11 Great Road Trips to Take in The Adirondack Mountains
Roads in the Adirondacks rarely take the obvious path. Vast roadless areas in the High Peaks and Pharaoh Lake country force highways to bend around mountains, follow rivers, skirt wilderness, and stop at reservoir edges. That constraint makes for better driving than it sounds. A road tracing the Sacandaga can be just as striking as one threading the narrow space between protected wilderness and wild forest. These 11 road trips follow routes dictated by the Adirondack landscape.
Caroga Lake to Piseco via Route 10
Route 10 separates two kinds of protected land on its way north from Caroga Lake. Ferris Lake Wild Forest fills the country to the west. Silver Lake Wilderness takes over on the east. State land managers draw its western boundary along the road itself, along with the West Branch of the Sacandaga and the Piseco Outlet. The drive covers 27.5 miles in 34 minutes.
The road crosses the West Branch more than once. The Good Luck Lake Trail reaches the water half a mile in from the highway. About 10 miles up, the Jockeybush Lake Trail runs 1.2 miles past small waterfalls to the lake, from a parking area kept clear through winter. Old-growth spruce survives along the Powley-Piseco Road, a seasonal dirt route leaving Route 10 south of Piseco.
Ferris Lake Wild Forest covers 147,454 acres and carries 97 primitive campsites. Public vehicles reach 10.95 miles of road inside it, the entire motorized allowance for the tract.
Corinth to Warrensburg via the First Wilderness Byway
The Sacandaga meets the Hudson at Hadley, and the byway links the two communities that grew on either bank. Route 9N carries the first leg north out of Corinth, holding the river up to Lake Luzerne. Rockwell Falls drops through the gorge just upstream of the confluence, in sight of the Rockwell Street bridge.
One turn onto Corinth Road brings the Hadley Parabolic Bridge, which carries two iron spans across the Sacandaga. The Berlin Iron Bridge Company of Connecticut put it up in 1885, on the foundations of a covered bridge that burned. Its main span survives alone from three ever built to the design. The county closed the crossing in November 1983 and reopened it in 2006 as a single lane.
From Lake Luzerne the route crosses the Hudson and turns north through Stony Creek, reaching Warrensburg 25.4 miles on, about 37 minutes at the wheel. A restored fire tower stands on Hadley Mountain, with a long view down Great Sacandaga Lake.
Speculator to Hague via Route 8
Route 8 wraps three sides of the Siamese Ponds Wilderness before it reaches Lake George. That block runs about 23 miles top to bottom and stays unbroken by public roads. The highway forms its eastern, southern, and western edge. The drive is 61.9 miles and takes about an hour and 20 minutes. It does not head east from Speculator either. Route 8 overlaps Route 30 southeast to Wells first, then separates and swings northeast.
Auger Falls is on that overlap, on the Sacandaga's West Branch, reached from a large marked lot beside the road. A trailhead south of Bakers Mills opens the six-mile walk to the Siamese Ponds themselves.
A steel truss carries the road over the Hudson River at Riparius. Past Brant Lake the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness lies to the north, and Route 8 holds its southern edge down to Hague.
Severance to Ticonderoga via Route 74
Access to a roadless block leaves the shoulder here, which is unusual for 17 miles of two-lane pavement. Paradox Lake lines the north side of Route 74 out of Severance, with a state campground at number 897 on the highway. Trails head south off the highway a short distance west of that entrance road, reaching Crane, Oxshoe, and Putnam Ponds. They run deeper in toward Pharaoh Mountain and its lake.
Eagle Lake is next along the highway. The turn for Putnam Pond comes about 12 miles east of the Northway. That campground is a key access point for hikers walking into Pharaoh Lake country.
The drive ends 17.4 miles from where it left Severance, about 25 minutes, at Ticonderoga near Lake Champlain. The road carries on into Vermont from there, on a cable ferry that reaches Shoreham in seven minutes and runs daily from May to October.
North Hudson to Newcomb via Blue Ridge Road
Blue Ridge Road carried the Route 73 designation once. The 1930 renumbering assigned it, and the state pulled Route 73 back to Schroon a few years later, leaving this stretch to Essex County. The number moved on and the pavement stayed put.
The route runs 24.2 miles west from North Hudson, about 34 minutes, as Essex County Route 84. Blue Ridge Falls comes early, with roadside parking and a short walk to reach it. Beyond it the road enters the Vanderwhacker Mountain Wild Forest, crosses the Boreas River, and climbs and drops through country with almost nothing built on it.
Newcomb closes the run. The Severance to Ticonderoga road carried the same number in 1930.
Elizabethtown to Keene via Route 9N
Hurricane Mountain Wilderness covers 13,784 acres across four towns, all of it north of the highway. Giant Mountain Wilderness takes the south, with Route 9N along its northern edge. Twelve miles of pavement separate Elizabethtown from Keene, about 15 minutes of driving.
Trailheads punctuate both shoulders. The parking area for Hurricane Mountain is about 6.5 miles west of Elizabethtown. Its summit carries a 35-foot steel fire tower that went up in 1919 and joined the National Register in 2007. The Owls Head Lookout trail leaves the opposite side and climbs toward Giant Mountain, though it is mostly walked only as far as the lookout.
The road climbs over Spruce Hill and drops into Keene, where Route 73 inherits the High Peaks traffic.
Saranac Lake to Plattsburgh via Route 3
The Saranac River tracks northeast out of Lake Flower, and Route 3 keeps company with it for much of the 50.3 miles into Plattsburgh, around an hour of driving. The river turns north at Bloomingdale, then bends east, and the road follows it down past Redford and Cadyville.
Little about this stretch says byway, and that is the appeal. Vermontville and Bloomingdale are working hamlets rather than trailhead parking.
Redford repays the stop. The Redford Crown Glass Works made high-grade glass here in the first half of the 19th century. Workers used the leftovers after hours to make glassware that collectors still hunt. Dams downstream powered no fewer than five iron forges by the late 1800s, with the ore coming from Lyon Mountain.
Long Lake to Tupper Lake via Route 30
Route 30 climbs away from Long Lake through country where the trailheads are smaller than the peaks they serve, covering 21.8 miles to Tupper Lake in 27 minutes. The Coney Mountain lot takes three cars. Its trail runs 1.1 miles, moderately steep, to the summit.
Goodman Mountain comes about a mile farther on, with parking for 10 cars just south of the Route 421 junction. The climb reaches 2,178 feet over 1.7 miles, gaining 570 feet.
The first mile of that hike is the part worth knowing about for anyone driving this road. It runs on old Highway 10, the route that once joined Long Lake and Tupper Lake, and the old tarmac still shows through in places. Route 30 makes that connection now, then keeps going north past Tupper Lake.
Tupper Lake to Malone via Route 30
Saint Regis Canoe Area fills 18,400 acres of ponds and low forest beside Route 30, the only designated Canoe Area in New York State. The state manages it so that crossing means paddling. Malone comes 58.7 miles north, a little over an hour.
Paul Smiths comes next, where St. Regis Mountain carries a view over the pond country. Farther north the road reaches Meacham Lake, where a public campground fronts the water and a free car-top launch waits on Meacham Road outside it. That launch has 15 spaces for cars with trailers and six for vehicles alone.
Debar Mountain stands at Meacham Lake. Malone ends the drive beyond the park boundary, where the mountains give way to farm country.
Sevey to Potsdam via Route 56
Route 56 crosses the Blue Line partway along its run north. The road meets Route 3 at Sevey Corners and is 32.1 miles to Potsdam in about 40 minutes.
The southern half stays with the Raquette River through dense woods, past Chandler Pond and the wide water of Carry Falls Reservoir. The road then bends out of the park entirely, through Irish Settlement and South Colton. Higley Flow State Park is 1,115 acres on the river a short way west along Cold Brook Drive.
Colton is where the river gets loud. Stone Valley Recreation Area runs trails along both banks past a run of waterfalls and rapids. Trailheads sit on each side of the bridge above the Colton Dam, with parking at both.
Eagle Bay to Stillwater Reservoir via Big Moose Road
Big Moose Road stops at water, which is the point of driving it. The road heads north off Route 28 in the center of Eagle Bay and reaches Glenmore Corner at 6.5 miles. A left turn there runs another 1.5 miles to the hamlet of Big Moose.
Past that the route ends at the Stillwater Reservoir boat launch, 18.1 miles and 40 minutes from Eagle Bay, alongside the Forest Ranger headquarters. Campsites line the shore, and campers sign themselves in and out at a kiosk by the launch.
Beaver River lies across the water, with no road reaching it. The hamlet lost its road in 1922, when raising the dam flooded the only way in, and the railroad that served it afterward ended passenger runs in 1965. Residents keep vehicles that have never worn a license plate.
Roads Around the Middle
These 11 drives all work around the Adirondacks rather than cutting straight through them. Route 10 follows a boundary. Route 8 bends around wilderness. Another ends at a reservoir with a hamlet across the water. The map leaves little choice, but that is part of the fun. Every route ends up tracing something different, whether it is a river, shoreline, mountain notch, or old highway grade.
