The Magazine of the Mountains since 1969
Sometimes an extended getaway can seem like such a commitment. What if you’re only in the mood for a quickie? Whether you’re down for some easy-access backcountry or you prefer a bed at the end of the trail, we’ve got you covered with these one-night outings—just enough to recharge your batteries with a dose of vitamin nature without a long-term engagement.
Longtime Adirondackers get attached to places the way they knew them, mostly for sentimental reasons. In my case, more than 20 years ago I met my now-husband in the second-floor lounge of Lake Placid’s old Northwoods Inn.
Standing on a shelf of rock looking toward the High Peaks, I realized my mistake. I had no headlamp, no source of light, and the sky was already a bruised shade of purple and red. Shadows crept over the valley below. As I watched, the sun slipped away behind the mountains.
A Captain Crum, who navigated the lake in 1819, told a tale of an almost 200-foot-long black monster with three teeth and a star on its forehead. Sandra Mansi, the photographer behind a hotly debated 1977 image of “Champy,” compared the creature to a dinosaur.
Yellow-green sparks shimmer among shadowy pines overlooking my backyard on the outskirts of Saranac Lake. It is a warm June evening, and the humid air hangs heavy with the fragrance of mountain maple blossoms and last year’s fallen pine needles. More such flashes beckon from the quiet tree-lined road that circles Moody Pond, and I follow.
A spooky campfire tale from our Night Issue
Why should you care about bats? “Besides the fact they’re cute,” says bat researcher Vanessa Rojas, assistant professor at SUNY-ESF Ranger School, based in Wanakena, “the ecosystem services they provide are critical. Bats eat forest defoliators and other pests. I can’t imagine what our forests would be like without them.”
Have you ever wondered what the Milky Way—the celestial one, not the confection—would smell and taste like?
Some night this summer when the sky is clear, pick up a pair of binoculars, step away from the fire pit and open your mind to celestial high-drama echoing down to us from the Babylonians, the Greeks, and from the phantasmic beginning of life and time itself.
Nighttime adventures, seaplane voyages, classic backpacking trips, climbing icons and more!
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