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By Phil Brown
On my lunch hour today, I climbed for 30 minutes up a small mountain and skied down through the woods. On the descent, I held my point-and-shoot camera in front of me to capture video. This meant I had to ski without poles, which I’m not used to doing. The results are only so-so. The…
By Phil Brown
Bob Marshall was one of the original Adirondack Forty-Sixers, but he thought he was born too late. He would have preferred to have lived in the nineteenth century, before the Adirondacks were overrun by civilization. Well, Bob is now part of the twenty-first century. John Warren, the guy behind the Adirondack Almanack, reports in his…
By Phil Brown
Seth Lang was part of the media horde that showed up Monday morning to watch the demolition of the Champlain Bridge. But the event held a special poignance for Seth, who grew up in Crown Point, just five miles from the bridge. “I can’t help but feel saddened by the loss of our bridge,” he…
By Phil Brown
Everybody loves lean-tos, right? But perhaps not as much as the fellow who goes by the name of Dsettahr in Adirondack Forum. He has compiled an Excel spreadsheet of every lean-to he could track down in the Adirondacks and Catskills—nearly three hundred—and his goal is to spend a night in each one. We learned about…
By Phil Brown
We got enough snow last week to do a little backcountry skiing. One day I skied to McKenzie Pond; on another, I skied part way up Debar Mountain. The flats were fine, but on both trails, my skis scraped rocks on the hills. Expect the cover to remain thin for a while, at least in…
By Phil Brown
We finally have enough snow to ski on some of the early-season trails, such as the road to Camp Santanoni in Newcomb, the Marcy Dam Truck Trail in the High Peaks Wilderness, the Fish Pond Truck Trail in the St. Regis Canoe Area, and the Hayes Brook Truck Trail in the Debar Mountain Wild Forest.…
By Phil Brown
In the next issue of the Adirondack Explorer, we plan to publish an article by Adam Federman on the implications of the Old Mountain Road decision on the state Forest Preserve. Federman notes that probably hundreds of old roads crisscross the Preserve. As a result of the Old Mountain Road case, observers are asking whether…
By Phil Brown
The next issue of the Adirondack Explorer will feature a tribute to Clarence Petty, who died last week at 104. Dick Beamish, the Explorer founder, wrote a long article summarizing Clarence’s eventful life. Dick had known Clarence since the early 1970s, when both worked at the Adirondack Park Agency. Our tribute also will include a…
By Phil Brown
I awoke this morning to learn some sad news: Clarence Petty died yesterday at his son’s home in Canton. He was 104. Readers of the Explorer got to know Clarence well through the magazine’s “Questions for Clarence” column. He was a passionate advocate of protecting the Adirondack Park’s natural resources. For the first few years…
By Phil Brown
Well, we didn’t get the 4 to 7 inches of snow in the forecast, but we did get a few inches–enough to make the Whiteface Veterans Memorial Highway skiable from top to bottom over the weekend. I did the road on Sunday with Ron Konowitz, one of Keene’s more prominent ski bums. When we got…