Western Trails, the fourth of six volumes in Adirondack Mountain Club’s (ADK) Forest Preserve Series is set to release the beginning of February.
The guidebook includes 7 Wilderness areas, 13 Wild Forest Areas, the extensive St. Regis Canoe Area, 1 Primitive Area, and 2 state forests. Also included is the relatively new Cranberry Lake 50, a 50-mile hiker’s challenge that falls within this region. » Continue Reading.
Don Mellor’s second edition of Blue Lines: An Adirondack Ice Climber’s Guide, published this month, describes almost 600 ice-climbing routes — a testament to the popularity of an erstwhile fringe sport.
The growth in ice climbing is mirrored by the growth in the heft of previous guidebooks.
In 1976, Tom Rosecrans published a slim guidebook called Adirondack Rock and Ice Climbs. Though rock and ice received equal billing in the title, only nine of the 124 pages were devoted to ice climbing. Only a few ice routes were named and described.
In the 1980s, Mellor came out with a bulkier guidebook, Climbing in the Adirondacks, with a substantial section on ice climbing. The 1995 edition described more than 140 routes.
Mellor published the initial edition of Blue Lines in 2006, the region’s first guidebook devoted exclusively to ice climbing. It described about 350 routes.
Maurice Isserman’s Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering is a scholarly work that covers the exploits of mountaineers in the United States and Canada from colonial days to 1963, the year that an American team reached the top of Everest.
Everest is a world away from the northeastern United States, the starting point of Isserman’s book. In 1642, Darby Field, a resident of what is now New Hampshire, climbed White Hill, known by local Indians as Agiocochook and by moderns as Mount Washington, the highest mountain in New England.
Others in the Massachusetts Bay Colony thought Field daft for climbing a mountain. It just wasn’t something people did. Isserman writes: “Following his death in 1649, it was remarked that his was a life of ‘merriness marred by insanity.’”
Adirondack Architectural Heritage (AARCH), the nonprofit historic preservation organization for the region, is expected to publish A Guide to Architecture in the Adirondacks this spring.
Architectural historian Richard Longstreth’s project to research, visit, document and photograph hundreds of historic structures in over 100 towns and hamlets in the Adirondacks took five years and nearly 10,000 miles of driving throughout the region.
This is the first book to document the architecture of the twelve counties in the Adirondack region, including a significant portion of the Lake Champlain watershed. » Continue Reading.
On Saturday, December 10th from 11 am to 3 pm, guests are invited to the North Country Folkstore (located in The TAUNY Center, downtown Canton) to meet the founders of Bloated Toe Publishing, a company dedicated to publishing the work of local authors and organizations in the North Country.
Award-winning author Lawrence Gooley and his partner Jill Jones, both North Country natives, founded Bloated Toe Enterprises in 2004 and have since published 75 titles, including a number of historical Adirondack reprints.
In addition to his work in the publication field, Lawrence has also written 21 books and over 175 articles on the history of the region; he is a weekly contributor to Adirondack Almanack. » Continue Reading.
Erik Schlimmer is a man who likes to make lists, and check them off. After he climbed all the highest peaks in the Northeast he decided to climb all the less-than-high peaks of the Adirondacks, hundreds of them. Then he designed and hiked the Trans Adirondack Trail, a route that bisects the Park north-south from Blue Line to Blue Line.
With his beaver-like energy and red-squirrel enthusiasm Schlimmer has also written four books about the Adirondacks. The best of them, My Adirondacks, Ten Stories from Twenty Years, contains personal essays that are funny, thoughtful, and well-written. It recently won the Adirondack Center for Writing’s first prize for memoir. » Continue Reading.
Chances are good that you’ve never seen Pine Lake. Or OK Slip Falls. You can now. Pine Lake and OK Slip Falls are two natural gems of the Adirondack Park that until recently had rarely been visited by the general public. New York State’s historic purchase of sixty-five thousand acres of former Finch, Pruyn & Company timberlands from the Nature Conservancy has put them into the public domain.
But how do you get to them? What can you do once you get there?
Phil Brown has the answers. 12 Adventures on New State Lands: Exploring the Finch, Pruyn Tracts is the latest in a series of guidebooks by Brown, editor of Adirondack Explorer. » Continue Reading.
The Chapman Museum in Glens Falls will host William R. Griffith, author of the new book, The Battle of Lake George: England’s First Triumph in the French and Indian War (History Press, 2016) on Sunday, September 25th at 2 pm.
In the early morning of September 8, 1755, a force of French Regulars, Canadians and Indians crouched unseen in a ravine south of Lake George. Under the command of French general Jean-Armand, Baron de Dieskau, the men ambushed the approaching British forces, sparking a bloody conflict for control of the lake and its access to New York’s interior. British commander William Johnson rallied his men through the barrage of enemy fire to send the French retreating north to Ticonderoga. The stage was set for one of the most contested regions throughout the rest of the conflict. » Continue Reading.
Author William J. “Jay” O’Hern’s new book, Spring Trout & Strawberry Pancakes: Quirky Cures, Camp Recipes & the Adirondack Characters Who Cook Them Up, looks at some old Adirondack folks, their stories, and how their favored recipes brought mouthwatering meals to Adirondack tables.
With vintage photographs, Spring Trout & Strawberry Pancakes highlights hand-picked camp recipes, background stories of old camps and characters, historic photos, tales, time-tested household cleaning tips and old-fashioned remedies for common ills.
Each chapter highlights appealing recipes and a look back at an Adirondack site, or camp, and the people associated with it, from the 1890s to more recent times. The format features recipes for breads, pastries, soups, casseroles, stews, goulash, practical main meals, desserts, beverages, picnic menus, camping trips, and holiday gatherings. » Continue Reading.
On a snowy winter night in Lake George, in 2010, Cindy Eggleston’s motion-detecting light came on in her back yard. She looked out her kitchen window and saw a big cat. A really big cat. Her husband, a retired conservation officer, guessed that it must have been a bobcat. No, she said, “it had a long tail.” So he went out to look around. In the snow he found huge tracks and, eventually, a hair sample. DNA analysis subsequently showed that these hairs came from a cougar, an animal whose last proven presence in the Adirondacks had occurred over a century before.
The life and death of this wandering cougar, along with a history of this splendid animal in North America and a discussion of its current status, are the subjects of Heart of a Lion: A Lone Cat’s Walk across America, a fascinating book by William Stolzenburg. He debunks myths and spins an engaging and often sad story. » Continue Reading.
After more than a 25 years of protecting New York State’s alpine zone, the Adirondack High Peaks Summit Stewardship Program is being recognized in a new publication.
Adirondack Archangels: Guardians of the High Peaks, (Adirondack Mountain Club, 2016), is a collection of essays by and about individuals who have worked to protect the Adirondack Park and its highest peaks.
The collection is a tribute to the late Edwin H. “Ketch” Ketchledge, Ph.D., who in 1989 led the creation of the Summit Stewardship Program. It comprises thirty-nine essays and includes a foreword by celebrated writer Bill McKibben and over 250 photographs. » Continue Reading.
Historic Saranac Lake has announced the release of a major biography of Dr. E. L. Trudeau by Mary B. Hotaling. The book, entitled A Rare Romance in Medicine: The Life and Legacy of Edward Livingston Trudeau, is now available to purchase from Historic Saranac Lake, and will soon be for sale in local bookstores.
The new biography expands upon Dr. Trudeau’s autobiography, published posthumously in 1915. The doctor’s great-great-grandson, Doonesbury Cartoonist Garry Trudeau, wrote the Foreword. Dr. Andrea Cooper, former Francis B. Trudeau Chair in Tuberculosis and Related Research at the Trudeau Institute, and Dr. Ian Orme, professor of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology at Colorado State University, contributed the closing chapter. The final chapter sets Dr. Trudeau’s work in the context of the continuing study of the cellular immune response to TB. » Continue Reading.
Jay O’Hearn’s new book, Adirondack Logging: Life and Time in the Early Years of Logging’s Mechanization (Versa Press 2016) portrays the timber-logging lives of lumberjacks in the “Glory Years” following the introduction of Linn log hauling tractors.
The book includes interviews with loggers, remembrances of lumber camp life, accounts of river drives, the passing of old-style logging with horses, remembrances of yesterday’s lumberjacks, and stories that accompany appetizing recipes.
Rare photographic images capture the scenes once common around lumber camps, centers of the logging industry built exclusively for the lumberjacks. » Continue Reading.
After two award-winning Adirondack non-fiction histories, author Glenn L. Pearsall of Johnsburg has turned novelist.
Leaves Torn Asunder: A Novel of the Adirondacks and the American Civil War was published by Pyramid Press of Utica.
Inspired by true events, Leaves Torn Asunder portrays a time rarely covered in Adirondack literature. Pearsall’s research included soldier diaries and letters, town enlistment and cemetery records, regimental histories, and visits to the exact places on Civil War battle sites where local men fought and died. » Continue Reading.
The Adirondack Center for Writing hosted the annual Adirondack Literary Awards at the Blue Mountain Center on Sunday, June 5, to celebrate another year of publications for regional authors and presses, and to announce this year’s winners. Following the ceremony Joe Bruchac gave a tribute to poet Maurice Kenny that concluded with a moving rendition of a Seneca song.
Judges selected winners from the categories of fiction, memoir, general nonfiction, poetry, and children’s literature. The People’s Choice Award was selected by peers and audience members as their favorite title of the year’s submissions. » Continue Reading.
Latest News Headlines
Latest News Headlines
The Adirondack Almanack is a public forum dedicated to promoting and discussing current events, history, arts, nature and outdoor recreation and other topics of interest to the Adirondacks and its communities
We publish commentary and opinion pieces from voluntary contributors, as well as news updates and event notices from area organizations. Contributors include veteran local writers, historians, naturalists, and outdoor enthusiasts from around the Adirondack region. The information, views and opinions expressed by these various authors are not necessarily those of the Adirondack Almanack or its publisher, the Adirondack Explorer.
General inquiries about the Adirondack Almanack should be directed to editor Melissa Hart.
To advertise on the Adirondack Almanack, or to receive information on rates and design, please click here.Catch up on all your Adirondack
news, delivered weekly to your inbox
Help us keep bringing you the Adirondack information you value.
Email
Twitter
RSS
Facebook
Recent Almanack Comments