Larry Stone has attempted to retire five times. And now, at age 76, the New York Ski Educational Foundation (NYSEF) jumping coach has given up trying to walk away. After decades of working with kids in the Junior Jumping Program, Stone says his latest group of athletes—18 in all—have more talent than he’s ever seen.
Fifty-nine years ago in mid-July, Peter Welles hiked the Adirondacks’ 46 highest peaks in 11 days. The 22-year-old was never alone on the trip, tackling the first half of the expedition with his dad, Gillette “Toots,” and then the rest with friends from Camp Pok-O-MacCready, in Willsboro, where he had attended summer camp.
Up an overgrown road, through thigh-high grass, a centuries-old burial site nestles in a crescent of thorn bushes on Warren Kries’s property in Keene.
As summer turns to fall, foliage just beginning to pop and the air cooling, Olympian Andrew Weibrecht is looking forward to snow. Last winter, from January through March, the 35-year-old Lake Placid native skied 22 of the Adirondacks’ 46 highest peaks to raise funds and awareness for Make-A-Wish Northeast New York, a chapter of Make-A-Wish America, an organization that helps kids with critical illnesses realize their dreams.
“I hate nature.” He said it as we sat in a college classroom, our desks pushed into a circle. I had just explained that our semester would focus on reading and writing about the natural world. Nature, he said, had killed someone he knew. He immediately dropped my class.
It’s Erik Danielson’s 30th birthday. He strides purposefully, pack on his back, along a shoulder of Route 3 near Ampersand Mountain. He’s doing one of the things that makes him happiest.
An early April afternoon last year, snow clinging to Old Forge’s Bald Mountain and the Fulton Chain still frozen, two men ate lunch at The Tavern, in Eagle Bay.
Ten o’clock on a Friday night we rode the escalator up, out of Pennsylvania Station in New York City. We’d made the two and a half–hour drive from our home in the Adirondacks to the Amtrak station outside of Albany, then another two-plus hours into Manhattan. We’d hurried from our train, packs on our backs, my daughter clutching my arm as we wove through the crush of people, many of them hockey fans in their teams’ jerseys, amped up after a game in Madison Square Garden.
This trip was part of an early birthday celebration—Big Apple–style—for my nine-year-old. We were on our way to a friend’s apartment, our weekend base camp for excursions around the city.
After years of living along the East Branch of the Ausable River, wading in its ankle-deep shallows and swimming its sandy-bottomed stretches, I’ve accepted leeches as part of the Adirondack package.
My dog walks me along the Ausable River, pulling and pulling for the next sniff, dipping his doggy beard in puddles. Along the road and scattered on front yards are dollops of melting snow.
Recently, a historian friend known for sleuthing regional nuggets found the album Old Time and Jugband Music by a group called Cranberry Lake. She sent it to me with a note that said, “I think you need this LP.”
Last spring, during the Meghan Markle and Prince Harry wedding extravaganza, some media outlets looking to translate the pomp and circumstance relied on the expertise of commentator Thomas J. Mace-Archer-Mills, Esq., chairman and founder of the royal-enthusiast British Monarchist Society.
Lost hikers, splintered bones and wildfires—a forest ranger reflects on more than two decades of coming to the rescue. Plus the oldest tavern in the Adirondacks, a trip through James Bond’s Lake George, and new energy in Schroon Lake.
Learn about advertising opportunities in Adirondack Life Magazine.
