Adirondack swimming holes can look mighty inviting on a warm spring day. Before you take the plunge, though, take note of conditions that can lead to hidden dangers:
June 2021
The Lost Generation in Saranac Lake
Glazed off-white bricks were chosen, 125 years ago, for the interior of the first laboratory devoted to the study of tuberculosis in America, because they were easy to clean. Some of those bricks are now etched with names—in plain, black lettering—just inside the entrance to the Saranac Laboratory Museum, forming a stark memorial to “Patients who Cured in Saranac Lake.”
The Big Picture
Behind a rack of reds at Adirondack Mountain Spirits in Au Sable Forks is a mural that spreads across most of a wall. Its paint is cracked and peeling, coated in layers of cigarette smoke and polyurethane and, after 81 years, dulled by the sun that streams in through the windows.
Small Wonders
The Adirondacks, with its varied forests and numerous lakes and streams, is an ideal habitat for the only hummingbird species that breeds in eastern North America, the ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris).
Backwoods Brotherhood
I began to wonder what kind of camping trip this was shaping up to be when the guys I’d met just hours earlier tapped me to play the dog in a fox hunt.
The 138-Mile Classroom
I have very little in common with a 13-year-old boy. Especially the 13-year-old boy who is my son. He likes to talk about video games and mountain bikes and The Mandalorian. I know nothing about all three.
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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