Frozen water is guaranteed on Adirondack lakes and ponds, starting from a thin skim when temperatures drop in December. In 2019 some lakes had ice more than 30 inches thick by March 1.
February 2020
Road Work
It is snowing, the flakes descending in endless, languorous swirls. Seemingly from nowhere, the snowplows emerge—yellow lights flashing and blades grinding. It is winter in the Adirondacks.
Fastgirls
On a freezing night last winter, Kristyn Abbale, 28, left Daikers, a shorefront bar popular with snowmobilers, an hour before last call and drove her sled onto the frozen ice of Fourth Lake in the Fulton Chain.
The Winter of ’32
My father, Ruel Alford, was the son of Harvey and Effie Alford. In the early 20th century, his family owned a great deal of property in Lake Placid and the surrounding areas.
Saved by a Miracle
Blink and you’ll miss it, an almost throwaway line in the 2004 film Miracle, one that hints at what Adirondack locals know about the 1980 Winter Olympics. Or at least knew 40 years ago.
Becks Tavern
“We wanted a ski cabin but we bought a hotel,” said Matt Parobeck, 45, who owns Becks Tavern and Gore Mountain Lodge with his older brother, Mark, and younger brother, Douglas, all avid downhillers and devotees of Gore.
A Graves Situation
President Grover Cleveland stood on the second-floor veranda of Henry and Kate Graves’s mansion in Au Sable Forks and likely told the crowd, waving hand-sized American flags on the lawn below, that company towns like theirs were the pride of the nation.
On Sale Now
October 2026
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.
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