Table of contents for Outings Guide in Adirondack Explorer

I can relate to Indiana Jones, the swashbuckling Hollywood character played by Harrison Ford who readily retrieves precious artifacts from heavily booby-trapped enclaves in remote places around the globe. He climbs mountains, rafts rivers, races through rainforests, and wriggles through caves, unless there are snakes. Actually, I just do the climbing mountains and avoiding snakes part, which is why the Tongue Mountain Range, a peninsula that juts into Lake George from its western shore, was low on my list of places to hike in the Adirondacks. Tongue Mountain is one of the few places in the Adirondacks where timber rattlesnakes live. The only poisonous snake in the Adirondacks, the timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus), also called a canebrake rattlesnake or a banded rattlesnake, was the creature on the first flag of…

It was a family hike, and I was behind my father on the trail. I am faster and I could’ve passed him, but I didn’t. What if he fell, and I wasn’t there to help him up? It was like a switch had been flipped. I was the child looking after the parent, instead of the other way around. It was something I’d never felt before. It should be said that my father, despite his age (seventy-five) and two knee replacements, doesn’t need looking after. He will be annoyed when he finds out the thought even crossed my mind. There’s nothing fragile about my dad. On the day of the hike, he had dried blood on one hand from a dog bite and hadn’t bothered to wash it off. DIRECTIONS:…

Rock climber Kevin “MudRat” MacKenzie eyed his options on the cliff in front of him. He was standing high up on a cliff, roped in but more than 60 feet above his last piece of protection. If he fell, he would bounce and scrape his way down the steeply-sloping slab, all the way to the ground. He was high up on Big Slide, one of the 46 High Peaks more than 4,000 feet high. Just a few hundred feet below the summit is the actual rock slide for which the summit is named. The 300-foot-high face was caused by the release and avalanche of rain-saturated soil in 1830. Today, nearly all visitors to the top of Big Slide have no idea that there are rock-climbing routes near the summit. There…

I’d read about skiing the toll road. Listened to others tell their stories. But I never made the effort to ski to the top and back down. My brother and I would talk about it and concoct grand plans. I imagined a long, glorious run floating atop soft powder. Our discussion always ended the same way: “We really should ski the toll road someday.” Someday arrived in December 2017 under bright blue skies and with cool temperatures. Skiing the Whiteface Veterans Memorial Highway is an Adirondack tradition, especially early in the season. Happily, it’s a tradition I can now easily participate in. My wife, Tracy, and I had recently become full-time North Country residents. (Tracy is the publisher of the Explorer.) I left Saranac Lake at 8 a.m. Temperatures were…

When the Adirondack Mountain Club expanded the footprint of its guidebook Eastern Trails into western Warren and southern Hamilton counties, I suddenly had a lot of new turf to cover, mostly in the Wilcox Lake Wild Forest. A couple years ago, I visited two extraordinary places near Wells. You should go, make a day of it for each, and also spend time in that pretty village by Lake Algonquin on the East Branch of the Sacandaga River. Here is what I found: A Dazzling Triad The first one you come upon is above and around a bend. The second one you spy straight on through the trees. The third one jumps up on you from a small gorge down below. This trio of cascades make up the pillowy and arresting…

Every avid hiker has a relationship with a particular mountain. You might climb many others, but there’s always one that’s yours. It’s not a peak that’s simply checked off a list. It’s a favorite you climb over and over. It’s your go-to hike when you need exercise, you want to share quality trail time with someone else, or you need to get above the daily fray. Like relationships with humans, a hiker’s relationship with their mountain does not always go smoothly. A mountain can be moody, even violent when a storm brews, but it can also be warm and welcoming when the sun shines and the wind is calm, so it’s easy to forgive its sullen side. The more you get to know a mountain, the more it surprises and…

I’ve skied the Whiteface toll road many times, often early or late in the season when snow is scarce in the backcountry. I always enjoy the ever-changing views and the fun descent, but it is not the only skiable highway leading to an Adirondack summit. For years, I contemplated skiing the Prospect Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway near Lake George, and in February I finally did it. You may wonder how they compare. Both highways are unplowed in winter and end at or near summits, but there is one crucial difference: Prospect Mountain’s road is open to snowmobiles. The Whiteface highway is not, though workers sometimes ride sleds to access the buildings high on the mountain. I arrived at the Prospect Mountain gatehouse on a Monday afternoon and did not expect…

It was a mid-October when I decided I needed to get down to Anthony’s Nose to catch a last glimpse of the fading fall foliage. I got up early one morning, gathered up my gear in a daypack and drove south to the northeastern side of Lake George, to the preserve owned by the Land George Land Conservancy. The drive actually was one of the highlights of the trip, as I passed a number of colorful hardwood hillsides, scenic barns, and farmlands colored in autumn hues Anything the hike would provide was a bonus, and I already knew it would be good. LGLC Land Steward Alex Novick had recommended it as one of the best places to view Lake George, noting that photographer Carl Heilman had shot some incredible images…

The Adirondacks is blessed with lovely waterfalls. A number of them can be found along the Grass River. And the best of those is Lampson Falls, which can be reached by a short walk or a longer paddle. On a gorgeous fall day, my friend Carol and I opted for the paddle. I had done this trip several years earlier, while researching my guidebook Adirondack Paddling: 60 Great Flatwater Adventures, and was curious to see if things had changed. As it turned out, the river and the falls were pretty much the same—that is, beautiful. Our journey began on the Middle Branch of the Grass and ended on the Main Branch just above the falls. Thus, some kind of shuttle was called for. We first drove to the Lampson Falls…

It was a sunny Sunday in August in the southern Adirondack hamlet of Hadley, and business at the Sacandaga Outdoor Center was in full swing. A crowd of people in life vests were milling about, eating snacks, sitting on picnic tables, chatting, or texting. I was here with my girlfriend Beth to join in the fun—a rafting trip down the Sacandaga River. Only a few miles from Lake George, Saratoga Springs, and the Great Escape, the Sacandaga lures tens of thousands of clients each summer with its easy entry into the world of rafting: warm water, fun and safe waves, and a reasonable price, about $30 for several hours of fun. On this short section of whitewater, kayak, canoe, tube, and stand-up paddleboard rentals are available. But rafting is what…

It was a Monday when we hit Buck Mountain. It was in late March, a week after the biggest nor’easter of the winter, which dropped several feet of snow all over upstate New York. That means that any skier worth his salt was trying to catch as much of it as possible, knowing it would soon be gone. Which explains why my friend John and I wanted a relatively easy day. We had both been skiing and snowshoeing almost nonstop since the storm, and we were exhausted. But for outdoorsmen such as ourselves, a “rest day” meant an adventure that leaves at noon. Buck was perfect. It’s close to our homes in the Albany area and not too challenging for tired legs and blistered feet. Buck is a splendid little…