For the first time in more than a century, Boreas Ponds will open to the public.

By Mike Carr, Executive Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Adirondack Chapter

The view of the Adirondack Park’s Gothics Mountain pulls you in from the moment you launch a canoe on First Pond. Sure, you can see other summits that reach toward the sky, from deep within the largest wilderness area in the Northeast, but this mountain keeps your eyes fixed on its steep, narrow architecture, and its gray granite streaked with tendrils of fir forest. With each paddle closer, it invites you to be completely present—to shed any worry that might have followed you to this beautiful remote spot in northern New York.

When you reach the center of Second Pond, the largest of three connected water bodies that make up Boreas Ponds, a choir of mountains comes into view: Allen, Cheney Cobble, Marcy, Skylight, Saddleback, Basin, Haystack, Sawteeth, Giant, Boreas. All soar upward, and it feels as if you are in one of the world’s great cathedrals.