Best for… The Point is optimal for house-party weekend for a (very) special occasion
The surroundings… The Point is a traditional Adirondack “great camp” set amidst 70 wooded acres on Upper Saranac Lake, at the very end of a deliberately unmarked road. It’s as remote as it sounds—a 5.5-hour drive from NYC or almost 3 from Albany (or 15 minutes if you’re flying private). This means that cell and wi-fi are unreliable to unavailable…but that’s the point of The Point. Privacy, tranquility, nature immersion, genteel rusticity…all under the most attentive care of a devoted staff that often outnumber guests.
The vibe… Refined yet relaxed. About 40 percent of guests are repeat visitors, and I think that says it all. The ethos here is that this is your home for the weekend, and you are encouraged to (respectfully) own it. There are just 11 guest rooms between the main lodge and three smaller buildings. Everyone can access the great hall, a soaring wood-paneled room overlooking the lake, with a huge fireplace encircled by sofas and taxidermied trophies; the cozy pub; five(!) bars; and even the kitchen, which you can walk into at any hour for a turkey club or anything else you might crave. It’s both a throwback to the European estate tradition and to the Gilded Age, when the moneyed class began traveling to the wilds of the Adirondacks in summer to escape the steamy, crowded cities, without the formality of Newport. (The American word “vacation” supposedly comes from this era when New Yorkers “vacated” their city homes.)
And so, a long weekend here is effectively like a private house party, with group dinners—one of them in full black tie—and shared activities, though you can also opt out of everything and do your own thing. It’s your house! Which means that your experience is to some extent shaped by the strangers you are brought together with. In our case, that was three other groups, who were all great company—including a doctor-couple from Indianapolis who’d visited the previous summer and couldn’t wait to return in winter and a couple from NYC who’d been to The Point so many times they’d lost count (upwards of 20) and had come for a break from their newborn (kids are not allowed, but pets are welcome!). As much as The Point is known as a summer sanctuary, with its boathouse and vintage Hacker Craft and practically every type of waterfront sport on offer, our doctor friends said they liked the resort even more in winter—when it’s quieter, more intimate, and you have the (frozen) lake to yourself.
The Rooms… Nearly all of the buildings are original to the camp, which was built in the early 1930s by William A. Rockefeller (nephew of John D.) and has operated as a hotel under various owners since 1980. It’s one of the last fully intact great camps created in the Adirondack rustic style, using regional materials like pine planks, slate and granite, twig and branch décor, and lake views from everywhere.
We stayed in “Mohawk,” Rockefeller’s original bedroom, one of two attached to the main house. I loved that it was dark and cozy in winter, with wooden walls covered in landscape oil paintings (the hotel’s impressive art collection includes some Hudson River School works) and armchairs by the fireplace. We could call to have a fire made at any time, and it was delicious to sit and read or fall asleep to hissing embers. I asked to see a few other rooms—all very different. Sentinel, over the pub, feels like a fancy treehouse, with a king bed made of birch tree trunks, a wood-lined bathroom and a panorama of the lake. Weatherwatch also overlooks the lake but feels more British cottage, with lots of patterned fabrics. And The Boathouse is an airy, loft-like space right over the lake, with a wide sleeping porch where beds hang in summer.
The wellness… It’s nature-as-gym here—in summer, of course, there’s boating, swimming, and biking. In winter, we still stayed very active. From Camp David (a rustic wooden shack named for a former owner), we hiked a well-marked trail and shot pellet guns. We tried curling on the lake and, when Saturday’s rain froze on Sunday, we were able to skate clear across its marbled surface for hundreds of yards in every direction (there was a roaring fire pit and bar on the ice, of course). You don’t need to bring equipment: just borrow from the warming shack filled with hiking poles and boots, snowshoes, XC skis and skates.
The food… Meals are taken family style (unless you don’t want to), with a fixed menu (unless you want something else). In other words, you have options. We came on a Friday afternoon and had a delicious charcuterie plate waiting in our room, before cocktails in the pub (with a pool table, darts, puzzles, etc.) and dinner in the great hall. The food was truly outstanding. Chef Loic Leperlier and his sous, D’Anthony Foster, have worked together for years and the dishes on Friday—miso black cod with savoy cabbage, duck with freekeh—were wintry but light. Pastry chef Charlotte Scosz made an insanely good Basque-style cheesecake, slightly burned on the outside and creamy on the inside. Afterwards, we all decided to take our animated conversation to a fire pit by the lake, in a ring of Adirondack chairs surrounding a fire and a woodsy bar with a huge whiskey selection and truffle popcorn.
Both mornings, we had coffee and freshly-baked fruit muffins in bed before a huge breakfast in the great hall—pancakes with the chef’s own maple syrup, an outstanding truffle-baked egg. Saturday lunch was a barbecue that was planned for outside at the fire pit, but rain moved us inside—an epic spread of brisket, ribs, turkey, grilled shrimp, venison and buffalo sausage, also colorful roast and chopped vegetable salads. (In season, the kitchen uses foraged ingredients from the property, including wild mustard, sorel, ramps and mushrooms.)
The big event is Saturday’s black-tie dinner, which they do take seriously (all men were in tuxes, women in, well, black), but also with a wink—they hand-deliver an invitation to your room for cocktails announcing, “Guests in Residence.” It’s always hosted by a staff member (who helps to politely steer conversation from politics—you never know these days!); that evening Matt, an administrator and magician, blew us away with his card and mentalist tricks. The six courses, announced each time by a sweetly modest D’Anthony, included an insanely good king crab “girella” pasta, Hudson Valley morels and ramps over foie gras, and the tenderest venison over farro, each with a wine pairing. Afterwards, we had the run of the pub, with guests behind the bar mixing cocktails, playing music and pool, and ordering the most delicious grilled cheeses from the kitchen. When there’s enough snow, sometimes guests go tubing in their tuxes from the hill outside the lodge right onto the frozen lake.
Extra tip goes to… Assistant GM Kyle Mayette, who taps the maples on his property and schooled us on exactly how it’s made (40 gallons of sap = 1 gallon of syrup!), and gave us a bottle of his delicious syrup aged in bourbon barrels. And Jack Karmen, who at twentysomething is sort of the camp counselor—loading our pellet guns, sweeping the ice in curling, prepping our skates. As we were leaving on Sunday, he was busy constructing clues for a scavenger hunt for guests who’d requested one, with a different drink at each spot.
Parting words… As a place that on some level gambles on the chemistry of strangers, The Point feels like an antidote to our isolated, socially distant age. There’s no getting around that it’s expensive—very. Rooms start at $2,600 a night. But the entire staff and even the guests surprised me by being entirely down to earth. The doctors told us about a couple they met during their previous stay who save up all year to splurge on a stay each summer, then make the most of it: all the activities are included, the meals, the open bars. Gratuities, which can run into the hundreds at places like this, are also baked into the fee. And when you leave, they surprise you by filling up your tank and cleaning your car inside and out. I don’t know if that’s just what family does (mine doesn’t!), but it’s a classy and memorable move.
Date of stay… February 9-11, 2024
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