The Magazine of the Mountains since 1969
In the Adirondacks, maple is embedded in our flavor landscape. Today—from backyard taps and stove-top boiling to networks of tubing and high-tech evaporators—the process of transforming sap into syrup endures, as does our love of that sweet liquid gold.
On a Friday morning in March, Devon Harris—one of the original members of the Jamaican national bobsled team—addressed a group of about 100 K–12 students in Minerva Central School’s gymnasium. A motivational speaker, Harris told the story of his improbable journey from the streets of Kingston (“I was just a kid from the hood,” he said) to the national stage. And of course the team’s immortalization in Cool Runnings, a 1993 film starring John Candy.
Chicken riggies—mouthfuls of chicken, sweet and hot peppers, onions and rigatoni smothered in a white-wine marinara—is an upstate favorite born in Utica’s deep-rooted Italian community. Start your own love affair with the dish at Frankie’s Taste of Italy, in Old Forge, where owners Frankie and Tina Zammiello—now joined by their son, Julian—serve up meals inspired by their family’s Sunday feasts.
We’re not saying that the Adirondacks’ muscular mountaintops and water-ribboned valleys are attention hogs, but they have monopolized generations of lenses.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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