Innehållsförteckning för Guide to the Great Outdoors 2025 från Adirondack Life

Not to take anything away from the High Peaks—46 4,000-plus-feet stunners that have beguiled Adirondack hikers for generations—but sometimes size does matter, and bigger isn’t always better. If you’re in the market for some shorter trips that are long on rewards, read on. Balm of Gilead Mountain, Johnsburg This 1.8-mile round-trip expedition delivers wide-open views of the Siamese Ponds Wilderness Area and Thirteenth Lake. In the mood for more exploring? The trek can be combined with a 1-mile round-trip detour to the abandoned open garnet pit at Hooper Mine. The trailhead begins on the property of Garnet Hill Lodge (www.garnet-hill.com), a base camp for year-round outdoor adventures. If You Go: From Route 28 in North River, follow Thirteenth Lake Road southwest 4.6 miles. Continue another 0.2 mile past the Garnet…

The Adirondack Rail Trail is a 34-mile recreation trail—formerly a railway—connecting the villages of Lake Placid, Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake. Twenty-five miles of the trail are open to the public and the final nine-mile section is scheduled to open this fall. Mile posts/points (MP) are still a work in progress. The trail is managed by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and supported by the Adirondack Rail Trail Association (ARTA), an organization that promotes business and municipal interests along the trail. ARTA volunteers partner with the DEC to maintain the trail and provide visitor amenities. Below is a starter guide for the route, with tips, day-trip ideas, rules of the road and more. For more information visit www.adirondackrailtrail.org. ACCESS The best and most popular access points (east…

THE FIRST TIME I used the phrase “Found This Place Today” to caption a photograph on Instagram, I’d spent a marathon day hiking in the High Peaks Wilderness. I hadn’t really discovered anyplace new, but I instantly liked the way the words reframed my experience. For one thing, I do feel a secret sense of exploration trekking in the Adirondacks. I often imagine I’m on a journey that might lead somewhere entirely different, even when following trails I’ve hiked over and over. And really, you never do walk the same path or take the same photograph twice. Nor are we exactly the same person at the end of two different treks. Tiny shifts in season, weather and our own moods and spirits create a remarkable alchemy. Found This Place Today…

I remember the gloss of a fresh coat of varnish on a newly built boat. I remember the coziness of the shop from the woodstove in the dead of winter. But even without it, my dad’s energy filled the area. He was calm and focused, with a passion for his craft. For years after he died, I dreamed of him. It was like a brief moment with him again. He’d always be happy and healthy, like nothing before ever happened. It’s May of 2021. The traffic going in and out of the 37th Street tunnel screeches. The streets below are jammed. Though I’m 11 flights up, I can hear it all, from car stereos to jack hammers to horns. I had just moved into a one-bedroom apartment after a painful breakup.…

It sounded so plausible on paper. The State of New York would pump 32 million life-giving dollars into the petrified veins of a long-dead Wild West theme park, creating a bustling commercial center to which ecotourists would flock from around the world. Matter of fact, a goodly number of people might forget all about the glitz of Lake Placid and instead come to North Hudson (population 200). Or maybe it wasn’t so plausible after all. It’s been more than eight years since then-Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled the Adirondack Gateway proposal, a 288-acre “world-class” attraction that would transform a lonely interstate exit into a year-round, one-stop-shop for hikers, horseback riders and snowmobilers, where travelers could choose from a bevy of restaurants, hotels, concerts, festivals and such as they prepared for their…

On a beautiful July day in 1989, Harold Jerry stepped up to the podium at the Westport Country Club. Kim Elliman, board chair of the Adirondack Council, handed him a life-sized loon decoy, expertly hand-carved and painted, as the audience stood to applaud. Jerry was the Council’s Conservationist of the Year. He was about to turn 70, and the time had come for him to sum things up. Harold Jerry had been the Council’s cofounder and guiding spirit. He saved the group from bankruptcy in 1977 after a disastrous start. He inspired board members and staff as it grew in the 1980s to become one of the largest environmental advocacy groups in the Northeast. In 1989, he was serving on a commission appointed by the governor to recommend ways to…

Usually it’s rock and ice climbers who are attracted to the sheer cliffs above Keene Valley’s Chapel Pond. And, depending on the season, you might see canoeists, kayakers and swimmers in the water. But on one summer day, people who pulled into the parking area could catch an unfamiliar pastime—“highlining”—a type of “slacklining,” or balancing on a strip of webbing, at significant heights. Benjamin Emmett was negotiating a 175-meter line, approximately 30 feet above the water’s surface. He’d secured his line from a tree at the parking area’s shoreline to a campsite on the opposite side. The line, constructed of Dyeema, a buoyant lightweight polyethylene fiber material considered 15 times stronger than steel, had been transported by a paddleboard and pulled taut. Dyeema is also used to repair human joints…

With raccoons, you either see too much of them, or, when you have friends visiting from overseas and you want to show them one, there’s neither hide nor hair to be found. For years at our place along the Saranac River, we saw no raccoons whatsoever. Occasionally late at night elsewhere in the Adirondacks, one bolted across the road in front of our car, but this never happened in the driveway. Over time, though, backyard sightings began to happen. Then they began to happen often. Last night a raccoon visited our bird feeder. I stepped out the door and heard a loud thump as it dropped to the ground. I’ve come to know that thump well. In a shed that is permeable to raccoons, we store bird seed in a…

The boat bounces through a choppy First Lake, delivering a refreshing Adirondack spritz. Scout’s ears perk up in recognition; she knows where we’re headed. Upon approach, our destination looks like nothing more than a cluster of pines sprouting from the dark water. We reach the speck of an island, and I give Scout the go-ahead, prompting a victory jump with a dramatic splash. Swimming to the slender stretch of sand, she shakes off and gets into her ready stance, so I’ll throw her most treasured possession: her ball. I comply, of course; this is our game. After a few tosses, we continue our Dog Island ritual, ambling up the worn, sandy trail to the crest of the tiny hill. I take in the 360-degree view, the late afternoon sunshine splicing…

The story of Mr. Pink begins, as so many stories do, with an unfortunate circumstance and an unexpected chain of events. It was the fall of 2020 when Mr. Pink, a diminutive creative of great heart, found himself unceremoniously surrendered to a rather grim so-called “kill shelter” in Philadelphia. Unbeknownst to me at the time, two separate friends—guided, perhaps, by the unseen hand of fate—intervened, orchestrating his passage to a far more hospitable haven: the Phoenix Animal Rescue. That fall, my partner and I contemplated an addition of something small and snuggleable to our pack. It was this desire that led us to Mr. Pink. As an animal photographer, I found his proportions particularly compelling. His tininess was, in a word, cinematic. I envisioned him as a pocket-sized explorer, peeking…

THE FOLLOWING NOVELS span three centuries, and for subject, voice and readership, they are worlds apart. But one thing they have in common: they, or a chunk of them, are in the Adirondacks and they put the woods to use. For all the micro-settings in these books (farm, fort, motor court, Great Camp, lake, summer camp or sanatorium), it is the wilderness around that raises hopes of some fresh start. Maybe it’s a romance, good health, an abolitionist’s subsistence farm on the frontier. It doesn’t matter. It will not take. The wilderness has ideas of its own. The people in these books suppose the Adirondacks’ distance from the cares and claims of daily life promises a respite, an escape. But the world pursues them anyway. And it always, always catches…