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By Phil Brown Winter came late. We didn’t get our first decent snowstorm until the second week of December, maybe six inches over two days—enough to ski the new trail at Henry’s Woods outside Lake Placid. The 2.5-mile trail winds, climbs, and descends through a two-hundred-acre preserve on the outskirts of the village. Tony Goodwin,…
With snowshoes, you can go just about anywhere in the Adirondack Park. But with more than two thousand miles of trails, where do you start? Below are suggestions from four gung-ho Adirondack snowshoers. DEBAR MOUNTAIN By Tony Goodwin Although only 3,300 feet in elevation, Debar Mountain rises prominently from the flatter terrain to the north…
His lifelong quest: To protect wild nature By Dick Beamish When Clarence A. Petty died at 104 on November 30, the Adirondack Park lost one of its greatest champions, the woodsman who laid the groundwork for the protection of a million acres of wilderness and 1,200 miles of rivers inside the Blue Line. With his…
By Phil Brown
Last weekend I encountered Mark Meschinelli and Dave Hough, two members of the notorious Ski to Die Club, on the trail to Mount Marcy. Back in the seventies and eighties, Mark, Dave, and their crew set a standard in boldness by tackling difficult terrain–slides, frozen brooks, glades, you name it–in the gear of the day,…
By Phil Brown
On Sunday, I skied to Whiteface Landing for the first time in a few years and was pleasantly surprised by the state of the trail. I’m not talking about the snow conditions, although they were superb. I’m referring to improvements made in recent years by Tony Goodwin and his volunteers at the Adirondack Ski Touring…
By Phil Brown
The trip to Avalanche Lake from Adirondak Loj is one of the most popular ski tours in the Adirondacks, and justifiably so. You’re treated to a variety of spectacular scenery along the way, culminating in the lake itself, a frozen sliver of white immured between the cliffs of Mount Colden and Avalanche Mountain. On the…
By Phil Brown
The Jackrabbit Ski Trail offers lots of great skiing over its twenty-four miles, but the best part is the six-mile stretch from Whiteface Inn Road in Lake Placid to McKenzie Pond Road outside Saranac Lake. The highlight is a mile-and-a-half downhill run from McKenzie Pass to McKenzie Pond. On Sunday, I did a round trip…
Winter came late. We didn't get our first decent snowstorm until the second week of December, maybe six inches over two days, enough to ski the new trail at Henry's Woods outside Lake Placid. By Phil Brown
By Phil Brown
Last weekend, I saw a slide show in Keene Valley given by Steve House, one of the best mountaineers in the world. He’s an entertaining speaker, self-deprecating and down to earth despite his penchant for high places. Unfortunately, I missed the slide show given the the night before by Eric Weihenmayer, a blind climber who…
By Phil Brown
This YouTube link takes you to my second attempt at making a short backcountry ski video. For this one, I strapped my camera–an Olympus 1030SW–to my chest and skied down a small peak outside Saranac Lake. The clip is only a few minutes long. Unfortunately, when I converted it to QuickTime for the Web it…