The Magazine of the Mountains since 1969
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.
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 memorable browsing.
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.
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...
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.
Twenty-five years ago, in Montclair, New Jersey, Anne walked into a bookstore for the launch of Christina’s second novel. We were both relatively new to town—Anne had just moved from Brooklyn; Christina was adjusting to suburban life after years on the Upper West Side. Within minutes, we discovered a creative kinship that would eventually lead us deep into the Adirondack wilderness, both literally and literarily.
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.
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.
When I travel around the Adirondacks, I sometimes squint my eyes, trying to imagine how the landscape looked before it was settled: Wild, tangled woods. Unencumbered rivers.
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.
Southern Adirondack waterfall hikes, a funky renaissance in Onchiota, bootlegging adventures, a mysterious island and more.
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