Here is a Terrific Guide to 100 ADK Hikes

Do you enjoy hiking?   Many skiers enjoy the outdoors all year, not just in winter.  Here is some great information that Club Member Don Streed provided to us.  As the information mentions, Hiking the High Peaks on weekends can be challenging due to the number of people hiking these days.  If anyone needs encouragement to choose a hiking location other than the high peaks, a club member reported that the Garden parking lot was already full at 4:45am Saturday May 29!  Here are some alternatives.

The folks at Protect the Adirondacks have created a wonderful online site to explore and plan “100 terrific hikes from across the Adirondack Park outside of the High Peaks that offer hikers great rewards from stunning views and experiences in different terrains that showcase the vastness and diversity of the Adirondack landscape... that lead through great forests to mountains, waterfalls, bog and remote lakes.”

The 100 hikes online address is:

https://www.protectadks.org/online-guide-to-hiking-trails-in-the-adirondack-park/

The website is sorted by County [Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton, Herkimer, Saratoga, St. Lawrence, Warren & Washington] and for each trail it provides the following: trail descriptions, length and level of difficulty, directions to parking lots, downloadable trail maps and on-trail directions, photos at start, on-trail, and vistas. A really excellent website to plan your next hike!

For example, in Clinton County “Catamount Mountain is a very steep and challenging 1.9-mile hike to a large, wide open summit with 360-degree views.”  In Warren County, “Cat Mountain is an easy going 3-mile hike in the mountains west of Lake George above Bolton Landing” or “Peaked Mountain, a 6.8-mile hike (round trip) winds along the shoreline of Thirteenth Lake, passes by Peaked Mountain Pond and beaver meadows, enroute to a wonderful rocky summit with terrific views the south and west of the Siamese Ponds Wilderness and beyond.”

“Protect the Adirondacks! (PROTECT) is a non-profit, grassroots membership organization dedicated to the protection and stewardship of the public and private lands of the Adirondack Park, and to building the health and diversity of its natural and human communities for the benefit of current and future generations. Protect the Adirondacks pursues this mission through grassroots organizing, advocacy, education, research, independent public oversight of state and local agencies, and legal action.”

As the folks at Protect Adks suggest, “Go out and hike and enjoy many different mountains, ponds, waterfalls and bogs that are off the beaten track.”