NORTH ELBA - Oncoming hikers stepped off the trail and made way for two canoes getting hauled up to Avalanche Lake. It looked hard-core, shouldering boats 4.4 miles among the Adirondack High Peaks, or else a little crazy.

But at 12 pounds each, they weighed less than a full backpack and were just about one-fifth the weight of most canoes. “Cool,” another hiker said after hoisting one to test it. Even the rangers, who see many things in the north woods, said they'd seen very few boats in the mountain pass at narrow, windswept Avalanche Lake.

Builders have revived century-old Adirondack pack canoes, with more outdoor enthusiasts opting for the smaller, lighter boats they can carry easily to remote lakes, rivers and streams seldom navigated.

Craftsmen also expect to make an inroad on kayaks, which have grown popular while canoes faded.

From its latest online survey, the Outdoor Industry Foundation reported 13.3 million Americans went canoeing in 2005 and/or 2006, while 6.7 million went recreational kayaking, 2.9 million sea kayaking and 2.3 million whitewater kayaking.

Dave Curtis, who sells replicas of 1880s solo canoes through the Internet, says the new “featherlights” are little known outside New York, where they appeal especially to women.

“It's a black art. For a long time there was very little information that was available,” Peter Hornbeck said. He estimates having made about 3,500 in two decades at his shop in Olmstedville. “Business is excellent. My business increased almost 25 percent last year.”

In part he credits interest generated by other boat builders who followed him, especially Placid Boatworks.

Others include Curtis' Hemlock Canoe Works in the Finger Lakes, Wisconsin-based Bell Canoe Works with its Bucktail, and Vermont Canoe's Tupper. Prices start about $1,000.

All make solo boats that are easy to carry, most weighing 20 to 25 pounds. In the water, the canoeist sits on the bottom, legs stretched and uses a paddle with a blade on each end - like a kayak.

But builders say each model has particular advantages, and Hornbeck's carbon-Kevlar 10-foot-8 Black Jacks at just 12 pounds were probably best for a day with 11 miles of hiking and almost six paddling.

“It's a lot lighter than mine,” Susan Bibeau said after carrying a Black Jack across Marcy Dam. She had decided to leave her own 16-pound Kevlar canoe home.

On a June weekday, there were scattered campers and hikers along the popular High Peaks trails, but the waterways were empty. The gray cliffs of Mount Colden, tufted with scrubby cedars, shrouded the eastern side of Avalanche Lake. Late-morning sunshine bathed the western side and the face of Avalanche Mountain. From the water, the panorama stretched in every direction.

With gusting wind at your back, you could glide south on the riffling water. The return would take effort, but paddling wasn't hard. For carries, hoist the boat over one shoulder, arm through the thwart, double-bladed paddle wedged inside.

“Lighter boats get blown around more,” Bibeau said. “They're really more for pond hopping and rivers.”

An artist and photographer, she was thinking about buying another solo boat, Placid's 12-foot, 23-pound SpitFire, to paddle New York's Chubb, Osgood and Grasse rivers and enter a 90-mile race.

“It depends what you want to do,” she said. “You couldn't do this in a SpitFire. It'd kill you.”

After a short portage, we crossed wide, clear Lake Colden. Bibeau turned back before the last short portage and paddle down a winding, stony section of the Opalescent River and across the Flowed Lands to the half-broken dam on the Opalescent and back.

In the 1880s, George Washington Sears, aka Nessmuk, paddled small, light boats through hundreds of miles in the central Adirondacks, memorializing the trips in Forest and Stream magazine. A series of boats, like the 9-foot Sairy Gamp now in the Smithsonian, were made by the former Rushton Boat Works in Canton. They had “one-fool power in the middle,” Sears wrote.

“He was one of the many people who were pushing people to go back to nature without guides,” said Charlie Wilson, partner in Placid Boatworks. Sears was a small man, weighing about 110 pounds and dying of tuberculosis, and even he found the 9-footer a little small, Wilson said.

Rushton's Rob Roy, a solo boat weighing about 45 pounds with a partial deck but wider opening than a kayak, was more popular then, he said.

Bell makes a 31-pound version of the Rob Roy, which it plans to actively market for appeal to crossover kayakers, said ORC Industries/Bell vice president Todd Bahnub.

Hemlock owner Dave Curtis said other Rushton originals are in the Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake and at the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton. He makes 10-foot-6, 16-pound Kevlar-hybrid replicas, based on an original Rushton shape and dimensions, and similar canoes enlarged to 12 feet for modern men. “I was getting a lot of 250-pound sportsmen that wanted to take a Labrador retriever and go duck hunting,” he said.

Hornbeck said kayaks, which he also makes, outsell canoes almost 8-to-1, he thinks partly because of the more efficient paddling technique.

While most pack canoes use the same paddling method, they're also much lighter than kayaks and more convenient without having to stuff your gear in a compartment, he said.

Placid, now in its fourth year, builds and sells 150 to 200 boats a year, Wilson said.

It has four solo designs, two for sitting with a double-blade paddle, two for kneeling with a single blade.

“When you want to build a boat light, you build it fragile or you build it expensive,” he said. SpitFires start at $2,295. “We've chosen the latter.”