Flying High with Tate Frantz
Photograph by Tadeusz Mieczyński On a blustery fall afternoon, after a series of wind delays, Mimi Wacholder leans out from a watch stand on the ski jumps in Lake Placid. She looks on as her son Tate Frantz launches himself into space, his body angled sharply...
BOW in the Snow
Photograph by Jamie West McGiver “I skinned and broke down an entire squirrel,” offered my table-mate, Kelsey, between bites. “It was much easier after I cut the head off.” It wasn’t your usual pleasantries-over-brunch exchange, but this was no ordinary weekend. It...
Malfunction Junction in the Adirondacks
Photograph by Johnathan Esper Malfunction Junction, Dysfunction Junction, Spaghetti Junction, Crazy Corners—or, often for first-timers, What the Hell. Those are a few of the epithets for the intersection of Routes 9 and 73, in New Russia, a head-scratching...
Featured
Flying High with Tate Frantz
Frantz is a boyish-looking 20-year-old who grew up here in Lake Placid. Over the last year, he has emerged as the most successful American male ski-jumper ever to compete on the World Cup circuit.
BOW in the Snow
It wasn’t your usual pleasantries-over-brunch exchange, but this was no ordinary weekend. It was B.O.W. in the Snow, the winter version of Becoming an Outdoors-Woman, a nationwide program designed to build women’s confidence in outdoorsy skills.
Malfunction Junction in the Adirondacks
Photograph by Johnathan Esper Malfunction Junction, Dysfunction Junction, Spaghetti Junction, Crazy Corners—or, often for first-timers, What the Hell. Those are a few of the epithets for the intersection of Routes 9 and 73, in New Russia, a head-scratching...
Nature & Environment
The River Fixers: How the Ausable Freshwater Center Is Healing a Critical Waterway
By the time Tropical Storm Irene moved on, the Ausable River’s rage had washed away portions of Au Sable Forks, Jay, Upper Jay, Keene and other hamlets. Roads and homes, businesses and roadside attractions, including the actual Land of Makebelieve, a former theme park in Upper Jay, were swamped. A total of $25 million in damages sat on the ledgers of hamlets whose combined annual budgets were a mere $4 million.
Bird Notes
Boreal chickadee photograph by Jeff Nadler Want to go birding in the park? Let guide Joan Collins show you the way Know Before You Go: Learn the birds around your home first. A feeder is a great way to attract them. Most species are habitat specific, so...
Eternal Love
The best years of my life have, so far, passed in a crease of the Ausable River Valley. The love of my life, our children, our friends, our trials and triumphs—it’s all happened here. Recently, after the kids were tucked in and the dog walked, my husband and I sat on our front porch, the river roaring after days of rain, the creeping night swallowing the Jay Range in the distance.
Travel
Cover Story
It was a cool, perfect afternoon with fluffy clouds floating over Upper St. Regis Lake. My plan was to spend the day rowing my guideboat around the lake in search of a sunset composition for a photograph I had etched in my mind. I had borrowed a lantern from a friend, and brought along a red-and-black checkered wool blanket I had found on the back side of Colvin Mountain.
The Adirondack Harvest Festival
On a September afternoon at Westport’s Essex County Fairgrounds, a farmers’ market on steroids is underway. People stroll booth to booth and table to table along a loop of growers and bakers and makers.
Dew Drop: The Revival of a Saranac Lake Hangout
On any given day through the heart of the 20th century, blue-collar workers in Saranac Lake could be found pounding burgers at the Dew Drop Inn on Broadway, right alongside bejeweled ladies from Upper Saranac nibbling on seafood platters, boisterous, five-o’clock-somewhere barflies, politicians feasting on New York strips and college kids tossing pizza crusts to the ducks drifting by on the river that flowed a few feet beneath the cantilevered dining room.
Recreation
Pole, Pedal, Paddle: Saranac Lake Revives the 3P
“Three P” races that include skiing, biking and paddling have existed for decades—out West in places like Crested Butte, Colorado, and Bend, Oregon, but also in the Adirondacks, from Tupper Lake to North Creek to Lake Placid.
The Adirondack Ice Bowl
Spectators—some in horned Viking helmets—watch from behind shin-high borders and burn barrels while players chase pucks toward six-inch-tall nets. Absent are goalies, time stops and thrown fists. This is the Adirondack Ice Bowl, an easy-going pond-hockey tournament in the heart of the Adirondacks.
School of Fish
There is no better salve for post-traumatic stress, A. J. Beaudoin believes, than the call of the loon and the morning mist rising from an Adirondack pond.
History
Storms of the Centuries
Ever since Adirondackers began keeping track, they’ve recorded hamlet-swallowing blizzards that socked folks behind snowdrift-jammed doors, downpours that ravaged river valleys, and hurricanes with jet-speed winds that uprooted chunks of forest.
About Orra
She rushed from her campsite at Marcy Dam to Lake Colden after being summoned in the deep of a September night. A man splitting wood for his party’s campfire had sliced his ankle to the bone with an ax.
Manhunt Revisited: 10 Years After the Dannemora Escape
A mother accompanied her child to the school bus with a rifle slung over her shoulder. Guns were loaded and propped near doors and windows. People slept with hammers and baseball bats. They locked their houses, camps, cars and trucks—some for the first time ever. Armed officers lined roadways, searched passing vehicles, and swept forests and fields while the chop of helicopters drowned out the sounds of Adirondack springtime.
On Sale Now
April 2026
The Wildlife Issue! A peek inside the secret lives of Adirondack moose by Jeff Nadler, wildlife portraits by Pamela Underhill Karaz, an opossum search party led by best-selling author Kristin Kimball, plus loons, turtles, turkeys, chipmunks, coyotes and more.
Home & Camp
Adirondack Reads 2025: New Books of Regional Interest
The Adirondack 46 in 18 Hikes: The Complete Guide to Hiking the High Peaks (North Country Books, 2025), by James Appleton, offers a strategic roadmap to tackling the High Peaks.
Rustic Invention: The Art of Paul Lakata
Artist Paul Lakata brought home one of the most coveted honors at the Rustic Furniture Fair in September 2024. The annual exhibition, mounted by Adirondack Experience, in Blue Mountain Lake, showcases artisans who specialize in crafting classic and contemporary rustic furnishings.
Character Study
Every Adirondack small town has its own cast of characters whose presence becomes as familiar as its landmarks, and just as entwined with its sense of place. For the better part of five decades, the affable Keene Valley artist Frank Owen has played a recurring role around town, with frequent appearances at the Ausable Inn, where you may find him chatting up hikers, contractors and anyone else who happens upon the only local watering hole.
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From The Archives
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The Adirondack Store
As you approach the rustic log and glass front of the Adirondack Store on Route 86, in Ray Brook, between Lake Placid and Saranac Lake, a glance through the window promises ...
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The Man Who Would Be King
The story of Roger Jakubowski's preternatural arrival in the North Country two years ago has already entered the annals of Adirondack legend, but for those of you who have be...
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An Au Sable Forks Pulitzer: The Life My Father Chose
Spike Pulitzer (1941–2013) was a paradox, even to those who knew him well. He was complex yet simple, tough but tender, guarded and private, yet genuine and transparent. When...
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