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From the Field, by Justin A. Levine

Watching the sun rise on Owls Head

When the alarm went off at 3 a.m. I thought, “I don’t want to get up yet.” When it went off at 3:07 I thought, “Man, I really don’t want to get up yet.” But when it went off at 3:14 a.m. I thought, “If I don’t get up and shut off the alarm, Audrey is going to kill ...

A quick trip to the Washbowl

The Roaring Brook trailhead for Giant Mountain is often packed full, but for good reason. From there, a number of pleasant hikes begin, including up the 12th-highest mountain in New York, the top of Roaring Brook Falls and the lone named pond in the wilderness area, Giant Washbowl. During ...

Unending views on the Soda Range

The first glimpse of the views we could expect all day only took a few minutes to get to from the parking area, which only had two other cars in it early on a Monday morning. And after that, it wasn’t that there were unending views so much as there were just occasional breaks where we could ...

Finding solitude on a misty mountain

Most people, including myself, typically climb mountains for the views. But with an ever-increasing crush of hikers entering the Adirondacks, perhaps the best way to get some solitude is to climb a mountain on a weekday in the rain. A couple weeks ago, colleagues and I were heading to ...

Improvements, history and a rude paddler

I pulled into the Axton Landing parking lot in Tupper Lake and was pleasantly surprised to see just four cars. With perfect weather, I expected more people to be out enjoying the water, and I was soon proven correct. With my kayak sitting at the edge of the water, I loaded up my dry bag ...

Two ponds connected by history

The Saranac River is a paddler’s dream, stretching 81 miles from the St. Regis Canoe area to Lake Champlain. And although there are dozens of lakes and ponds that contribute water to the river, two parts of the river were dammed more than 100 years ago. In the early 1900s, Paul Smith — ...