By Matthew Liptak
Inlet is known as the tiny, charming Adirondack community that welcomes wandering campers and outdoor enthusiasts each summer, but at the end of February this tight-knit, all-American town of 300-plus people, welcomes everyone to its “Frozen Fire and Lights” festival at Fern Park and Arrowhead Park.
The event takes place Saturday, Feb. 28 all day long.
2026 ushers in the 24th time the festival welcomes celebrators of the wonders of winter in the Adirondacks. And how do they celebrate you may ask? Well with outhouse races, cardboard sled races, kite flying, and fireworks of course!
The kite flying takes place at nearby Fourth Lake, and other events and competition are at the parks. The festival was inaugurated at about the turn of the century as a way to highlight Fern Park and the local trail network.
“It’s changed,” said Adele Burnett, the community’s tourism director, who has helped lead the festival since its inception in 2002. “It’s evolved. It started with fireworks and [celebrating] trails. We’ve done snowmobile races and dog sleds.”
The park has a free ice skating ring as well as a small sledding hill. Frozen Fire and Lights may be seen as just another end-of-winter area festival by some, but for locals it can require major effort to organize and become a labor of love.
“It’s different little committees that run it,” Burnett said. “It’s many, many volunteers that make it work.”
And the participants in the events and contests can put their hearts into the festival fun too. Once registering, and complying with guidelines on the construction of their awesome outhouse, or slippery cardboard sled, they can let their creative nature roam free, or just keep it simple.
“It’s a pretty small sledding hill,” the tourism director said. “Some people put a lot of time and effort into their cardboard boxes. Others just put their names on it.”
There will be hotdogs available to fuel the passions of the fierce, fun-loving competitors, and a bonfire. As the intrepid, stalwart Adirondack residents push their trusty outhouses across the frozen landscape, spectators line the way to cheer their progress.
But survival of the fittest portable potty will inevitably flush out the true champions of this toiletry tundra. All eyes will be on the prized trophy, as the winter athletes contend to find out who will be the No. 1 champion, and who will take No. 2 home. Ahem.
But you have to be in it to win it. So if a good-fun contest of competing privies sliding across frozen ground, hauled by Inlet’s finest upright citizens, is intriguing to you, or you want to learn more, get in touch today. And don’t forget, there’s traditional fare like kite flying and traversing trails too.
“It’s fun,” Burnett said. “Little trophies are handed out. “We’ve never cancelled anything.”
For anyone who has not had the opportunity to enjoy and experience the great Adirondack region during the long Upstate winter the Inlet Frozen Fire and Lights Festival may be just the chance to get you started. And for those mountain lovers who are veterans of the Adirondacks in wintertime, the Inlet events may be just the chance to start the send-off of the season, as spring approaches.
For more information, visit www.inletny.com