Biking through history
The Champlain Valley comes pretty close to Bikers’ Heaven, with its quiet country roads, friendly villages, rolling farmland, and frequent views of lake and mountains. By Dick Beamish
Adventure Planner
Chimney Mountain
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.
Mount Adams
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
Azure tower gets 2nd life
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.
Spruce Mountain
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.
Adirondacks to Maine
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 . . .
Silver Lake Mountain
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.
Dunham Bay Marsh
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…
Short hikes for the road
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…
Cycling through historic valley
Great Sacandaga Lake is only slightly smaller than Lake George, which is the largest water wholly within the Adirondack Park, but it doesn't get nearly as much respect. By Phil Brown