Grand Adirondack Hotel
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. That hotel has been around a while, before...
Helping Ukrainians Far from the Front Lines
The young couple and their four-year-old daughter were living in an apartment in Kharkiv, 20 miles from the Russian border. Rockets flew overhead. The thunder of explosions and plumes of choking smoke were constant. The parents feared for the safety of their daughter,...
The Upside Down: Introducing Another Lake Placid
Illustration by Mark Wilson Lake Placid is the most wonderful town in the world,” says Giggles. “The people here are so friendly and giving—talking about it, I get tears in my eyes.” The 78-year-old, aka Sandy Pelski, graduated from the first clown class at Toby’s...
Photographer Pamela Underhill Karaz Captures the Wonders of Wildlife
Just after Christmas some years ago, a coyote emerged from a stand of evergreens on Pamela Underhill Karaz’s property near Barneveld. Wildlife sightings on Karaz’s 40 acres in the southwestern Adirondacks were nothing new, but she grabbed her camera and watched as the...
Mystery Man: Unpacking an Adirondack Life
Illustration by Gwen Jamison Vogel Bids at 30, now 30, would you go for 40, I hear 40!” Numbers were rattled off in a mesmerizing chant. The crowd listened, huddled in an unheated warehouse beneath a domed wooden roof. “Now 40, would you give me 50? Now 50,...
The Old Man and the Loppet
Illustration by Mark Wilson Taking on Lake Placid’s toughest Nordic race It all started sometime the summer before last, when my son Nathan suggested he would come back East and we would both ski the Loppet. Held at the Nordic Center at Mount Van...
The Winter of ’32
How Lake Placid’s first Olympics brightened my childhood 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. Grandfather Alford started out...
Kate Smith Today
Cooper Holmes has a cold. Yet the virus hasn’t prevented the 17-year-old from showing up at 7:15 a.m. to sing for the Lake Placid Rotary Club, and to be honored with the club’s Kate Smith scholarship, a 1,000-dollar award given annually to Lake Placid High School’s...Ready for the World
Throughout 2019, in celebration of Adirondack Life’s 50th anniversary, we’re sharing an article per week from our archives—one for each year since 1970. In 1980, the talk of the Adirondacks was the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. After years of preparation and...
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