The World’s Most Beautiful Resort

They say if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. Well, when you are traveling and sleeping in a Toyota Sienna, every accommodation without wheels looks like a resort.

I saw JBL for the first time in September of 1972. I was just shy of 12 years old. My dad and I had hiked in 3.5 miles from the town of Keene Valley in the Adirondack Park in upstate New York for a week of living and hiking in the back country. We carried everything we’d need for the week: food, sleeping bags, a stove. The plan was to climb some of the 46 mountains in New York state that are more than 4,000 feet above sea-level, on our ways to becoming “46ers.”

We did not bring a tent. We didn’t need one. We would be staying in an iconic Adirondack lean-to just steps from Johns Brook. It was a lovely, idyllic spot, but the accommodations are rustic to put it mildly. A lean-to is a 3 walled structure, open in the front. The floor may be wood planks or just dirt. In 1972 most of the floors were dirt. A roof protected us from rain, but lean-tos can be cold especially in mid-September when the temperatures can go below freezing at night.

As we hiked the last quarter mile to the lean-to we passed a somewhat more robust structure. This was Johns Brook Lodge, my father explained, established as a backcountry lodge in 1925. Softer, less rugged sportsmen than we could enjoy beds, heat, prepared meals, and flush toilets. My dad and I, however, had no need for such niceties. We were backpackers. The real deal.

We had a beautiful week. My Uncle Marty joined us on Thursday. We climbed seven mountains, and I left feeling that the Adirondacks was the most beautiful place on earth.

So when, in mid-August of this year my wife and I planned to spend three nights in the same area, we reserved a lean-to. But three days before we were to hike in, my wife in her wisdom, looked at all the stuff we were going to have to carry in and suggested that we see if there was space at the lodge. The lodge costs more than a lean-to but at just $79 per person with three meals included, Johns Brook Lodge is a bargain. They even gave us credit for the lean-to payment. As my 62nd birthday approaches I decided to embrace my softer side.

The only way to get to the lodge is to hike there. It is a relatively easy hike for the Adirondacks. You start from a parking lot a few miles from Keene Valley called “The Garden.” I don’t know why it is called that. It is not a garden – just a parking lot. The hike is about 5 km and just about 300 meters of elevation gain. The trail crosses burbling streams and in a year like this, lots of mud. We carried everything we would need for three days in our packs. This included clothes, raingear, sleeping bags, camp shoes, and sleepwear. We would not need: food, a bear canister, or a cook stove.

Arriving at the lodge, you are greeted by a member of the summer crew. The crew is made up of four young people (usually college students) plus a slightly older person who supervises them. The crew member checks you in and assigns you to a dorm room. Bunks are first-come, first-served.

There are four dorm rooms at JBL. Two with four bunks each and two with ten bunks each, for a total of 28 beds. The beds are a bare mattress (you must bring your own bedding) and a pillow.

In addition to the dorms, there is a main room where lodgers hang out when not on the trails and take meals at communal tables. There is a wood stove, but it is only fired from November through April. There is also a large kitchen where the crew prepares meals for everyone. Everything is made of wood. There is a rustic feel to the whole place.

Each of the ten-bunk rooms has a bathroom with two sinks with running water and a toilet behind a separate door. The flush toilets are gone. It was decided for environmental reasons that it would be better to replace them with pit toilets. Every year, all of the human waste is collected in big plastic barrels and lifted out by helicopter for processing in a local plant. Toilet paper is provided, however. Those in the 4-bunk rooms have to go through the other rooms to visit the facilities.

The grand porch of Johns Brook Lodge is great for basking in the sun durning the day or star-gazing at night.

The lodge has electric lights powered by solar collectors on the roof. However, there are no outlets for lodgers to charge things, nor any wifi. Cellular signal does not reach the lodge. To see the lodge and learn more, check out this fine YouTube tour.

Upon arriving early in the day, Barbara and I were assigned to a ten-bunk room and staked out two lower bunks catty corner to each other. It was a lovely warm day, and we spent the rest of the day until dinner time sitting on the huge porch in (what else?) Adirondack chairs reading and planning our hikes.

With no internet and no cell coverage, your only option is to socialize with the other lodgers. Such accommodations create instant affinity, and within minutes you are chatting away with your fellow travelers as if you had known them all your life.

Dinner was simple but plentiful: vegetarian chili, corn bread, salad, and a very sweet apple cobbler for dessert. At 10 pm, the staff turns out all the lights and if you aren’t already in bed when that happens you will be shortly.

I awoke in the night and went outside to see the stars. The sky was stunning. The moonless night was so filled with so many stars it was nearly impossible to identify the constellations. The Milky Way filled the heavens like so much star dust. There was no human noise. Just the wind in the trees, the crickets, and the brook happily about its journey toward Lake Champlain and the sea. I was loath to return to bed.

Breakfast is served at 7:30 am and is a carb-lovers dream. Pancakes, French toast, oatmeal. Some days there are eggs and treyf meats I can’t eat.

Lunch is a bagged affair, the assumption being that you will be on the trail. You have your choice of a peanut butter and jelly or hummus sandwich or you can have one of each if you think you will eat them. Also, a bag of trail mix and a big cookie.

There is a tap to fill your bottles with potable water and off you go.

On the second day, we returned from our hike at about 4 pm. There are no showers as much as I would have liked one. However, you can take a dip in the very chilly Johns Brook. The brook is fed with snowmelt and rain from high in the mountains, so it is plenty invigorating.

Dinner on the second night was black bean burgers. I wasn’t that crazy about them but there was ketchup, which made it work and the buns, baked on the premises, were delicious. Dessert was a shockingly sweet chocolate tart. We ate everything.

The following day, Barbara decided to relax and chill at the lodge so I did an easy(ish) climb of a mountain called Big Slide that I first did with my dad that September in 1972. The day was fine and blue, and I made good time for me, though I was quickly passed by a family with two teens that were staying at the lodge. The hike, though not terribly long, was challenging enough ascending more than 2,000 feet over 3 miles and requiring some scrambling up some rock faces.

I arrived at the summit just before noon and just in time to see the family that had passed me before they started down. I chatted for a few minutes with another family (a young couple and their mother/mother-in-law) eating my lodge-provided peanut butter and jelly sandwich before they too started down.

After they departed, I sat alone on the bare rock summit gazing out at the group of mountains in the distance known as the “great range.” I thought about my life and all that has happened in the more than 50 years since I had first sat here with my dad. I thought of my own children and how they too have come to love the natural world. I pondered this gift my father and mother earth have given me and wondered if I would ever sit on this spot again.

As I sat, a wind began to blow some large dark clouds in my direction and they began to fill the previously blue sky. It was as if the mountains wanted to remind me that behind the staggering beauty of the “forever wild” lurked danger for those who were overconfident or took their safety for granted.

I am not one of these. When I hike, I carry a map and compass, a GPS device and a phone loaded with maps and a backup power source. I also have raingear, a lamp, a way to make fire, a water filter and water purification tablets. Still, I didn’t linger too much longer once the clouds started rolling in.

I took a different trail down. It was shorter but steeper following a lovely brook most of the way. The brook eventually joins with Johns Brook and leads back to the lodge. I arrived a good hour before the rain started and cleaned up as best I could before dinner. It rained the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. It was cozy in the warm, dry lodge.

Dinner that night was pizza and although it was not as good as mine, it was damn good nonetheless. There was also homemade bread with garlic butter and dessert was a lovely white birthday cake with sprinkles. It was not too sweet and there was a lot of it.

Is Johns Brook Lodge the most beautiful resort in the world? I don’t know. I’m not even sure it is a resort. But, beauty is in the beholder’s eye, and to this beholder it is. True, there are no showers. The toilets are a bit smelly. And the food though tasty would not, I dare say, garner even half of one Michelin star.

Yet the quiet isolation of this place, the fact that it can only be reached under your own steam, the nights absent of human light or noise, and the unquiet majesty of the mountains that surround the valley speak to a kind of splendor that is too rare in our increasingly crowded world. Rare too is the sense of companionship in sharing such a place with a few other kindred souls who love and appreciate it.

The Adirondack Park sees many more visitors each year than it did in 1972. The park saw more than 12 million visitors in 2021. Yet it is still possible to spend a day here and not see another human soul. Most of the 12 million never make it into the back country. Those that do are often in a few popular areas. When you are miles from a paved road on an unmarked herd path, there is still a sense of the wild, of wilderness and yes, of danger.

I am too cynical to be confident that such places will always exist, but I am grateful that I was here while they did. I am even more grateful for the time I spent therein.

Life’s a narrow bridge; fear nothing.