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By Phil Brown
I had hoped to ski Mount Marcy last week, but work and travel got in the way. I expect we’ll have other chances before the winter ends. Meantime, I put together a five-minute video of a Marcy ski trip from a few years ago. It contains snippets shot with a helmet cam while descending…
By Phil Brown
Last week we enjoyed the best backcountry-ski conditions we’ve had in a while. I am using the editorial we; I didn’t enjoy them because I was sick all week. By Saturday, I was feeling good enough to venture out to Dewey Mountain for a few hours, where my girlfriend Carol and I explored the ungroomed trails near…
Three hikers set out on one of the most arduous and spectacular hikes in the Northeast—a traverse of the Great Range—but encounter a thunderstorm just a half-mile short of Marcy’s summit. By Alan Wechsler We had been on the trail for nearly eleven hours when the storm hit. We were so close to success, so…
The hike from Elk Lake to the state’s highest summit is not the most popular, but it is one of the most rewarding. By Lisa Densmore Ballard It was necessary to perform the whole journey on foot, the trail lying through the wildest and most inaccessible forests of the Adirondacks, portions of which were almost unknown.…
By Phil Brown
On Saturday I skied Mount Marcy and was surprised at how good the snow conditions were. I began at the start of South Meadow Road and had to take my skis off only once, on a fifty-yard stretch of the Marcy Dam Truck Trail. To be sure, the trails were hard and sometimes icy on…
By Phil Brown
He had a watch but was afraid to look at it. Instead he tried to gauge time by the slow movement of the stars across the sky. Alas, he forgot that he set his watch alarm for 4 a.m. “When it went off, I was disappointed,” he said. “I knew I had to wait some more.”…
By Phil Brown
I recently wrote a blog for Adirondack Almanack about an art exhibit featuring the work of Anne Diggory, who often paints Adirondack landscapes. When asked which of her Adirondack paintings was her favorite, she replied that it was a scene of Panther Gorge as seen from Mount Marcy. I thought people would like to see…
By Phil Brown
I hiked the Van Hoevenberg Trail to Mount Marcy today (Saturday) and found it fine shape, despite a few changes wrought by Hurricane Irene. It was just two days after the state Department of Environmental Conservation reopened the eastern High Peaks, and many hikers were out enjoying the sunshine. Starting at Adirondak Loj, the Van…
By Phil Brown
If you’re thinking of climbing Mount Marcy from Adirondak Loj this weekend, you should plan for a longer-than-usual journey, thanks to the loss of a log bridge over Phelps Brook. The bridge that hikers use to cross the brook in high water was washed downstream about a week ago, according to David Winchell, a spokesman…
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,…