Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2024 i Adirondack Life

The 5-mile trek to Great Camp Santanoni, stretching along a relatively flat carriage road off Route 28N, is a classic Adirondack ski. For those not ready to tackle a 10-mile round trip, the camp’s former farm complex, at about 1 mile, offers an easier goal. Though the trail is open year-round, the buildings are only accessible in cold-weather months during Winter Weekends—this year January 13–15, February 17–19 and March 16–17—when volunteers from Adirondack Architectural Heritage lead interpretive tours. See aarch.org/santanoni for more information. The James C. Frenette Sr. Recreational Trails, which connect the Tupper Lake Golf Club to the former Big Tupper Ski Area, make for an easy-access playground. The 7-mile system—including more than 2 miles that have been tricked out with motion-sensor lighting—is free and dog-friendly; snowshoers and fat-tire…

This version of the ultimate in northern Adirondack comfort food, cooked up by Mrs. John E. Delehanty, of Tupper Lake, was first published in our Winter 1976 issue. ¾_pound coarsely ground beef¾ pound coarsely ground pork3 medium onions, chopped1 teaspoon pepper½ teaspoon salt½ teaspoon sage DIRECTIONS Mix all ingredients together. Add sufficient water to just cover and simmer in a medium fry pan for an hour or until meat is tender. While simmering, make a double pie crust shell using only ⅔ the amount of shortening normally required. Pour meat mixture into 9-inch pie shell, cover with top crust, create slits to allow steam to escape, and bake in preheated 375° Fahrenheit oven for 45 minutes or until golden brown. Serves 6. Meat mixture may be cooked a couple of…

It needs winding twice a week, if you can get to it and know how. And frankly, it’s not that easy. You’ve got to be in shape for this job. You might ask, Really? Certainly a clock, even in a tower, is electric by now, with a switch by the door and some gizmo to reset it if the power goes out. Nope. A charming weather vane on the roof indicates the Westport Library was established in 1884. Some years later, in 1918, the clock was installed. Ever since, it’s been someone’s job to climb up there—way up there—and wind it by hand. That’s 106 years of hand-winding, all so the town can stay in sync as to the time of day. This story is not so much about the…

Sometimes lightning does strike twice. It did for Agnes Kendrick, a local girl who made good on the mid-century modeling scene. In the early 1950s two up-and-coming photographers, Ozzie Sweet and Ruth Orkin, scouted for models at Lake Placid High School—and though they came at different times and for different assignments, both chose Kendrick as their rosy-cheeked North Country muse. Ozzie Sweet’s photographs of Kendrick made the covers of magazines, and one was featured as an 18-by-60-foot Kodak Colorama panoramic in the Grand Central Station advertisements dubbed the “world’s largest photographs.” Kendrick went on to work with the Conover Modeling Agency, in New York City, becoming a face for Coca-Cola, General Motors, Sweetheart Soap, Ship ’n Shore and other brands, before giving up the limelight to settle down with Peter…

Forty years after last stepping foot on the property, Patti Fitz-Gerald was overcome. From 1960 to 1973 her parents, Jean and Boylan “Doc” Fitz-Gerald, had run Paleface Ski Center and Dude Ranch on Jay’s Bassett Mountain, a family-friendly hill just down the road from looming Whiteface Mountain. After the Fitz-Geralds sold Paleface, a couple of other owners took it on until it was purchased as a private estate in the 1980s. And with that one family it stayed until fall 2022, when Rick and Matt Vidal, who were living in the Hudson Valley, where they operate Cascada Farm retreat, purchased the property. They were looking for a place in a jaw-dropping setting, that had a happy history, and where the community could grow and gather. In July the Vidals opened…

Train-ing Days The first ski train chugged into North Creek in 1934, bringing 378 skiers to the town’s slopes—and in no time that number ballooned to thousands crowding into the tiny town every winter, until the last whistle blew at the start of World War II. The town’s Ski Bowl was initially a “ride up, slide down” experience: locals would drive truckloads up the hill to Barton Mines for 25 cents or so a head, and from there visitors skied the four miles back to town. Soon an enterprising pair of locals rigged up a tow rope using parts from a 1929 Buick; it was the first of its kind in New York State. In 1935, Old Forge developed its own center-of-town slope, Maple Ridge, and put out the welcome…

When Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, Americans were divided as to what, if any, their role should be in what was likely to be an escalating conflict. But both the military and civilians began thinking about what untapped skills might prove useful in case of foreign attack. The effectiveness of Finland’s ski troops in holding ground during the early months of Russia’s November 1939 invasion of their country heightened American interest in developing an effective ski force. Starting in early January 1940, troops serving with the 28th Infantry, Fort Niagara, came to Lake Placid for weekly instruction at a ski school run by Rolf Monsen, who had completed compulsory military training in his native Norway before immigrating to the US. Monsen had won more…

As my car crept into Wanakena through the falling snow, I felt a pull from the glowing blue lights marking a wooden footbridge. Getting out of my car, I heard live music in the park, saw hand-painted signs around the post-office/general store known as Otto’s Abode, and met a kind man with a bit of michigan sauce in his beard, who offered me a free hot dog right off the grill. Though I was hungry and thankful, the dog would have to wait. First, I had to see the bridge. It was a Friday, the first night of WhiteOut Weekend (WOW), an annual festival in the western Adirondacks. WOW is a four-town collaboration—Cranberry Lake, Star Lake, Wanakena and Oswegatchie—created by and for people in the community that features art, music,…

In 1998, researchers at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s Adirondack Ecological Center radio-collared a 700-pound female moose and released her into the woods. They named her Alice. Two years later, Alice began a 350-mile journey northwest through the Adirondacks and across St. Lawrence Valley farmland. She swam the St. Lawrence River into Canada, clambered across Canada’s busiest superhighway, and made her way through the rocky Laurentian shield to Ontario’s massive Algonquin Provincial Park, where she lived until her death by unknown causes in 2001. Alice inspired the creation of a nonprofit—the Algonquin to Adirondacks Collaborative (A2A)—dedicated to preserving the corridor she traveled. Last summer she also inspired a Canadian environmentalist to walk in her footsteps. Jamie Findlay, a storyteller and grant writer for the conservation group Nature Canada,…