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Beyond the Adirondacks: With the Adirondack Mountain Club
Beyond the Adirondacks With the Adirondack Mountain Club Author:Laurence Thomas Beahan MD The Adirondack Mountain Club showed me amazing sites and great times in the Adirondacks. I never expected the Club to add to that, another set of adventures, flung out around the entire globe. Beyond the Adirondacks is a collection of Adventure Travel trip, primarily, ADK Extended Outings. ADK has its historic Loj on Heart Lake in the High Pe... more »aks. The Loj is base camp for hiking and mountain climbing in some of the prettiest and most dramatic country in New York State. But ADK members backpack, hike, bike and canoe all over the Adirondacks. There are local ADK Chapters spread across the State and into New Jersey and Connecticut. The members of those chapters travel to the Adirondacks but they also hike all over the state and, as this book testifies, throughout the United States and to many other parts of the world. I began my ADK hiking with the Niagara Frontier Chapter in Western New York. but we were drawn to the Adirondacks, even if they were five hours away. We climbed mountains; many of our Niagara Chapter members climbed all of the 46 big ones up there and joined the hallowed ranks of 46ers. I bushwhacked from Stillwater to Wanakena, skied the Peavine Trail, canoed the Fulton Chain, rafted the Hudson, and did three, week-long, sessions of Winter School. Then old Clark Hall, pushing 70, said, ?Let?s climb some of those 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado and maybe the Matterhorn and that big one down in New Zealand.? Such big ideas took a while for me to digest but finally eight of us, including my son, Teck, made the trip to Colorado. It turned out that we had taken on more than we were prepared for. We did not take the necessary time to acclimate to the altitude and our Adirondack Mountain climbing skills did not cover all that was required at those high and remote altitudes. But we all survived and, looking back at it, we had a monstrous good time. Our appetite was whetted for more. We discovered the intriguing adventures listed in the Extended Outings section of ADK?s Adirondac magazine. THE TRIPS: COLORADO MOUNTAIN CLIMBING 1984, CONSERVATION ON THE OCEANIC ISLAND OF BERMUDA 1984, SKIING CZECHOSLOVAKIA, A NICE PLACE TO VISIT BUT...1988, IT'S SPRING AGAIN IN PRAGUE 1990, EVERGLADES BY CANOE 1991, GREEN RIVER/ CANYON LANDS 1992, BIG BEND OF THE RIO GRANDE 1994, YELLOWSTONE IN WINTER 1994, KONIAG ESKIMOS AND KODIAK BEARS 1996, ALASKA?S NORTH SLOPE RAFTING THE IVISHAK 1998, GREENLAND 2000, PERU 2002, DOGSLEDDING AND WOLVES ELY MINESOTTA 2004, THROUGH THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE 2011 Our Guides and Organizers were: Clark Hall led the Colorado trip. Dr. Wolfgang Sterrer, the Bermuda Biostation Director hosted us there. ADKers Sol and Dina Greene led us. SUNY Prof Barbara Webster organized and led both trips to Czechoslovakia ably assisted by Stanislaus, our Czech Travel Bureau guide. Dave Cilley of Saint Regis Canoe Outfitters took us to the Everglades. Rick and Randy French of Pack, Paddle and Ski out of Lima NY led the Big Bend, Green River and North Slope of Alaska trips. They are identical twins and at this moment I can?t say for sure which one ran which one. Teck and I had planned to go to Peru with the Frenches to hike the Inca Trail. My bad knee got in the way so we went to Machu Picchu by train with Vidal and Adventure Life, out of Missoula Montana. Our Greenland voyage was arranged by Sierra Club with Oceanwide Expeditions out of Holland. Our tour leader, Rene, was Dutch. ADK member Dave Golibersuch arranged the Dogs and Wolves trip to the Boundary Waters. Wintergreen Lodge owner and Polar Explorer, Paul Schurke taught us dog sledding. David Mech of the Wolf Center taught us about wolves. Versatile Dr. Jim Halfpenny, under the auspices of Four Corners School, the Village of Akhoiak and Adventure Canada escorted us ADKers respectively to Yellowstone, Kodiak Island and through the Northwest Passage. Koniags Mitchell and his son, Spiridon, guided us on Kodiak Island.« less