…