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Cool hike for a hot day By Carl Heilman II Peaked Mountain in the Siamese Ponds Wilderness makes a great day trip any time of the year, but it’s especially fun on a hot day that offers the reward of a refreshing swim along the shoreline ledges of Thirteenth Lake on the way out. At…
Until 1979, Lampson Falls, on the northwest edge of the Adirondack Park, where the Grass River starts its tumble into the St. Lawrence Valley, was in private hands and off limits to the public. But thanks to the persistence of Paul Jamieson and others, the state bought the falls, and it is now a popular…
I became acquainted with Jim Goodwin in 1969, in my first summer as a crew member at the Adirondack Mountain Club’s Johns Brook Lodge. Thanks to the generosity of the Goodwin family, we used their “summer place” (the last house before the trailhead, appropriately) as a base of operations, partly because one of Jim and…
From Buck Pond paddlers can explore watery wilds By Mark Bowie Way up north in Franklin County glacial country, eskers snake through boreal lowlands and kames and kettle hole lakes pepper the landscape. Here a canoeist becomes intimate with the geology. From Lake Kushaqua and Buck Pond, he can venture southwest for 12 miles on…
By Bill Ingersoll In my pursuit to help keep Barbara McMartin’s Discover the Adirondacks series of hiking guidebooks up to date, I have visited every corner of the Park, in every season. I am drawn to the Adirondacks week after week because there is so much to see and so much that I have still…
No bugs, no crowds, no mud (mostly), colorful foliage and, often enough, previews of winter at high elevation. How can anyone resist hiking in fall? So in early October, I spurred my family out and up into the hills above Wilmington.
This year the Open Space Institute purchased 9,600 acres from NL Industries bordering the High Peaks. Sometime soon, the state plans to buy 6,200 acres from OSI and add them to the “forever wild” Forest Preserve. The public then will own Henderson Lake and the Preston Ponds, pristine lakes with magnificent views.
After too much overtime and too many missed bedtimes, it was time again to plug into America off line. Our goal was Chimney Mountain, one of the Adirondacks’ more fascinating freaks of geology. Chimney has a maze of caves, a jumble of boulders fit for a Road Runner cartoon and an immense rock tower narrowing to the sky that gives the mountain its name.
The fire observer who staffed the tower on Mount Adams must have been one lucky fellow. The 3,540-foot mountain sits smack dab in between the eastern and western High Peaks, affording an intimate perspective on both sectors of the Adirondack Park’s largest wilderness. By Phil Brown
You might say I’ve come full circle on Azure Mountain. When I was 12 or 13, a friend and I climbed it and then clambered up the fire tower’s rickety stairs. The fire observer, a slim and grizzled but cordial old-timer, pointed out landmarks on his table-mounted map and showed us how to ascertain the location of a suspicious wisp of smoke.