A Winter Trip to the Adirondack Mountains

Okay, so indeed, I took a trip last week to visit my brother, who lives between, or really on the edge of, the Adirondacks, and next to Lake Champlain. He also lives close to the bridge that traverses across the lake into Vermont, so we were able to briefly visit there on the last day. That small trip to a couple of small towns in Vermont was already documented in a recent post.

However, the main thrust of this trip, in terms of visiting, would be the Adirondack Mountains. These are among the tallest mountains east of the Mississippi River, at least in places where people inhabit. The only taller mountains in the eastern portion of North America (again, the inhabited parts of the United States and Canada) would be the Great Smoky Mountains, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Maine, and some other individual mountains inside of Maine, like Mount Katahdin. The Adirondacks are right there with all of those mountains, however.

There are famously 46 peaks that rank among the tallest of the Adirondack range, and generally reach at least 4,000 feet high (1,219 meters). The five tallest are Mount Marcy at 5, 344 feet (1,629 meters), Algonquin Peak at 5,114 feet (1,559 meters), Mount Haystack at 4,960 feet (1512 meters) Mount Skylight at 4925 feet (1501 meters), and Whiteface Mountain at 4, 867 feet (1,483 meters). We visited Whiteface Mountain in particular, and it should be noted that Whiteface actually has the second greatest prominence of any of the Adirondack peaks at 3,110 feet (947 meters). Only the very tallest peak, Mount Marcy, has greater prominence in the Adirondacks, at 4,914 feet (1,497 meters). 

New York set this land aside as a state park, and this park is massive. In fact, it is larger than numerous famous national parks, including Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Glacier, and the Everglades combined. Now, that is huge!

However, it is different than a national park, in that people actually live in them, as it has over 100 towns within it's borders. In fact, most of the land is privately owned, which makes this state park one of the great experiments in land usage. So far, it seems more or less to be working well, as the land feels remarkably well preserved, and the integrity of the land of the region is mostly intact. There are over 10,000 lakes within the borders of the park, obviously adding to the abundance of natural beauty in the region. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963. 

My visit really did not last long, spanning the course of three days. I arrived at my brother's place on a Wednesday afternoon, stopping along the way to take a few pictures here and there. The thrust of the visit was on Thursday, which was entirely devoted to visiting the mountains. Finally, we visited Vermont and had breakfast in the morning on Friday, and took in some views of the Adirondacks across Lake Champlain. Also, we stopped at Crown's Point to take in some of the historical sites there, including an old, abandoned fort and a strangely shaped lighthouse. But those will be covered on another day, in another post.

Today, I am posting about my visit to the Adirondacks, specifically. We drove around a lot on this overcast day, and between it and the pictures that I took the day before and on the final day, I think that there were some nice pictures that documented the dramatic qualities of the Adirondack Mountains. Below are some of the pictures that I took. Enjoy!

Looking out across a snowy field to some of the beautiful peaks of the Adirondacks, somewhere between Lake Placid and Whiteface Mountain.

I believe that this is the other (less famous) side of Whiteface Mountain, as seen from the mostly frozen Ausable River.

The entrance to Whiteface Mountain, although it sure appeared to be closed during our visit, with no traffic and barely any parked cars visible. It still looked beautiful, though.

The Adirondacks seen from across a frozen lake. There were still a lot of lakes that were frozen in the Adirondacks during this trip, and on some, people were walking on the ice, which seemed a bit dangerous. This I saw both at Tupper Lake (with my brother) and at Lake George, when I briefly stopped there on the way back, even though it was relatively warm for the time of the year. Plus, this is late March, and not late January or February, when you would think that the lakes would clearly be frozen solid. I did not myself venture on the ice, but just wanted to appreciate the beauty.

The snow of Whiteface Mountain, as seen from the nearby Ausable River.

This is not Ausable Chasm, but these were some chasms on the Ausable River nonetheless. The rocky chasm is topped by beautiful pine trees above, while the rock sticking out above the water in the middle is largely covered with ice. The river was really moving with serious whitewater at this point, although the waters become much calmer and gentler in the distance.

Some final views of the Adirondacks as seen from across Lake Champlain, in Bridport, Vermont.