The Adirondack Mountain Club has released the fifth edition of its popular trail guide, Eastern Trails, which is part of a substantial reconfiguration and revision of the Forest Preserve Series of their books.

Eastern Trails highlights some of the most popular and widely used trails in the region and provides the most updated information about entirely new trails, particularly on new Lake George Land Conservancy preserves. Eastern Trails was last issued in a new edition in 2012.

Adirondack Mountain Club Eastern Trails is 304 pages, 5″ x 7″, and includes trail descriptions and detailed directions, as well as distances to shelters, other trails and points of interest. It is organized into nine geographical sections including Northern Lake George and Southern Lake Champlain, Pharaoh Lake Wilderness and Schroon Lake, and Southwestern Lake George and Warrensburg, among others.

It is available in softcover for $19.95 ($15.96 members) and $26.95 for the book-and-map pack ($21.56 members) at book and outdoor supply stores, at ADK stores in Lake George and Lake Placid, through mail order by calling (800) 395-8080, and online at ADK.org.

Eastern Trails is edited by David Thomas-Train of Keene Valley, New York. A lifelong educator and avid hiker, Thomas-Train has led canoeing, hiking and skiing excursions in the Adirondacks for numerous organizations including ADK, Champlain Nature Trails, Adirondack Nature Conservancy and others. He has served as chair and coordinator of the Keene Valley Chapter of ADK for more than twenty years and he has volunteered for numerous Adirondack scientific and advocacy groups.

Like others in ADK’s Forest Preserve Series, this guide includes grid coordinates that correspond to a National Geographic trail map. Trails Illustrated Map 743: Lake George/Great Sacandaga, a large-format, two-sided, waterproof map created in partnership with the Adirondack Mountain Club, shows each trail described in the guide. Thomas-Train has also given descriptions of potential winter uses of trails for skiing and snow-shoeing where appropriate.

“Eastern Trails comprises a unique mix of trails on Wilderness, Wild Forest, preserve, and municipal lands,” says Neil Woodworth, ADK Executive Director and an experienced hiker. “Many are that much more appealing owing to proximity to water bodies such as Lakes George and Champlain, as well as many smaller gems.”
The Forest Preserve series covers hiking opportunities in the approximately 2.6 million acres of public land within the Adirondack Park and nearly 300,000 acres in the Catskill Park.

The Eastern Trails region of the Adirondack Park is distinguished by the singular bodies of water that serve as borders in all directions. To the east are the vistas of Vermont’s Blue Mountains, standing majestically over Lake Champlain. Also east is Lake George, and to the north and south, respectively, are Schroon Lake and the Great Sacandaga Reservoir.

The region is characterized by rolling hills, scenic vistas and isolated locations with hidden ponds and rugged terrain. The guide serves as a means to access some of the lesser known and less frequently traversed trails, offering the twofold benefit of guiding hikers away from overused trails and affording them the opportunity to experience some of the most isolated, wild and beautiful terrain as any found in the Adirondacks.

The public lands that make up the Forest Preserve are unique among all other nature preserves in the United States because of their constitutionally protected status. Unlike many other public lands, some of which are currently being reduced in size by changes to laws governing them, the Forest Preserve cannot be sold or developed.