From Trail to Sky: Voices From the Lake George Hike-A-Thon
Lake George islands.
How well do you really know Lake George?
Spend enough summers swimming its waters, hiking its mountains or returning to the same family camp, and it can begin to feel familiar. But during the Lake George Land Conservancy's annual Hike-A-Thon, hundreds of people fan out across the region—and discover that Lake George still has ways to surprise them.
In this special field-recorded episode of ADK Talks, hosts Jane and Steve take the podcast's mobile studio to the Hike-A-Thon after-party to hear those stories firsthand.
The result is less an event recap than a collection of dispatches from around the lake: hikers, paddlers, birders, photographers, volunteers and conservationists describing what they noticed when they stepped onto a different trail, slowed down or simply looked at a familiar place from another angle.
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One lake, many perspectives.
The Lake George Land Conservancy's Hike-A-Thon brings hundreds of hikers and paddlers to locations throughout the Lake George watershed. Some tackle mountain summits. Others explore preserves, ponds and family-friendly trails. A helicopter carrying Adirondack photographer Carl Heilman II travels overhead, capturing photographs of the groups scattered across the landscape.
For some participants, the event introduces them to a trail they've never explored. For others, it reveals something new about a place they've known for decades.
Alexis usually spends her Lake George time around Bolton Landing. Hiking Pilot Knob on the opposite shore suddenly gave her a different lake to look at.
One of Lake George’s many moods.
Gina had lived in the Adirondacks for a year and a half and felt she'd barely scratched the surface. Her hike at Sucker Brook Preserve took her farther north on Lake George than she'd previously explored—and added four loon sightings to the day.
Jason came from North Carolina, but his family's Lake George story stretches back to 1952. He met his wife here and continues returning each summer. Brent traveled from Seattle with his family and discovered that Adirondack hiking changes when the children are finally old enough to tackle the trail themselves.
Listen: From Trail to Sky.
What you'll hear.
Why one Hike-A-Thon participant says that after living in the Adirondacks for a year and a half, she's still only "barely scratched the surface."
The very Adirondack moment when a hiking group discovers a large timber rattlesnake occupying the trail—and hears its warning.
How three Glens Falls Hospital nurses turned to hiking for respite during COVID and created a hiking community that grew across the hospital.
A Lake George family history reaching back to glass-negative photographs from the 1880s and 1890s—and a story about conservationist John Apperson.
What Lake George looks like from a helicopter when its mountains, forests, homes, waterways and protected lands suddenly become one interconnected landscape.
Lake George: the perfect place for a paddle.
Look closer and the Adirondacks change.
Some of the episode's most memorable conversations aren't really about reaching a summit.
At Amy's Park, birder Julie notices Blackburnian warblers, red-eyed vireos and golden-crowned kinglets. She watches for tiny red efts underfoot and describes the marsh, lilies, fungi and hemlocks that turn a hike into something closer to observation.
Photographer William offers another way of seeing. His advice is deceptively simple: don't take the same eye-level photograph everyone else takes. Move three feet. Get down on the ground. Return to the same place and find a photograph you've never made before.
Nathan takes the idea further. Through forest bathing and forest therapy, he describes slowing down enough to remember that people are part of the forest, not apart from it.
Different people. Different approaches. Same underlying idea: the landscape reveals more when someone takes the time to notice it.
Why protecting the land matters.
Eventually, the episode's individual stories begin to connect to something larger.
Belinda describes how three bedside nurses at Glens Falls Hospital began escaping to the mountains for respite during COVID. Their Darn Tuff Hiking Club eventually brought together employees from across the hospital. For her, the mountains became not simply recreation, but community.
Longtime Hike-A-Thon participant and volunteer Florrie talks about helping visitors experience a newly accessible trail at historic Wiawaka on Lake George's eastern shore.
The Lake George Land Conservancy works from a simple principle: protect the land that protects the lake. The Hike-A-Thon gives people a chance to experience that work on the ground.
And in the episode's final conversations, from the air.
Amy’s Park.
From trail to sky.
From a helicopter, the day's scattered adventures suddenly become one landscape.
Janice helps coordinate aerial photographs of Hike-A-Thon participants while Carl Heilman II photographs groups below. From above, turquoise Hike-A-Thon shirts appear through clearings in the trees as the helicopter travels from one location to another.
Her husband Chris describes the experience more personally. Looking down on the place where they now live, he sees homes, mountains, forests and waterways—and how the entire basin ultimately connects to Lake George.
It brings the episode back to where it began.
The lake may be familiar. The trail may even be familiar.
Change the perspective, though, and there's always something else to discover.
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