The Bible for hiking the trails of and around the Adirondack’s 46 “High Peaks” above 4,000 feet elevation was a volume of Adirondack Mountain Club’s own trail guides edited by Tony Goodwin. It was the kind of trail guide that was meant to be in your backpack: Sturdy binding, a map folded neatly in a pocket of the back cover, and thick but no room for photos, maps, or illustrations. It was purely prose meant to give you guidance, direction, and know what to expect from things like a stream crossing, where water near a camp site was located, and where things were steep enough that a ladder or cable was put in place.

Competing guidebooks were published by James Burnside (1996) and Lisa Ballard (2023). To me, those guides weren’t as sturdy or as official as the volume edited by Goodwin. But as time has passed, the ADK (the charming abbreviated moniker of the Club) High Peaks guide has not been updated and these books are available in the region’s bookstores. The latest guide seems to build on all of them and speeds up the education of the new Adirondack hiker.

Jonathan Zaharek’s new guidebook, published by Falcon Guides, Hiking the Adirondack 46 High Peaks was released in May 2024 and it speeds up the knowledge of the region including some local lore. And it’s beautiful for the photography and the sidebars about the peaks, trails, and intriguing trivia.

Zaharek was born in Ohio but grew up visiting the High Peaks regularly and, clearly, fell in love with the area. He made permanent move to Lake Placid, the largest town within the High Peaks (and where I would have probably moved if I hadn’t gone to Washington, DC — I know, seems a little silly in retrospect,) and became more intimate with the peaks and trail. He also covered every trail within the High Peaks — redlining the region — in both summer and winter. You might have seen Jonathan Zaharek’s contributions on YouTube.

I find going through Zaharek’s guide much more gratifying than re-paging through the Ole Goodwin guidebook. The maps, photos, and descriptions are there like a coffeetable book, without the pretense of trying to be a thing of art that you leave next to you sofa. This guidebook is one you might leave in the car, but it will ride with you at least to the trailhead.

I had to piece together some Adirondack lore from the guidebook, my uncle and hiking mentor, and picking up comments at the gear shop. Zaharek drops it all into his book. In sidebars about the multiple plane wreckages throughout the High Peaks to explaining the myth around the Trap Dike on Mount Colden. He includes guest essays and his own explanations. The High Peaks are a neighborhood an nearly a universe unto itself, and Zaharek knows this and immerses his readers in his adopted home.

On matter of editing and formatting made no sense to me. Early the book, the list of the 46 High Peaks — the Adirondack Mountains widely or traditionally accepted as being over 4,000 feet above sea level — could fit on one page or at least an open set of pages. Yet, they are not visible from the open book, and the reader is left flipping pages to see them at once… because you can’t. But, as always, Zaharak as writer and editor addresses the nuances of the various surveys and what compounds down to make the 46 High Peaks from various surveys.

Guidebooks unnecessarily carry a great deal of photos today, and this one does too. 208 photos, to be precise. This is a trademark of Falcon Guides’ newer guidebooks, and I wonder if they are more valuable for selling the book than using the book out of your backpack. I rarely complain about a map in a guidebook, even if I still need a full USGS topo, because the map is orienting. The images can be inspiring but on the trail become extra pages. (The publisher also says it has 249 illustrations, separate from photos and 41 maps. I am not sure what, having read through the book, the distinction from photo from illustration is. They seem to be either pictures or maps. Maybe you know and could email me?)

While a functional guidebook doesn’t require so many images, as someone that stomped those trails and knows the map extremely well, I love paging through Zaharek’s Hiking the Adirondack 46 High Peaks. It put the coffee-table book from my parent’s living room into a backpack-appropriate book, and gives me the sense of place that I want to share. Whether you’re planning the hike, or just need to daydream, I highly recommend this guidebook.

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