High Peaks Wilderness

The High Peaks Wilderness Area, the largest Forest Preserve unit in the U.S. state of New York, is located in three counties and six towns in the Adirondack Park: Harrietstown in Franklin County, North Elba, Keene, North Hudson and Newcomb in Essex County and Long Lake in Hamilton County.

It is roughly bounded on the north by NY 3, the old Haybridge Road, which runs from Cold Brook to Averyville, the Adirondak Loj property at Heart Lake, the Mount Van Hoevenberg area and NY 73 near the Cascade Lakes. Private land to the west of Route 73 forms the eastern boundary. The southern boundary is formed by privately owned lands, including the Ausable Club, Finch, Pruyn, and Company, National Lead Company and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s Huntington Wildlife Forest. This wilderness is bounded on the west by Long Lake and the Raquette River.

There is one significant inholding: the Johns Brook Lodge, a cabin and surrounding campsites operated by the Adirondack Mountain Club, 3.5 miles (5.6 km) along the eponymous trail and brook from the popular “Garden” parking area and access point near Keene Valley.

The area includes 112 bodies of water on 1,392 acres (5.6 km2), 238.4 miles (383.5 km) of foot trails, 52.3 miles (84.1 km) of horse trails, and 84 lean-tos. The area contains 36 of the 46 Adirondack High Peaks, including the tallest, Mount Marcy.
The topography ranges from small areas of low-lying swampland (e.g., along the Raquette and Saranac Rivers) to the highest point in New York State at the top of Mount Marcy. Although there is a considerable variety of topography, it is predominantly high mountain country. Like the topography, the forest cover also varies from pole-size hardwoods to mature, large diameter hardwood and softwood stands to the spruce-fir of the subalpine region.

Edge of Tailings Pile

This picture gives you a more realistic view of what the tailings pile road looks like, when your not trying to make everything look all purty.

Taken on Saturday May 21, 2011 at Tahawus.

High Peaks Wilderness Parking πŸ—»

High Peaks Wilderness Parking πŸ—»

Below is a list of DEC parking areas in the High Peaks Wilderness.

Parking Area Description Nearby Trail Road On Lat Lng
Ampersand Parking Lot   Blueberry Horse Trail Amperstand Road 44.1916605216101 -74.2634384334002
Amr Parking Lot Maintained By Dot, 20 Vehicle Capacity Roaring Brook Trailto Giant Mtn. Ausable Club Road 44.1497419915036 -73.7679950097098
West Mill Brook Parking Lot Maintained By Dot, 6 Vehicle Capacity Courtney Pond Trail Dix Wilderness Trail 44.0249442519573 -73.7047623540544
Elk Lake Parking Lot 12 Vehicle Capacity Elk Lake To Marcy Trail Elk Lake Road 44.0196996395741 -73.8266783528032
Cascade Mountain Parking Paved, Roadside Pull-Off Casade Mountain Trail NY 73 44.2196728508921 -73.8858798087473
Cascade Lakes Picnic Parking   Pitchoff Mountain Trail NY 73 44.2255447838164 -73.8751811579178
Cascade Mountain Parking Paved, Roadside Pull-Off Pitchoff Mountain Trail NY 73 44.2189443167024 -73.8874781553099
Cascade Mountain Parking Paved, Roadside Pull-Off Pitchoff Mountain Trail NY 73 44.2183931807012 -73.8894370872999
Zander Scott Trail Head Parking Lot Paved, Maintained By Dot, 40 Vehicle Capacity Ridge Trail To Giant Mountain NY 73 44.138255933091 -73.7436978674947
Pull Off   Round Pond Trail NY 73 44.1368895741045 -73.7422824389762
Round Pond Parking Lot Paved, 8 Vehicle Capacity Round Pond Trail NY 73 44.1320077972245 -73.7319715371644
Chapel Pond Parking Lot Paved, Maintained By Dot, 10 Vehicle Capacity Round Pond Trail NY 73 44.1403322479409 -73.7463981627774
South Branch Bouquet River Parking Lot Maintained By Dot, 11 Vehicle Capacity Round Pond Trail Spur To Campsite NY 73 44.1040542341833 -73.6929545851725
North Branch Bouquet River Parking Lot Maintained By Dot, 10 Vehicle Capacity Round Pond Trail Spur To Campsite NY 73 44.1141894890601 -73.7097647324262
Beerwalls Parking Lot Paved, Maintained By Dot, 24 Vehicle Capacity Weston Trail NY 73 44.1456023560885 -73.7560857515608
Marcy Dam Parking Lot   Marcy Dam Truck Trail South Meadows Road 44.1896114889394 -73.9385542601212
East River Trail Parking   East River Trail Upper Works Road 44.0812112121921 -74.0551293402588
Upper Works Trail Parking   Indian Pass Trail Upper Works Road 44.0891639549695 -74.0564019659383
Walker Brook Parking Lot Maintained By Dot, 6 Vehicle Capacity Bass Lake Trail US 9 43.9994562009087 -73.7090410772457
King Phillips Spring Parking Lot Paved, Maintained By Dot, 25 Vehicle Capacity Deadwater Road US 9 At Northway 44.077412279315 -73.6652084506369

NYSDEC’s Management Fiasco in the High Peaks Wilderness Area – – The Adirondack Almanack

NYSDEC’s Management Fiasco in the High Peaks Wilderness Area – – The Adirondack Almanack

A very strange thing happened this fall in the High Peaks Wilderness Area. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) worked for weeks in 2021 with heavy machinery to rebuild an old logging road in the Dudley Brook area of the MacIntyre East section of the High Peaks Wilderness. This is the same area where the DEC had worked for months in 2019 and 2020 to tear apart old logging roads. However, the DEC says they’re not rebuilding the road; they say they’re simply correcting a massive mistake that somehow its leaders in Albany had failed to notice for the last two years.

This is one of the strangest things I’ve seen in Forest Preserve management at the DEC in the last two decades.

In 2019, DEC approved a work plan to do something new and different. The DEC set out in 2019 and 2020 to expedite ecological restoration and reclaim a series of old logging roads in newly purchased and newly classified lands in the MacIntyre East section of the High Peaks Wilderness. These lands are on the south side of the Opalescent River, include the southwestern flanks of Allen Mountain, and are bordered by conservation easement lands and a Primitive Corridor logging road. Since DEC work plans are not published, and since this is a trailless section of the High Peaks Wilderness where public access is difficult, involving a deep ford of the Opalescent River, we did not learn about this work right away. We had heard about similar road reclamation work in the Boreas Ponds area, but public access to that area has been limited and restricted in recent months.

There are many old logging roads in Wilderness Areas, such as the Burn Road in the William C. Whitney Area, among many others, that see slow change over the decades as the forest steadily, but incrementally, eats away at them and reclaims these roadways. Many of these old roads retain old culverts and human geometric forms from benchcuts, banking, grading, and borrow pits, among other road construction features, for decades. In the MacIntyre East and Boreas Ponds areas, DEC organized work crews in 2019 and 2020 to tear apart these road corridors, and build a series of pits and mounds (see below) that mimic the natural forest, with the objective of changing the long linear geometry of these road corridors and expediting forest reclamation. (Click here for pictures of abandoned roadways where pits and mounds were built to restore the road corridor.) This work covered nearly 20 miles total of abandoned roads.