High spirits on Lows Lake
By Adirondack Explorer
Two paddlers explore one of the Adirondacks’ largest motor-free lakes, discovering tranquility, beautiful scenery, and a few loons.
Adirondack Explorer
The Adirondack Explorer is a nonprofit magazine covering the Adirondack Park's environment, recreation and communities.
All Stories by Adirondack Explorer
A victory for paddlers
By Adirondack Explorer
Judge rules that ‘Explorer’ editor did not trespass when he paddled through private property, but the landowners plan to appeal. By Kenneth Aaron The owners of a scenic, remote Adirondack waterway plan to appeal a judge’s decision declaring that the route is open to paddlers under the common-law public right of navigation. In February, State…
How to fix the APA
By Adirondack Explorer
The state needs to do much more to protect shorelines, uplands, and the privately owned backcountry. By Philip Terrie In the Adirondacks, we often point with pride to the extraordinary oddness of the Adirondack Park. From Manhattan’s Central Park to California’s Yosemite, Americans have gotten used to parks with neat boundaries enclosing a domain…
DEC sides with paddlers
By Adirondack Explorer
Agency says the public has the right to travel on a disputed stretch of Shingle Shanty Brook. By Phil Brown Weighing in on a long-running controversy, the state Department of Environmental Conservation says the public has the right to paddle through private land on Shingle Shanty Brook and adjoining waterways that connect two pieces of…
Park Perspectives: Green growth is economic growth
By Adirondack Explorer
By Tom Woodman Part way through a presentation on a North Country Sustainability Study in January, an audience member commented: “The days of environmentalism and economic development being strange bedfellows are long gone. Now they work together.” Sadly this was an overstatement—in many cases development efforts are not compatible with sound environmental policy. But this…
Designing the Park
By Adirondack Explorer
Environmentalists say the APA needs to update its regulations to incorporate “smart growth” principles. By Kim Martineau As the proposed Adirondack Club & Resort in Tupper Lake wound its way through the approval process, two planning consultants separately recommended in 2008 that the Adirondack Park Agency require clustering of homes in the backcountry. Under a…
Skiing the quiet groves
By Adirondack Explorer
On the Peavine Swamp trail system in the northwestern Adirondacks near Cranberry Lake I found a tranquil route through open forest, culminating on a knoll overlooking the Oswegatchie River.
A plan for 69,000 acres
By Adirondack Explorer
DEC’s proposals for managing the former Finch, Pruyn lands kindle a debate over motorized use. By Phil Brown More than five years after the Nature Conservancy bought all 161,000 acres of Finch, Pruyn & Company’s timberlands, the state has acquired eighteen thousand acres for the Forest Preserve and intends to open up some of the…
Park Perspectives: Culverts as a common cause
By Adirondack Explorer
The Ausable River is a far-reaching system, fed by dozens of streams dropping out of the eastern High Peaks, moving water into the major courses of the East and West Branches before the rivers join to tumble out of the foothills and into Lake Champlain. At some point in its travels much of the flow…
A sure thing for skiers
By Adirondack Explorer
Paul Smiths VIC offers more than just good snow: it has doubled the mileage of ski trails since taking over the facility from the state in 2011. By Phil Brown Winter started slowly, so after we received a few small snowfalls in late November, I jumped at the chance to go on my first ski…