Adirondack Explorer

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Adirondack Explorer5 min readCrime & Violence
Briefs
BY GWENDOLYN CRAIG AND ZACHARY MATSON Rulings against the Adirondack Park Agency in two court cases in two days in early March raised questions about its internal operations and how it will conduct business in the future. On March 2, the state Suprem
Adirondack Explorer1 min read
Adirondack Explorer
Publisher: Tracy Ormsbee [email protected] Editor: James M. Odato [email protected] Associate Publisher: Betsy Dirnberger [email protected] Designer: Kelly Hofschneider [email protected] Digital Editor: Meli
Adirondack Explorer1 min read
Brief Bio
DANA FAST Age: 92 Birthplace: Warsaw, Poland Residence: Lake Clear (since 1974) Occupation / background: chemist/biochemist. Lived in Poland until 1962 and moved to Israel. Came to the Adirondacks in 1964 and worked at the Trudeau Institute and the W
Adirondack Explorer3 min read
Editorial
It often takes a near disaster to get politicians to act. Like, for example, the evacuation of 150,000 residents when erosion compromised the Oroville Dam in California, sending water gushing over the emergency spillway toward the neighborhoods below
Adirondack Explorer2 min read
Letters
I loved your piece on Charlotte Staats (“Her Adirondack dream job” January/February). I didn’t know her story. Well, consider my interest piqued! I was blown away to learn how Charlotte, the first woman to hold the trails manager position for the Adi
Adirondack Explorer8 min read
A Dammed Thing
The ground beneath the once-flooded Duck Hole in the High Peaks Wilderness was soft underfoot and teeming with life. Monarch butterflies fluttered among summer flowers. Mosses, bog plants, grasses, shrubs and early succession trees carpeted the wide
Adirondack Explorer6 min read
After The Storm: Transparency, Owner Fees, Risk Planning
During heavy rain in February 2017, concrete collapsed at California’s Oroville Dam, the tallest in the nation. Water pushed through the 3,000-foot-long spillway and drowned the adjacent hillside, eventually overtopping the emergency spillway. Erosio
Adirondack Explorer7 min read
Solar Panels And Dairy Cows
Jon Close has been farming all of his life. The 64-year-old, with a long, frizzy beard and cheerful demeanor, milks approximately 70 cows in a barn off Lakeview Road in Mayfield. His sprawling pastures offer views of Great Sacandaga Lake, a man-made
Adirondack Explorer5 min read
The Full Circle Of A Potato Grower
It’s tough to be a farmer in the Adirondacks, and doubly so at a scale that supplies wholesale markets out-of-state. And it’s hard anywhere to keep a family farm alive for more than a century and a half. Tucker Farms, surrounded by mountains eight mi
Adirondack Explorer10 min read
Free-range Adirondack Woodland Shopping
Jane Desotelle crouched at the edge of a brick walkway outside the Ausable Club lodge and plucked a green leaf and spindly flower from a low-lying plant. To the untrained eye, it’s a nuisance weed. Desotelle, an expert Adirondack forager, identified
Adirondack Explorer6 min read
Migrating To NY’s Mountains
Steph Larsen knew what she wanted in a community: A rural, friendly place where she could farm and raise her family. In 2014, Larsen and her husband Noah Weber bought land in Montana and started their farm. But their lives changed just three years la
Adirondack Explorer6 min read
When Private Land Meets Public Trailheads
Perhaps the best stretch to ski on the Jack-rabbit Trail is known as Old Mountain Road. As it leaves North Elba, the trail drops through a series of beaver swamps, passes Pitchoff Mountain’s ice-covered cliffs and eventually ends at a woodsy trailhea
Adirondack Explorer7 min readCrime & Violence
Crime In The Adirondacks
Sarah Keyes is often up in the middle of the night, after she gets off a nursing shift at Adirondack Health in Saranac Lake. Instead of going to bed, she goes running. Out on the rail trail in the dark, the 38-year-old ultra-runner is occasionally st
Adirondack Explorer5 min read
Broadening Bandwidth
Not since railroads and highways transformed access to the Adirondacks has the region stood poised to dramatically improve the area’s connectedness over a more metaphorical “highway.” Dozens of collaborators—regional advocates, economic development o
Adirondack Explorer5 min read
A Rainy Day Story
Our hike begins at a trailhead near Long Lake on bog bridges over spruce wetlands. Beneath the spindly trees, wide boards lead us across a soft green carpet of moss. We’re doing a 15-mile day trip from Long Lake to Lake Durant on a scenic part of the
Adirondack Explorer6 min read
A Portage With Purpose
The kayak trip from Raquette Lake to Blue Mountain Lake is one of the great paddles of the Adirondacks. In about 13 miles, you traverse four lakes, a major river and two inlets. You pass beautiful homes and quiet woods and follow the path of what was
Adirondack Explorer3 min read
It’s Debatable
AAA has not taken an official position on the latest efforts in New York to raise the speed limit to 70 on the Adirondack Northway and elsewhere. However, AAA believes that speed limits should not be raised or lowered only to manipulate traffic volum
Adirondack Explorer3 min read
Outtakes
When I moved to Saranac Lake, Dick Beamish, the founder of the Adirondack Explorer, told me about one of his favorite bike rides: starting in town, he’d pedal up Forest Home Road, coast down McMaster Road, take Route 186 to Donnelly’s Corners, and re
Adirondack Explorer3 min read
Fresh Look
I have always grappled with the concept of love. What does this word mean that society throws around so haphazardly? I feel most at home with bell hooks’ definition: “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s s
Adirondack Explorer3 min read
Birdwatch
Northern New York is a birding mecca for many reasons. In winter, sought-after species to our north head south into our region. Year-round boreal species can be viewed in the Adirondacks without traveling to Canada. In the spring and summer, northern
Adirondack Explorer3 min read
On The Wild Side
In life there are things that last and things that don’t. Among the don’ts are a group of spring wildflowers sometimes called “ephemerals.” They come, and if you don’t get out in the woods in a hurry, they go. Then, there’s nothing to be done but hea
Adirondack Explorer2 min read
Last Page
The Adirondack Park is known for its expansive forests, which store more carbon dioxide than they release. Carbon sequestration and storage in forests are key in the fight against the effects of climate change. But the forests are also getting help u

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