The Most Epic Hikes in New York's Adirondack Mountains

The Adirondack Mountains are located in northeastern New York, forming a roughly circular dome. The massif is "about 160 miles in diameter and about 1 mile high,” according to Wikipedia. While the mountain range is located some distance from the dense population center of New York City, that doesn’t seem to stop an immense flow of tourism to the region.

In 1892 the state of New York created Adirondack Park to protect this sparsely-populated region. The park is massive in scope, covering “almost one-fifth of the state” and comparable in size to the state of Vermont, according to Britannica.com. This massive scale makes Adirondack Park “the largest American state or national park outside of Alaska,” according to the article on Britannica.com.

Explore this impressive region—more specifically, the Great Range within the park—via this collection of epic hikes. Included in this list is the Adirondack Great Range Traverse, “arguably the most epic traverse in the Adirondacks, if not the entire state of New York,” according to author Brendon Voelker. In addition to the standard traverse, you’ll find optional summit hikes, and additional trails to turn the traverse into a massive loop.