Bum Pond Ski
By Adirondack Explorer
Bum Pond doesn’t sound like the most attractive place, and in truth there are better destinations in the Adirondack Park for cross-country skiing—lots of them. By Phil Brown
Adirondack Explorer
The Adirondack Explorer is a nonprofit magazine covering the Adirondack Park's environment, recreation and communities.
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Shaking off the storm
By Adirondack Explorer
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…
Park Perspectives: In the wake of the flood
By Adirondack Explorer
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…
Rail, trail, or both
By Adirondack Explorer
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…
Winter ramble
By Adirondack Explorer
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…
New Adirondack Slide Guide
By Adirondack Explorer
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…
The big rain
By Adirondack Explorer
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…
Panther Mountain
By Adirondack Explorer
One of the things I like most about taking a long hike are the different ecosystems you may find yourself in from start to finish. You start near a road, you go through marshland, you walk through a pine forest, and, if you go high enough, maybe you see some alpine grasses. By Kenneth Aaron
Chapel Pond Slab
By Adirondack Explorer
A rock climber could spend a lifetime exploring the Adirondack Park. The guidebook Adirondack Rock describes more than 1,900 routes (and the number is growing) on cliffs and crags scattered throughout the region. By Phil Brown
Moriah bike tour
By Adirondack Explorer
When the snow and rain and then more snow finally disappeared this spring, my wife, Kim, and I were desperate to get on our bikes, so a thirty-mile loop around Moriah sounded like a perfect way to spend Memorial Day weekend. By Ethan Rouen