Table of contents for Outings Guide 2024 in Adirondack Explorer

Thunder rumbled as we pushed off from the Long Lake boat launch. Four of us were embarking on a three-day canoe trip from Long Lake to Floodwood Pond via the Raquette River and Upper Saranac Lake. With a variety of backcountry experience (from some to basically none) our adventure began before we dipped paddles in the water. There were pre-trip questions like “what’s a portage?” and “should we bring umbrellas?” and Cushy texted a photo of himself in front of a pile of gear and wrote: “I don’t know what I’m doing.” Similar in size, Cushy and Windy paddled one rented canoe, while Minnesota and I paddled another. Both boats were piled with camping gear and essential provisions like beer. When the rains came, we found shelter on shore. After…

Located about 25 minutes west of Warrensburg, Crane Mountain is a popular hiking spot but something of a sleeping giant in the climbing world. With more than 250 routes and located much closer to New York’s big population centers than the climbing mecca of the Keene Valley area, Crane ought to have more climbers than it gets, which is often none. But then again, despite a well-written section in the Adirondack Rock guidebook series, Crane is an intimidating destination. Its routes are spread over a large area with dozens of cliffs and slabs. Finding them requires navigating a complicated series of unmarked paths or, in some cases, no paths. Just finding the trailhead is a challenge. It’s located amid a warren of back roads in Warren County, with a tenuous…

While office cleaning, I found a pamphlet picked up years before: “Route 29A Hiking Guide.” Published by the state marketing folks behind the I Love NY campaign, it listed a dozen hikes accessible from an unassuming road in northern Fulton County. I had only been to this area a few times. This after hundreds of trips to the more well-known mountains of the High Peaks, central Adirondacks and Lake George region. Compared to those destinations, northern Fulton County is something of an outdoors newcomer. Author Barbara McMartin, in her 1974 guidebook “Walks and Waterways,” described the area as some of the wildest and least-known lands in the Adirondacks. At the time of that printing, there were few marked trails, and her hikes mainly followed old logging roads or snowmobile routes.…

I have always grappled with the concept of love. What does this word mean that society throws around so haphazardly? I feel most at home with bell hooks’ definition: “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” In the Adirondacks, my spirit rises organically. I appreciate all the love people give to the region through sustainability, education and protection—and all the love they provide in memories involving us humans and our experiences in the natural world within the Blue Line. I have a soul sister named Megan. The platonic love we share constantly contributes to my life. She is the type of friend I wish everyone had. She is kind, caring, immensely resourceful and adventurous. We adore the Adirondacks, exploring and…

I love my friend, John, a former co-worker who is 30 years my senior. At face value, we seem worlds apart. Nonetheless, we get each other. He is full of stories, good humor and an eagerness to be outside. In retirement, he focuses on hiking mountains. His goal is all 46 High Peaks, but busy schedules often throw wrenches in our hiking plans. John and I serve as organizers corralling co-workers, friends and family to enjoy time in the Adirondacks. This year we planned an overnight trip to the summit of Mount Marcy, but John was hospitalized with pneumonia, and we rescheduled to Oct. 28. Still recovering, he opted to meet me for a hike on Buck Mountain from the Pilot Knob trailhead. We were originally a group of six,…

It’s a stunning view and all, but the new Buck Mountain trail in Long Lake had me at its parking lot. On Friday we were creeping along South Sabattis Road worried we might miss the standard-issue roadside pullout indicative of the typical Adirondack trailhead, when what to our wondering eyes should appear but a sprawling, modern, room-to-turn-around-without-decapitating-the-Hornbeck parking area, a gravel Shangri La capable, by the looks of it, of accommodating the entire cast of “Gone With the Wind.” Oh sure, some may miss the thrill of removing their pack from the back seat as whizzing semis threaten to send you somersaulting halfway to Utica, but to me the concept of adequate parking was so refreshing and so, so foreign, that the state may want to appoint a task force…

With the Adirondack Mountains to the west, New York’s shoreline on Lake Champlain is branded recreationally as the Adirondack Coast. This 120-mile lake flows north, making this coast’s unofficial starting point the lake headwaters in South Bay, just north of the historic village of Whitehall in northern Washington County. Having kayaked several times in South Bay’s shallow, milky waters from a state boat launch off state Route 22, I often wondered about the lake’s distant northern outlet, at the Richelieu River, which runs through Quebec to the St. Lawrence River and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean at the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Last summer offered two weeks to make that trip, driving, camping, and kayaking along portions of a lake with a whopping 587 miles of shoreline in New York, Vermont…

My scuba diving and marriage buddy and I have logged well over 100 dives including off the shores of Florida and New England where we were lucky enough to see lots of technicolor flora and exotic, toothy critters. But diving in the Adirondacks has an allure all its own. Lake George and Blue Mountain Lake attract divers from several states and Canada and are considered among the best cold-water dives in this part of the United States, but that’s an unnecessary qualifier. Sure, it’s chilly, but these lakes aren’t exactly hot tubs at the surface. But in diving, the 7-millimeter wetsuits provide entry to a world missed by most. Contrary to what many expect, the fish are curious, even friendly. They don’t scatter. They often surround you and sometimes they…

Our hike begins at a trailhead near Long Lake on bog bridges over spruce wetlands. Beneath the spindly trees, wide boards lead us across a soft green carpet of moss. We’re doing a 15-mile day trip from Long Lake to Lake Durant on a scenic part of the Northville-Placid Trail. It’s one of the few places on the 140-mile trail where it is possible to do a moderate one-way day hike with a short car shuttle. After I hiked the entire NPT, I knew I wanted to come back with friends to this beautiful stretch. The trail winds through the Blue Mountain Wild Forest and climbs to 3,000 feet, the highest point on the NPT. It is there, after almost five miles of hiking, we decide it’s time to take…

It’s not every day that a new trail is cut in the Adirondacks, old mountains explored by humans long before modern trail-building techniques provided moderate grades or stabilized soil. Large tracts that are forever wild cannot be altered in man-made ways. As any local peak bagger can attest, most ascents are direct and eroded, but we endure every heart-pounding, cobbled, foot-soaking step for the jaw-dropping views. Moxham Mountain is different. When I first heard about Moxham in the Vanderwhacker Mountain Wild Forest near Minerva—a new hike that boasts a host of views—I asked Liz Venesky, to explore it with me. Though the 2.6-mile trail opened a decade ago, it still qualifies as “new” in hiking terms. It was constructed by the state Department of Environmental Conservation with the Student Conservation…

I can write about this wilderness hike because I know I’m not going to convince you to check it out. I’m about to gush about one of my favorite Adirondack hideaways, yet I have little fear I’ll see you there. The trail is long and flat, the terminus has a marshy appearance, and I am no influencer. But I am in love with this special location anyway. Little Woodhull Lake—LWL for short—and its two existing trails have been seeking your attention for decades, alluring you with softly whispered promises of adventure and solitude as you peruse your trail maps and apps—and you, inattentive reader, have not noticed. Little Woodhull is a homely place. No sand beaches, nor towering pines; great mountains cast no shadows on horizons. Few rock perches offer…

I wanted to climb Kane Mountain (2,180 feet) near Caroga Lake, but it was a haul to get there from my house on Chateaugay Lake. The two lakes are 200 miles apart, about as distant as you can get from north to south and still be within the Blue Line. Sometimes the sheer vastness of the Adirondack Park limits my willingness to explore its backcountry bounty. “You Kane do it,” quipped my husband, Jack, who hankered for an outing. “But it’s almost four hours of driving each way for a hike that might take an hour and a half,” I sighed, but that little mountain had persuasive pull. I had only hiked it once, a dozen years ago while writing my book, “Hiking the Adirondacks.” I loved the hike for…

I’m not ashamed to hop off my mountain bike to climb a hill. I’ve never enjoyed the experience of my heart pounding in my throat, and it seems to be worse with age. So I was pleasantly surprised by a seven-mile loop over a series of moderate ups and downs with a total elevation gain of a bit over 200 feet during which I only dismounted the bike once. Doug and I met at Dave and Rivka Cilley’s Floodwood Outpost, previously part of their St. Regis Canoe Outfitters business in Saranac Lake. Dave and Rivka, recently retired, sold the business to two of their employees, Maeghan Farnham and Steve Cerri. Although canoe rentals will no longer be available at Floodwood Pond, Dave and Rivka are still offering light treats, a…