The only independent, nonprofit news organization solely dedicated to reporting on the Adirondack Park.
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…
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
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
Reading a recent editorial from the Glens Falls Post-Star, which pillories Chairman Curt Stiles and the state’s Adirondack Park Agency for being too strong on environmental protection, brings back memories of the anti-APA hostility so rampant four decades ago, in the earliest days of this state entity. “Who are you to come here and tell…
Your editorial on the Adirondack Club and Resort [July/August 2011] was balanced and realistic. I applaud you for taking a stand that is contrary to the opinion of many Tupper Lake residents. Aside from the issue of economic sustainability of the proposed project, which seems dubious at best, my primary concern is the negative impact…
The landslide on the hills above Keene Valley is for the landowners and all who have to deal with it a calamity. I first learned of the dangers of building structures on steep slopes and unstable soils after moving to Southern California in 1959. Luxurious mansions were being built in the Santa Monica Mountains on…
I really liked the Whiteface bike loop piece [July/August]. We have been on parts of the Whiteface loop but would not attempt the Whiteface shoulder climb or the traffic on Route 86 between Lake Placid and Saranac Lake. We have been on the Bloomingdale-to-Union Falls section (terrific) and also the Riverside Drive section that writer Susan…
A recent Viewpoint [July/August 2011] alleged that cougars could not survive today in the Adirondack Park primarily because of the road density here. Yet cougars today have a permanent presence in the suburbs of Los Angeles, San Diego, and Denver, seemingly oblivious to road-density factors many times that in the Adirondacks. My position and that…
Two recent letters to the editor, one from a writer in Rosendale and the second from a writer in California, urge the reintroduction of cougars into the Adirondacks, one claiming that it would “help forests” and the second apparently positing that it’s a good idea simply because “cougars and people can coexist” and that “conflicts…
By Tom Woodman The big moment came at 3:35 in the afternoon when, after a long early-morning drive, setting up tents in the rain, and some dry-land training at a grassy airfield, Drew Moses pulled in a small trout on the West Branch of the Ausable River. For the group of six boys…