Wilderness Rec Alum Publishes Two Adk History Books
Dec. 13, 2024
SARANAC LAKE -- Award-winning writer, wilderness adventurer, and North Country Community
College alumnus Erik Schlimmer has published two new books.
Wicked Awesome Adirondack Chronology: 1524 to 2024 is composed of nearly 4,000 individual entries that span those five centuries. The detailed chronological list includes every Adirondack event of consequence “from first ascents to fastest known times, logging to landslides, hermits to hemlocks, avalanches to airplane crashes.” The other title, Cranberry Lake Fifty Place Names: The Tiny Toponym Tome also packs historical punch. In this book Schlimmer writes about the 35 named features the Cranberry Lake Fifty hiking trail meets on its circumnavigation of its aquatic centerpiece.
Schlimmer, a 1995 graduate of North Country’s Wilderness Recreation Leadership program, said it took four years of research and the help of a squad of historians to produce the new books, published by his own Beechwood Books.
“I love esoteric history, forgotten history,” said the author who resides in Colorado but grew up in the Adirondacks where he worked as a backcountry ranger. “While writing Wicked Awesome Adirondack Chronology I uncovered hundreds of events few are aware of, though these events made the Adirondack Park what it is today. While writing Cranberry Lake Fifty Place Names I discovered the forgotten stories that revealed why features are named so.”
Marc Galvin, co-owner of the Bookstore Plus in Lake Placid (also a NCCC alum), wrote in the foreword to Wicked Awesome Adirondack Chronology that this book shares Schlimmer's “passion for exploring wild land and chronicling the history of these far-flung places.” Towns of Clifton and Fine historian Mark Fridén contributed the Cranberry Lake Fifty Place Names foreword and confirmed, “Even if you do not undertake a circumambulation of the Cranberry Lake Fifty yourself, you will enjoy reading about the various places this trail takes hikers to.”
Wicked Awesome Adirondack Chronology retails for $24, Cranberry Lake Fifty Place Names retails for $16, and both are available through ErikSchlimmer.com and select Northeast retailers. Beechwood Books was founded by the author in 2013 and now offers eleven titles.