Hike #1322; Harriman Lake Skannatati Loop

Hike #1322

4/28/20 Harriman Lake Skannatati Loop with Jason W. Briggs, Marsha ?, Jennifer Bee, and Brittany Audrey

This would be another hike around the Harriman State Park area, once again during the pandemic days when I had these odd days off from work and I wanted to cover some more ground.

Like the other Harriman State Park and Hudson Highlands area trips I took with Jason during the early days of the pandemic, this one too ended up somehow deleted from facebook. The journal entry shows up with only the title, but all text missing. It’s odd that the journals where we were talking in great depth about the pandemic are totally gone.
For this hike, there were a bunch of trails that I’d never done before in the western part of Harriman, and I pretty much left it up to Jason which ones we would do until we got to more than halfway through the hike. He chose the meeting point, and we were fortunate to even get in there.
This was the lot at Lake Skannatati along Seven Lakes Drive.
The road passes between two lakes, Lake Askoti and Lake Skannatati. Originally, Seven Lakes Drive skirted a swamp through the area, but the Works Progress Administration dammed the area to create Upper Stillwater Lake in 1935. 

It filled with water in 1937 and was renamed “Askoti” which means “This Side”. At that time, work began on the Lake Skannatati, which means “The other side”. It took two dams to impound this lake, completed in 1938 and 1947.
We started the hike on the Long Path heading south/east.
The Long Path is a long distance trail that was first proposed in the twenties, to connect from the George Washington Bridge to Bear Mountain. It was amended later as a proposal to connect New York City to the Adirondacks, specifically Whiteface Mountain.
Raymond Torrey was a trail builder who didn’t think it should be blazed at all. It should remain a sort of orienteering course, and the route would hit certain prominent points.
With encroaching development, it became clear that the original plan would no longer work, and it was blazed aqua in color. The trail was marked mostly from the NJ side of the George Washington Bridge up to John Boyd Thatcher State Park near Albany, and then extended a bit north of that to just beyond the Mohawk River. It’s unblazed from there to the start of the Northville-Lake Placid Trail, from which Whiteface Mountain can be reached. I hope to eventually do all of it.
I had already done the entire trail from the George Washington Bridge up through Harriman, and then on to the Orange Heritage Trail, but had not connected the bit to the Shawangunk Ridge. From there, I’d done it through the Gunks, but not connected to the Catskills. Then I’d done the bit from the Catskills at Peekamoose to the Devil’s Path. There’s so much more to do, and hopefully I’ll get around to it.

I’d already done the section we started with this time, but I was happy to do it again because it is such a nice section, and we would see some things I didn’t see before.
We walked by an old foundation, then through the hills to the south. We passed by the crash site of Flight 6231, where Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727 bound for Buffalo from JFK Airport crashed on December 1, 1974. The only three occupants of the plane died in the crash. The investigation in this crash resulted in increased safety measures and cockpit designs on such planes.
The first time we’d walked through this area, insulation and such from the plane, and more parts were still laying all through the woods. This time, it seemed that most of the junk from the plane was gone. Just a few bits here and there. There also was no historic marker or anything to denote the site, and this time there was a very nice memorial sign placed there.

The trail crossed over Rock House Mountain, Pole Brook Mountain, and crossed Lake Welch Drive. I don’t think we stopped at the St John’s in the Wilderness Church this time, which is via a side trail. We continued on the Long Path to the Big Hill Shelter, with a great overlook. We could see New York City in the distance.
Big Hill Shelter is one of those old shelters from early on, made of stone. The Suffern-Bear Mountain Trail intersects with the Long Path at this point, and is one of the longest trails in the park. It was proposed in 1924 by Major Welch, the first General Manager of Harriman State Park.
We turned right after a break here to follow the SBM Trail to the west. There were several other hikers hanging around this point when we arrived.
It was disappointing as ever to see more masks and gloves just about everywhere we went.
We continued from the Suffern-Bear Mountain Trail straight on Breakneck Mountain Trail, which is white blazed and continues on the ridge line where the SBM turns off. 
Breakneck Mountain Trail was originally known by locals as Knapp Mountain. The trail was blazed in 1927 to connect the Suffern-Bear Mountain Trail to the Tuxedo-Mt Ivy Trail.

We continued along this splendid ridge, which is not nearly as tough as the name leads one to believe, and then continued on Tuxedo-Mt Ivy Trail to the right when we reached that.

Tuxedo-Mt Ivy Trail was a favorite project of Major William A. Welch, proposed in 1924 to connect the town of Tuxedo at the Erie Railroad station with another Erie branch at a station at Mt Ivy, which is now the present day overpass of the Palisades Parkway at that settlement, and a crossing of the Long Path. The TMI Trail no longer is blazed to that point, and the railroad there is long gone.
We followed the trail along Conklin Mountain, then out to Lake Sebago on Seven Lakes Drive.

Sebago is an Algonquin word for "Big Water". We skirted the edge of the lake, where Jason and I had walked not all that long ago, and then went up and over the hill to the White Bar Trail.
The White Bar Trailw as blazed in the twenties as well, as part of the Boy Scouts White Bar Trail system, which was originally a system of about thirty five miles of trails. Only the one segment of it still bears that name, and was extended down to the old Johnsontown Road.
There is a cellar hole near the trail intersection, which was the home of the "Dutch Doctor", Frederich John Helms, from 1874 to about 1892.

We turned right on the White Bar Trail, and then made our way to the Dutch Doctor Shelter, named for Helms, on the right side of the trail on a hill.

Jason had a plan to go from this point over a few more hills that would be more difficult, but it was around this time that Jen started having some serious troubles with her foot. Fortunately, Marsha was familiar with this kind of ailment and helped her to pad it.

Even so, going up and down over hard rocks was not going to work out all that well, so we had to make amendments to the hike, which would be cool because there was quite a bit more stuff that none of us had ever done before.

Rather than go the way Jason was originally going to go, we instead began following the Triangle Trail. This was a particularly pleasant trail that meandered through a tunnel of Rhododendron.

This trail was originally the Yellow Bar Trail, marked in 1939 by Kerson Nurian. Mr. Nurian was well known for the "Trail Wars" where he would have disagreements and paint out blazes of other trail builders. Often, there was no recourse because the trails passed over what was then private land.

Nurian was a Bulgarian electrical engineer who worked in New York City ship yards, and spent a lot of time doing trail clearing and marking.
He offered his Yellow Bar Trail to the NY/NJ Trail Conference and they accepted. However, the Trail Conference decided to extend the trail using another trail marked with yellow triangles, all the way through Nurian's Yellow Bar Trail, which had a painted bar around the trees on it.

Nurian returned to Bulgaria in 1943, and it seemed the trouble with him covering over the blazes of other trail markers and maintainers was over. However, Nurian returned in 1947.

Soon after his return, all of the yellow triangle metal markers were removed from the trees for the entire route of the trail, and yellow bars were repainted along the route again. It was rather obvious who the culprit was.
After some discussion, Nurian agreed to leave the trail alone so long as it was marked with yellow painted triangles rather than metal ones.

We continued on Triangle Trail out to Lake Sebago, the "Big Water" lake, and then left the trail. So it ould be easier for Jen, I suggested we follow the unofficial trail around the west side of Lake Sebago to the now abandoned Sebago Beach complex.

Work began on Lake Sebago in 1923 and was completed in 1926. The lake covered the former site of the settlement of Johnsontown. The old road is under it, as well as reportedly the ruins of an old mill than still stand beneath the surface. Prior to the lake, it was the Emmetsfield Swamp.
Where we turned along the shore, the Adirondack Mountain Club's Camp Nawakwa was to the east of us, one of the first camps established in the area. It means "in the midst of the wilderness".
The way we were going, there is barely a foot path, but it's very nice with a stream flowing in from the left, and a couple of deep spots.
We made our way along the shore, which eventually came to a long abandoned camp site. I'm not sure which one this one was. I read into it when I wrote the original journal entry, but now that is lost and I can't find in my books any description of this camp under Lake Sebago.
There were some really rough foundations at first, followed by some better ones. There were spots where camp sites and facilities stood, and I meandered up and down along rock outcroppings over what were obviously once pedestrian paths our steps and such, long forgotten.
We eventually came to the clearing at the New Sebago Beach. I seem to recall there was a jeep or SUV with New Jersey plates over there, which was laughable. No one is allowed to bring vehicles back there, and it should be gated, but someone managed.
The "New Sebago Beach" opened in 1952 and replaced the earlier one from the 30s on the east side. There was reportedly once a roller rink there. Now, the administration building is used by park maintenance and much of the beach area and parking lots, as well as comfort stations are abandoned and getting overgrown.

We turned right at the recreation area and followed the paved old access road out beyond the beach complex. The Stony Brook flowed beneath the road in an area that looked like it used to impound water but no longer does now.
On the other side of the causeway over the lake, there was a woods road to the left that led north.

I had never walked this way before or even considered doing it, but there were camp areas out there. I soon figured out this was the way that vehicles were illegally accessing this area. The road was unpaved and small, but it soon led to the dam for Lower Kanawauke Lake.
The lake here was created in 1915 by damming the Stony Brook. The dam had a walkway all the way across it which I thought to use, but I didn't want to get too far into something and have a problem on a really rough trail. We instead continued on the east side of the lake through the areas of some of the fourteen camps that had graced its shores. The first of these camps were created by the Boy Scouts in 1917.

The woods roads through the camps were very pleasant for walking and really no one was around, so we didn't have a proble, and it was good for Jen's injured foot.
The name "Kanawauke" was chosen by Major Welch, and it means "place of much water".
We continued through the camp and I recall one car going by us, but no one told us we couldn't be there, and no signs said anything to that effect either.
We continued to the north side of the lake where we saw a seemingly abandoned but handsome stone camp building to the left. From there, the woods road was not open to vehicles at all, and became rougher. It led us out to Rt 106, the Monroe-Haverstraw Turnpike, which goes across the dam of the Middle Kanawauke Lake.

Middle Kanawauke Lake was dammed in 1916 on the Stillwater Creek, and six boy scout camps were once on its shore. There is also an Upper Kanawauke Lake to the west, which is actually a natural lake forty three feet deep, also known as Little Long Pond.
We turned right on 106 briefly, and some people were pulled over through the area, near the traffic circle. Everything was so crowded at the parking areas, people were just going wherever.

From here, we moved on by doing something that wasn't even shown on the map.
Seven Lakes Drive, which comes into the circle to the east of us, was apparently rerouted along the shore of Middle Kanawauke Lake. 

Seven Lakes Drive, as we know it today, passes by actually 9 lakes and parallels what was originally the Johnsontown Road. It was improved first as the Southfields Road, but after the construction of some of the lakes it was improved. I would suspect what we found on the east side of Middle Kanawauke was probably a pre-1962 incarnation. It was still paved, so it wasn't all that old.

We left the old road briefly and cut up through the woods on an informap path among pine trees with some nice overlooks of Middle Kanawauke Lake.

There was a little bit of off trail meandering through some undergrowth of barberry before we got back to the road, and then that got ot be very easy.

We were able to follow the abandoned road, not under any water, along the shore of the lake and then toward the edge of Lake Skannatati. We stayed low when the road disappeared under the modern road, and crossed over the outflow of water that cascades down from Lake Askoti to Skannatati.

The path went from there right into the parking lot at Skannatati where we started. There were a lot of guys there fishing, some of them with masks, and most of them behaving in a friendly fashion with on one giving us any hard time for hiking together. 

It was a bit of a relief to me to see people being friendly to one another.
The lot was completely full when we got there, and the Palisades Interstate Park Commission had blocked the entrance off so that no one else could come in to park. It was a good thing we got there as early as we did.

We headed back, and all of the lots on the way were full. Cars were lined up and down along the roads over by Reeves Brook and just about anywhere people could get to. The closure of parks in New Jersey had caused such a flood of patrons to New York and Pennsylvania parks that it served to only worsen the crowding they claimed they wanted to avoid.
Sense just seemed to be getting worse. While New Jersey closed all of its parks, Pennsylvania closed all of its liquor stores. We were sending thousands of people from New Jersey into Pennsylvania, and meanwhile one of my local liquor stores did over forty three thousand dollars in sales just because of people flooding in from Pennsylvania.
I didn't think the poor decisions and lack of communication could go much farther, but it continued for quite a long time.