The only independent, nonprofit news organization solely dedicated to reporting on the Adirondack Park.
The Adirondack Explorer is a nonprofit magazine covering the Adirondack Park's environment, recreation and communities.
By Adirondack Explorer
Environmentalists and local leaders agree that the privately owned backcountry should be protected—but how? By Phil Brown Nearly forty years have passed since Governor Nelson Rockefeller, while signing a law regulating development in the Adirondack Park, declared to the reporters and conservationists in the room, “The Adirondacks are preserved forever.” He had some reason for…
By Adirondack Explorer
By Stephen Williams 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…
By Adirondack Explorer
Little peak has it all By Gretel H. Schueller Forget those forty-six peaks. While the lower peaks in New York’s central Champlain Valley may be more nublike in comparison, there are few places that offer such a rich and connected tapestry of forests, farms, and historic hamlets—and most important, grand views that tie it all…
By Adirondack Explorer
Though short, shallow, and lazy, the Kunjamuk River doesn’t lack for grace or beauty.Text and photos by Mark Bowie.
By Adirondack Explorer
By Phil Brown The Clintonville Pine Barrens is a quiet spot. Most of the people who hike here live a short drive away in communities such as Ausable Forks, Keeseville, and Plattsburgh. Occasionally, the barrens attract hikers from farther afield. Commenting in the trail register, a visitor from Toronto described them last year as “a…
By Adirondack Explorer
By Phil Brown The Clintonville Pine Barrens is a quiet spot. Most of the people who hike here live a short drive away in communities such as Ausable Forks, Keeseville, and Plattsburgh. Occasionally, the barrens attract hikers from farther afield. Commenting in the trail register, a visitor from Toronto described them last year as “a…
By Adirondack Explorer
By Phil Brown The Clintonville Pine Barrens is a quiet spot. Most of the people who hike here live a short drive away in communities such as Ausable Forks, Keeseville, and Plattsburgh. Occasionally, the barrens attract hikers from farther afield. Commenting in the trail register, a visitor from Toronto described them last year as “a…
By Adirondack Explorer
By Tom Woodman Think back on a favorite excursion in the Adirondack wilderness, and if you were lucky a forest ranger played a cameo role. Maybe you encountered him on the trail and he filled you in on the conditions farther on. Or maybe she was advising hikers at a busy trailhead on the right…
By Adirondack Explorer
Should the state bill careless backcountry users for searches? By Kelly de la Rocha When Stephen Mastaitis of Saratoga Springs started a winter hike up Mount Marcy, he never dreamed he’d be coming back down in a helicopter. The fifty-eight-year-old lawyer and three others began the day hike bright and early on a February morning,…
By Adirondack Explorer
By Michael Virtanen On a mostly sunny Monday with the blue-black water on the quiet bay rippling lightly and glistening, my wife got the hang of a new sport in roughly the time it took to push off from the dock, brace her paddle shaft across the eleven-foot board for balance, and stand up. Outfitted…