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A hike on the quiet side By Phil Brown Last September I did a solo end-to-end hike. The start and finish were several miles apart, and I had only one car. I’ve bicycled from one trailhead to the other in similar circumstances, but in this case, I neither cycled nor walked between trailheads. I know…
Small waters offer solitude By Jeff Nadler We drove down the same dirt road that leads to the Flow, but this time we stopped at an unmarked pulloff. There were no other cars. We carried our canoe and gear along a half-mile path and soon beheld a wild expanse of water, with two small islands…
Exploring the beauty of Pharaoh Lake on skis, gliding through quiet backcountry trails in the heart of the Adirondacks.
Tony Goodwin’s short, powerful legs are churning up a steep, 1,000-foot trail to Brown Mountain in the Tongue Mountain Range above Lake George. Perspiration dapples his wind-burned brow. Yellow and orange maple leaves rustle in the wake of his battered, split-at-the-seams leather hiking boots.
You can reach the 2,178-foot summit of “Goodman Mountain” by an easy bushwhack. Start at the unpaved parking area for Lumberjack Spring, on the east side of Route 30 a few hundred yards south of the right turn for County Route 421 (the road to Bog River Falls and Horseshoe Lake).
When the Explorer asked me to write about two of my favorite ski trips, I didn’t have to rattle my brain long before I hit on the two gems below. Both should be great skiing in late winter, when there is (or should be) lots of snow. If you love the winter wilderness and enjoy backcountry skiing, you won’t be disappointed with either of these trips.
You think you’re physically ready, braced for the worst. But no matter how many times you’ve clung anxiously to a raft catapulting and careening down the wild upper Hudson River during spring runoffs, there’s no way to be really prepared for that first heart-stopping plunge into a wall of frigid water.
Carl Heilman knows snowshoes. He made and sold them for 15 years, always out of hand-split ash, and he’s used them for much longer. Although he got out of the business a few years ago to devote his energies to photography, he still goes out on snowshoes two or three times a week when conditions permit.
This is how it was meant to be. The wax is holding firm as we ascend the mild uphill behind Pitchoff Mountain and settle into a comfortable kick and glide through the still woods, slow enough to maintain conversation but fast enough to know we’re getting somewhere. By Rick Karlin
By Jeff Schmidt The roller-coaster ride through the krummholz was exhilarating and unlike any skiing I’d ever done. I had just come through the Romper Room, a magical section on the shoulder of Mount Marcy that epitomizes the best in Adirondack trail skiing. The trail rolls, dips, turns and twists. Blind corners lead to blinding…