A house with room for everyone, twenty minutes from the mountain
Five bedrooms on twelve private acres in the southern Adirondacks, with rights to a small, warm, non-motorized lake at the bottom of the road — the kind children stay in all afternoon. Two wood stoves, a full kitchen, and enough space that ten people are not living on top of each other.
It is a Cape Cod, and it has been lived in rather than staged. The kitchen counters are local garnet stone, quarried a few miles up the road at Barton Mines. Both wood stoves work and get used. The house comes furnished, so you arrive with food and clothes and nothing else.
What people tend to like most is the quiet. Twelve acres means the nearest neighbor is not in the window, and the only thing you hear at night is the wind. That is either exactly what you came for or it is not, and it is worth knowing which before you book.
Gore Mountain is twenty minutes away and the North Creek Ski Bowl, which is the better base if half your group is learning, is about ten. In summer the lake is a two-minute walk and the Hudson is close enough to raft in the morning and be back for lunch.
Families, and the occasions that need a whole house
Five bedrooms is an awkward size for a hotel and exactly the right size for a family. Everyone gets a door that shuts. Nobody is on a sofa. The grandparents are not in a travel cot in the corner of somebody's room.
It works particularly well for the occasions that are difficult to host anywhere else. A reunion where three households want to be under one roof without being in one another's pockets. A milestone birthday. The Christmas where somebody finally says they are not cooking it at their house again. A wedding weekend where the family needs a base and the venue has ten rooms and forty guests.
The reason it works is the twelve acres more than the bedrooms. Children can be outside and out of earshot without being anywhere near a road. Two wood stoves and a big kitchen mean people gather without being crowded, and the lake is a two-minute walk when somebody needs an hour away from everyone.
What makes it easy. A full kitchen with enough crockery and pans for ten, so you can actually cook for everybody rather than eating out twice a day in a region where the restaurants close early. Washer and dryer, which matters on a week with children. Parking for several cars. Bed linen and towels supplied, which a good number of Adirondack rentals do not do.
What it is not. This is a family house on a quiet road with neighbors who live here all year, so it is not a party house and not an event venue. Ten people, no exceptions, and that number is what the septic system is built for rather than an arbitrary limit. Family gatherings are exactly what it is for. Weddings held on the lawn are not.
If you are planning something and want to know whether the house suits it, email rentals@wirewalk.com and describe the group. That is usually a faster conversation than a booking form.
The lake
Antler Lake is small, and that is the whole point of it.
The big Adirondack lakes are cold. Schroon, George, Thirteenth — they are deep, they are fed from underneath, and they stay bracing into August. Children last about four minutes and then want to get out. Antler is shallow and sheltered, so it takes the sun and holds it, and by the end of June it swims like a bath. That is the difference between a lake you photograph and a lake the children are still in at six o'clock.
It is also a non-motorized lake. No ski boats, no jet skis, nothing towing anything. Canoes, kayaks, paddleboards and swimming, and that is it. Which means no wake, no two-stroke noise across the water in the evening, and no one doing forty miles an hour past a child on a float. The quiet is not a happy accident — it is a rule, and it is why the water is warm and why the fishing is any good.
There is a shared sand beach and a dock. It is a two-minute walk from the house, down a right of way rather than along a public road.
There is a canoe. It comes with the house, so you can be on the water without strapping anything to the roof of the car. On a lake with no motors, a canoe is not a compromise — it is the right boat.
The fishing. A quiet, unpressured lake with no motor traffic fishes far better than its size suggests. Early morning and the last hour of light are the ones worth getting up or staying out for. Bring your own rods — there is no tackle shop at the water, and the nearest one is in North Creek.
Anyone sixteen or over needs a New York State fishing license. They are sold online by the DEC and at sporting goods shops locally, and a short-term non-resident license costs very little. Seasons and size limits vary by species and by water, so check the current DEC regulations before you keep anything.
No lifeguard, and no staff. It is a beach on a small lake, not a facility. There are no bathrooms, nobody is watching the water, and mobile signal down there ranges from poor to none. If small children are swimming, an adult is the lifeguard. Said plainly because it is the kind of thing people assume the other way round.
What summer actually looks like here. Swim in the morning while the water is flat. Raft the Hudson Gorge and be back for lunch. Walk up something small in the afternoon. Then the lake again, because it is warmer at five than it was at eleven. The rest of what there is to do →
The house
All 38 photographs, room by room →
Booking direct
There is no platform booking fee here, which is most of the reason this site exists. On the big sites a guest typically pays a service fee on top of the nightly rate; booking here, that money stays in your pocket rather than going to an intermediary.
You are also emailing the person who owns the house. If the well pump fails or you cannot find the snow shovel, there is no support queue in between.
New York State and Warren County sales and occupancy taxes are added at checkout and shown as separate lines. They are collected on behalf of the state and the county and passed straight on — they are not ours.
Practical
Minimum stay depends on the season — two nights most of the year, longer over Christmas and the holiday ski weeks. The booking page works it out for your dates and tells you before you pay.
Winter driving, honestly. The last stretch of road is plowed but it is the Adirondacks in February. A front-wheel-drive car with winter tires is usually fine; summer tires are not, whatever the car. If a storm is forecast for your arrival day, message me and I will tell you what the road is actually doing rather than what the forecast says.