The only independent, nonprofit news organization solely dedicated to reporting on the Adirondack Park.
Secluded pass offers winter adventurers beauty, solitude, and a good run back. By Phil Brown When I was a novice backcountry skier, I once climbed to Klondike Notch, the pass between Howard and Yard mountains in the High Peaks Wilderness, and endured a frightful descent on the way back, falling on my butt a few…
As Big Tupper debate enters final weeks, questions linger about wildlife impacts and financing. By Brian Mann The Adirondack Club and Resort project has been scrutinized and debated for seven years, and yet, although the Adirondack Park Agency may vote on the project in January, several important environmental and financial questions remain unanswered. One…
By Phil Brown
By Brian Mann AS THE ADIRONDACK PARK AGENCY prepares this winter to decide whether a giant resort development proposed for Tupper Lake can go forward, the commission will have to rule on a central environmental question raised by opponents of the project: would the far-flung network of roads, homes, and amenities cause “undue” damage to…
Business owners in flood-ravaged communities prove they’re resilient survivors. By Kenneth Aaron September 11 is a brilliant late-summer Sunday in Keene Valley. The sun is shining, it’s 80 degrees, and it’s a perfect day for tourists to catch early-season foliage. There’s only one thing missing: tourists. A couple of kids are riding bicycles in circles…
By Tom Woodman Basking in the sunshine and breeze of an early fall day, I stand in the hamlet of Upper Jay. This small collection of homes and businesses somehow embodies the Adirondacks’ intertwined forces of creation and destruction. A crossroads on the bank of the East Branch of the Ausable River, Upper Jay was…
Group calls for end to Lake Placid’s tourist train, arguing the region would benefit more from a recreational path. By Chris Morris Jim McCulley and Tony Goodwin butted heads for years over the legal status of the Old Mountain Road in Keene and North Elba. Goodwin helps maintain the woods road as a cross-country ski…
The Capital Region forecasters were predicting a high of thirty-five degrees, meaning this day would rival the warmest in six weeks. So my son Nicholas and I debate: ski pants or blue jeans for our snowshoe trip? Nick, a college student who spends most of the winter in Potsdam—where it can be fifty degrees colder than…
The slides created or enlarged by Irene have given hikers and skiers new terrain to explore. Slides often entail a difficult bushwhack, but many of Irene’s creations extend all the way to a trail or come close. Easy access doesn’t mean easy. A bad fall could be fatal. With that warning, here are five new…
Tropical Storm Irene closed Wilderness Areas, washed away roads, damaged hundreds of homes and businesses, changed the look the High Peaks—and brought people together. By Phil Brown Johns Brook rises deep in the High Peaks Wilderness, less than a mile from the summit of Mount Marcy. The stream is well known to hikers who cross…
By Kenneth Aaron The State of New York can intervene in a trespassing lawsuit filed by a group of landowners against Adirondack Explorer editor Phil Brown, a State Supreme Court justice has ruled. The state attorney general’s office and the Depart- ment of Environmental Conservation (DEC) asked to join Brown in the dispute, and Justice Richard…