Whiteface Veterans Memorial Highway

The Whiteface Memorial Highway

21 stops· 36 min· 20.3 mi

Twenty miles from the Olympic village of Lake Placid to the wind-scoured summit of Whiteface Mountain — one of the great fall-foliage drives of the Northeast, climbing the fifth-highest peak in New York on a road built to honor a generation of soldiers. Ranger Quinn takes you out of Lake Placid, up the Ausable River gorge through the Wilmington Notch, and then up the Whiteface Veterans Memorial Highway itself — five switchbacking miles and two thousand feet of climb to a granite castle just below the clouds, where an elevator bored into the heart of the mountain lifts you to a summit with a hundred-mile view of the Adirondack High Peaks. Ranger Boone Merrick rides along with the tales: the Miracle on Ice, when a team of American college kids beat the unbeatable Soviets right here in 1980; the road itself, dreamed up by a governor named Franklin Roosevelt to remember the fallen of the First World War; the abolitionist John Brown, who chose to be buried in these mountains; and how a Mohawk insult gave the whole range its name. Best in late September and early October, when the High Peaks catch fire. The highway is seasonal and tolled — check it's open before you climb. Then go up.