Lake Champlain level. Lake Champlain is in the Lake Champlain Valley between the Green Mountains of Vermont and the Adirondack Mountains of New York, drained northward by the -long Richelieu River into the St. Lawrence River at Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, northeast and downstream of Montreal, Quebec. It also receives the waters from the -long Lake George, so its basin collects waters from the northwestern slopes of the Green Mountains and the northernmost eastern peaks of the Adirondack Mountains. Lake Champlain drains nearly half of Vermont, and approximately 250,000 people get their drinking water from the lake. The lake is fed in Vermont by
Avalanche Lake (New York) miles to the east. Avalanche Lake feeds Lake Colden to the south, in the Hudson River watershed. To the north, the trail to the lake from the Adirondak Loj surmounts Avalanche Pass, which is only slightly above lake level but separates it from the Lake Champlain (St. Lawrence River) watershed. Following the lake toward Lake Colden, the trail is choked with large boulders, and a number of wooden ladders have been built to make passage possible. There are also three places where the trail takes to wooden catwalks, first built in the 1920s, that are bolted directly into the cliff