Mount Marcy and the Adirondack High Peaks
Near Lake Placid, New York
To the south of Lake Placid rise the Adirondack High Peaks, and the tallest of them all is Mount Marcy, the highest point in all of New York State at five thousand three hundred forty three feet. It anchors a cluster of forty six peaks that hikers have long tried to climb all of, earning the title of Forty Sixer. Marcy was named for William Marcy, a nineteenth century governor of New York who authorized the survey that first mapped these mountains.
But it carries a more poetic name as well. In eighteen thirty seven a writer proposed calling it Tahawus, a word translated as cloud splitter, and for much of that century the name stuck. The first recorded climb to the summit came on the fifth of August, eighteen thirty seven, by a party led by the state geologist Ebenezer Emmons.
High on Marcy's slopes lies a small pond called Lake Tear of the Clouds, often described as the highest source of the Hudson River, the great waterway that flows all the way to New York Harbor. On a clear day from the summit you can see across the entire Adirondack range and, some say, into Vermont and Canada. The hike to the top and back is a demanding day of about fifteen miles.
