Hike #1492; Sloatsburg and Lake Sebago Loop

Hike #1492;  6/24/22 Sloatsburg and Lake Sebago Loop with Jason W. Briggs, Linda Salveson, Tina Chen, Eric Pace, and Major Tom Conroy

This next hike would be a big loop, and a variation on one I had done just about a year before with Jillane, our second to last trip before our son was born.

The hike took shape because Jillane wanted to hike to someplace and camp, then hike back out. She didn’t want to do a lot of high mileage, but she also didn’t want to be somewhere accessible. I mentioned local spots we could stealth camp, but she didn’t like them.

I thought of spots in Harriman State Park that would be perfect, and she said about seven or so miles out would be fine.

I came up with a great hike, but there’s still so much to see in that area, I decided to put together a variation of it that would have more terrain and some of the other stuff I’d missed.

I ended up overshooting the mileage in the end, but it ended up being a really great day.

The parking area we used for this one was in Sloatsburg itself, across from a bar and grill. For the meeting, I posted the area library just up the street since the spot I actually planned to park wasn’t showing up on the meetup.com maps.
After meeting, we shuttled over to that lot, across from Rhodes North Tavern. This was at the intersection with Mill Street.

The highway here was originally the Orange Turnpike, which was the major pass road through the Ramapo Mountains, carved by the Ramapo River, built in 1800. The settlement is named for European settler Stephen Sloat. The Sloats were the third generation to own the land, bequeathed from the Van Gelder family who first procured the land from the Minsi Lenape around 1738.

Sloat operated a tavern which was occupied by the Continental Army during the American Revolution as a headquarters for the strategic pass through the break in the Ramapo Mountains.

From here, we started walking Mill Street to the north. I had procured a beer by Eviltwin Brewing called Poor Man’s Grenade, which was quite excellent. 

The only problem with it was that it was certainly not for the poor, because they come up being like five dollars a can.

We followed Mill Street to the Sloatsburg Station on the former Erie Railroad, which is still in use today. We walked over the platform, and then turned right to cross the tracks at grade onto Ballard Ave.

To the right at the intersection was Brown's Gate. This was an estate farm entrance to the Cappamore Farm built in 1900. It led to the home and farm of Nicholas T. Brown, and had a wooden bridge over a mill race built in the late 1700s by the Sloat family, as well as a steel bridge over the Ramapo River.

The farm house on that estate was demolished when the New York State Thru Way was constructed. Much of that property on the other side of that highway is now part of Harriman State Park.

We continued on Ballard Street, then turned right on Academy Ave to reach Seven Lakes Drive. This road was built specifically for the park and only incorporated parts of earlier roads.

We followed Seven Lakes Drive just a bit ahead, crossed the Ramapo River, and then soon passed beneath Interstate/87 NY Thru Way. Just after that, we turned left on Johnsontown Road.

Johnsontown Road was the predecessor to Seven Lakes Drive, the old main road that once traveled up into present day Harriman State Park. The settlement of Johnsontown is now under the waters of Lake Sebago, near the New Sebago Beach. As such, much of the route we would be following from here would either be the old Johnsontown Road and some parallel stuff.

We went uphill a bit, and continued on the Johnstontown Road parallel with Seven Lakes Drive. After a connecting road back to Seven Lakes, there was almost no traffic on the pleasant back road. It is a dead end beyond that point. It terminates at a trail head with the White Bar Trail.

White Bar Trail was originally an early 1900s scout trail system that went all over present day Harriman, and one trail retains that title. Some of it was blazed onto the old Johnstontown Road for a bit to connect to the end of the road.

We weren’t going to be going that far. My plan was only to walk the road as far as the orange trail, which goes up Dater Mountain to the north.
One of the things I’d never done and remained higher on my “to do” list was Dater Mountain Nature Park. This piece of land was I think county or municipal owned, and has a common trail system with Harriman.

We turned left from the road and began climbing on the orange trail partway up the mountain. Eric and Tom were having a tough time with the climb, so I offered them an alternative when we got to the intersection with the blue trail. 

At that point, I was going to follow blue back to the west, and then weave back around on Dater Mountain, while remaining on the orange trail would cut that corner by a lot and save a little elevation.

They chose to do that, because it was pretty hot out, and the rest of us walked west on the blue trail.
The first view we came to was to the south, into the valley that the Seven Lakes Drive and Johnstontown Road followed, and looked across to the hills to the south. We continued on the trail from here to the peak at the end of it, where there was a giant glacial erratic we could get on for a more commanding view.

The end of Dater Mountain was one of those that was like a peninsula off of the main mountain range, with more than 180 degree views stretching from north to west to south. 

Most of Sloatsburg was visible from the vantage point, as well as the Thru Way bending around the outside of town.

The four of us and Linda’s dog Banjo enjoyed the view and then switched back around to take the north leg of the blue trail. It was at first over some exposed bedrock, but then became a pleasant woods road.

We continued through the woods and reached the intersection with the orange trail where Tom and Eric were. We continued ahead together on the orange trail to the intersection with the Kakiat Trail.

The Kakiat Trail goes from Kakiat Park to the south of Harriman north on a route that was originally the Tuxedo Trail in the 1920s, at least in part. It and the present day Blue Disc Trail follow some of this route.

We followed Kakiat Trail to the right just a short distance to the Blue Disc Trail, where we again turned right and climbed steeply. This was once part of Tuxedo Trail, but was also later a Red Disc Trail over the years.

The trail reaches a rock outcrop ledge and climbs it steeply. The ledge was named “Almost Perpendicular” and is usually a fun climb, especially when going up rather than down.

Once at the top of the climb, we could see another more than 180 degrees. We could see up through the hills through with the Stony Brook and Seven Lakes Drive travel to the east, south over Reeves Meadow and the trail parking there, and east down the top of Dater Mountain and the lower peak we had just been on earlier, and on to the Ramapo Valley.

It was a great spot; Major Tom particularly loved it.

From this point, we continued on the Blue Disc Trail to the north.

One of the things I wanted to look for this time, and on this stretch, was a rock overhang that had once had a shelter built into it, complete with windows and a chimney, known as “Rockneath”. It was created by John Bonora of the Paterson Ramblers Club in 1928. The rock was known as Bonora’s Rock.
Bonora lived in Brooklyn, but at the time city dwellers could easily reach these trailheads for a day via convenient railroad stations. Many of the trails were designed to go from station to station just for these reasons.

I went off to the left after walking a bit, while the others stayed on the main trail, but I found no remnants of a chimney. 

There was a little rock shelter into one of the rocks that I found, near a saddle between two peaks, but I’m not sure if that would have been the location or not. I’m inclined to say that I probably did not find the correct spot, although it must have been right under my nose.

We continued to the north, over Pound Mountain, which was pretty much just undulating and pleasant woods. The next point of interest was a cliff side area with a natural rock pile cave known as “Elbow Brush”.

I had done this trail before, and I had gone along the cliffs on it, but there is a bypassing side trail that skips the little cave section, so even though I’d done this trail before, I missed one of the coolest parts until this time.

By the time we were finished with Elbow Brush, we were almost to Claudius Smith Rock.
In this rock is Claudius Smith’s Den, a very popular spot in Harriman, and another natural cave formation in the rocks.
This was said to be a hiking place for outlaw Claudius Smith during the American Revolution. Smith could probably see the roads in the distance from the rock, and he and his band would rob local farms, passersby, and Continental Army movements.
Smith was of the same stock as the great Richard Smith, founder of Smithtown Long Island, which was the subject of a few of our past hikes (I believe he was a grandson).
Claudius Smith was eventually caught, I think in his sleep, and brought back to jail in Orange County NY. 

He and most of his sons were hanged for their crimes, but I recently found out that some of the sons survived, and there are descendants that have commented on the Metrotrails posts on the topic.

The understanding has been that those in Smith’s gang all escaped to Canada, but there must have been a few that hung around and escaped conviction.

We went to the far side of the “den”, and climbed up into it. The rock formation is pretty impressive, and one could see how it provided shelter in inclement weather.
We climbed up on top of the rock, which afforded us more great views, again almost 180 degrees, mostly to the west this time.

From this point, we had several options of different distances to reach my next destination, which was Lake Skemonto. It was obvious that the White Cross Trail from the top of Claudius Smith Rock would take us most directly where I wanted to go, and it was a trail I had never done before.

Another attractive feature was that this trail is far easier than other parallel trails. It is considered to be a Winter alternative to the more difficult Blue Disc Trail north of the rock.

The trail was first blazed by notable trail blazer Kerson Nurian in the 1920s. Nurian was known to be quite a problem, because he would paint out blazes of other trail maintainers, and/or paint over their blazes with his own. In 1939, Nurian asked the NYNJ Trail Conference to take over maintenance of the trail, and the Adirondack Mountain Club, to which Nurian belonged, took it over.

We at first went the wrong direction gradually downhill on a woods road. When I saw no blazes on it, we turned back and lost a little time. The intersections of trails all around Claudius Smith’s Den really need a little better denoting.

White Cross Trail from the rock went down gradually over some bedrock, on what is known as Parker Cabin Mountain. We weave through pleasant woods and skirted Blauvelt Mountain, and then went around the east side of Black Ash Swamp. Elevation wasn’t bad at all on this, and we soon intersected with the Victory Trail.

Victory Trail is mostly a very old road that passed through Harriman known as the Black Ash Swamp Road. When it was closed to traffic, hikes were organized over it pretty regularly.

 Eventually, clubs associated with the trails of the area proposed making the trail official by blazing it. It was finally blazed and re-dubbed Victory Trail, with a couple of reroutes, in 1943.

We turned right on Victory Trail, and continued along until Lake Skenonto on the right. It was along this lake that I camped with Jillane shortly before she gave birth, and we used a near area to access the lake.
When Lake Sebago down the hill to the east of this was completed in 1926, this area was simply referred to as the “Big Swamp Over the Hill”. This area was prepared for the lake in the 1930s, and it was filled by 1936. The original route of the Black Ash Swamp Road was destroyed, and so Victory Trail takes on a slightly different route to the north near the dam, where it originally crossed.

There were plans for camps all over Harriman, which was part of the justification for creation of the lake, but only one small one of them ever got developed on the northern portion. 

That camp was demolished in 1993, and ever since the lake has remained completely undeveloped.

We reached the area where Jillane and I had camped, and then we found a good spot to descend to the water. Most of us decided to go in for a swim at this point.

It’s really just one of the most beautiful back woods lakes anywhere, and hardly anyone is ever there even on the hottest and most beautiful days. This is because it’s such a pain to reach, and a long hike from the nearest convenient parking. The trails are overall narrow, and people don’t want to be bothered with it when there are closer accesses to water.

We spent a generous but understandably long time at Lake Skenonto, but when we finally came out, we got back on the Victory Trail and headed to the north a bit more.

There were actually a few other people along this stretch as we continued. It gets a little closer to access points when we reach the other end of the lake.

We ascended slightly away from the water and over a knoll, then by a large swamp land to the left. There was soon an intersection, which I at first mistook for the road to Sebago Beach. We turned right, and when I eventually looked at my phone GPS, I realized we went the wrong way.

This ended up being a cool little side route though, because it took us to the level area where the aforementioned camp was demolished in 1993. It had been the Boy’s Athletic League Camp, and all that was left were heaps of bricks from buildings and/or chimneys that were in the area. 

The camp road leads to the east side of the lake, but we didn’t bother continuing when I realized we went the wrong way.

We turned back to the Victory Trail, continued around another corner along the swamp, and then came to the correct turn toward Sebago Beach.

Just a short distance ahead, we came to an abandoned camp on the left side, with a side road passing through it. Usually I always stop so we can look at the ruins, but this time there were already a group of people over there milling about around the buildings, so we chose to just continue on down the road.

Ahead, we reached the “New Sebago” recreation area. This area was constructed in 1952 when crowds had outgrown the original beach area to the south. 

It was open until more recent years, but has now been closed for a great many. I’ve been told it had to do with contaminated water or something like that, but I’m not really sure.
One of the restroom buildings is clearly visible from the access road from the camp, and is pretty well beat up.
I always like going through this area because it reminds me of Spruce Run where I work, and it really shows how it will deteriorate if left alone for even only a short time.

We cut down from the road to the left to pass by the old restroom building, and then back to the road again. 

There is a picnic area that stretches to the south along the west side of Lake Sebago, and a former camp area in that direction that has been long gone. There are a lot of foundations out that way, as well as an unmarked trail that leads south to the Triangle Trail.

We continued on the main access road, and then came to the area of New Sebago Beach. It has a beach complex, walkways, and picnic grounds there. The building is apparently used by park maintenance, and sometimes one of their vehicles is parked out there.

Lake Sebago was created in 1926, after completion of the dam that had been started over the Stony Brook in 1923. 

It fills the area that was once known as the Emmetsfield Swamp, and the New Sebago Beach and some submerged land was formerly the site of Johnstontown, the settlement the road we followed in the morning accessed.
The word “Sebago” means “big water” in the Algonquin language. 

When we reached the beach complex, we went down the path around it. The sidewalks were good, but every bit of vegetation around it was closing in on them.

We walked by the buildings and no one was around, and then we headed to the far side of the beach. We turned right into the picnic grounds at the east side of the north end of the lake and started heading south.

Our trajectory from Victory Trail to this area was the same as I did with Jillane last year.
We headed down through the beach area, with the overgrown picnic benches, grills and fixtures. Near the end of the cleared and formerly mowed area, a side road went up to the left, and it was not shown on any of my maps.

The woods road reached a power line clearing and turned right along it to the south for a bit.
We weaved to the right off of the power line a bit, and back on it just to keep from having to go through too much brush. We continued like this until we came to another power line clearing coming in from the left.

We turned left to follow that clearing, which was kind of weedy, but when we got to the south side of the intersection with the other clearing, there was a good path in the woods heading parallel with it.

We continued to the east for a bit through these woods, and came to a saddle in Brundige Hill. A well-developed road went to the left, of gravel, and a rough road went up hill to the right, a little more rough.

I had not looked at the map of Harriman State Park just before reaching this point, which was a mistake, but it ended up working out favorably anyway.

I had wanted to see an obscure cemetery that supposedly exists atop Brundige Hill. This was, as per the map, to the north of the intersection we had reached, but I made the mistake of going to the south and following that woods road up the south peak of Brundige Mountain (hill on some maps).

When we got to the top of the hill, there was an oddball building with seemingly no doors and a roof. At this point, I was still looking for a cemetery, and I had thought that maybe this odd building was some sort of a mausoleum.

We scoured some of the land in the slope looking for graves, and all we found were some oddly discarded boats on the southeast side of the height of the land.
I pulled my phone out and tried to look at my Harriman map again. I did try to check it a little earlier, but I hadn’t saved or screen shot the thing, so it had to reload every time I opened the phone. The problem out there was that there was almost no service whatsoever. I finally did get the thing to open up, and I realized my mistake.
That raised the question: what was this building?

I figured it out pretty quickly.
This was an above ground reservoir intended for the camp just down below on the point between where the Stony Brook and Whitney Brook sections of Lake Sebago come together, known as the Baker Camp.
I had hiked into the old Baker Camp with Jillane the last time we were out there, but this time we broke away from that at the power line intersection.

The Baker Camp was built in 1927 for the employees of four New York City Banks: First National, Bankers Trust, U. S. Trust, and New York Trust.

The camp is named for First National Bank President George F Baker Sr, who donated $50,000 to the Park Commission in 1909, $100,000 in 1917, another $100,000 in 1920, and another $100,000 in 1925.
The camp was turned over to a private concessionaire in 1986.
While currently closed, Appalachian Mountain Club reportedly plans to rehabilitate and reopen the camp. When Jillane and I had walked through it, it was looking very abandoned. Some of the cabins were in deplorable shape, sadly. 

It looks unlikely that the reservoir building will ever be used for the camp again. It might have even been built to collect rain water initially. I’m not really sure.

We turned back and headed down the south peak of Brundige Mountain. Some of the group waited below rather than climb up.
We came all the way out there, so I wasn’t going to skip going north and looking for the cemetery when that route was so much easier looking on a gravel road.
We headed to the north for a bit, and headed uphill, then came to a water tower fenced in.

We walked a little beyond this, but it was downhill a bit. The topography on the Harriman map made it seem that the cemetery should have been at the crest of the north peak of Brundige Mountain.

We looked around for any area that might be level enough, even a small family plot, but we didn’t see anything. It was kind of discouraging, but we started heading back the way we came. We looked more closely on the way back down for any sign of anything, but we saw nothing.

I’ve spent some time googling and looking up this supposed burying ground, but could never find anything on it.

We got back down to the intersection where Eric and Tom were waiting, and we all headed down to the left. This brought us a short distance to Mad Dog Road.
Mad Dog Road is a three mile long road that weaves around crazy bends on the way to the Baker Camp from Seven Lakes Drive.
Near this intersection, up in the hill is a small cave visible from the road which they called Emmett’s Cave. It’s probably something to do with Emmettsville Swamp which was there before Lake Sebago, but the old myth was that there was a witch that lived in it named Auntie Emmett, that could turn herself into a toad and preyed on passersby.
Around 1900, a man named Conklin was found dead in the cave, murdered. On his death bed, a local farmer named Schoonover confessed to the crime.

We continued on Mad Dog Road around a corner and down to Seven Lakes Drive. Just before reaching Seven Lakes Drive, the road reaches the former alignment of Seven Lakes Drive. We turned right on that out to the current road.

We turned right on Seven Lakes Drive, and only had to walk a little ways to reach our next turn off.
There was a right turn in toward the Sebago Cabins on the right. A trail immediately to the left leads on the earlier road alignment and leads out to the Lake Sebago Boat Launch.
I had done this with Jillane a year ago, and it was fine to walk, but it was getting pretty overgrown this time.
We bushwhacked up from it onto the parallel road of the Sebago Cabins because it got so bad.
When we got up there and started going left, a park police officer came up to us and told us we had to get out and that the cabins area were off limits to all put those staying there.
I tried to explain to the guy that we had been on the trail, but there was a tree down over it when left it very overgrown and we needed to get out and hoped to get back down to it on the other side.

This guy was a complete dick. He didn’t understand anything we were doing and didn’t care that we were making our way around for safety. I tried to explain that we WANTED to be on the trail, but that we weren’t able to get through safely and would go back down at a point within sight. I explained we had to get back to Sloatsburg to finish our hike.
This idiot told us he didn’t care and to get out, and we had to go right back down the slope into the same mess we came in on. His snarky attitude was such that I even quipped “Well if your trails were actually maintained, then I wouldn’t have been up here at all”.
He sat in his air conditioned SUV and watched us descend back into the mess again. Tom and Eric went back to walk Seven Lakes Drive the entire way, but I pushed through the mess of weeds because I didn’t want to miss any of the scenic stuff.

This was the first negative experience I ever personally had with an officer in Harriman, and I think it was actually the only one I’d ever had. The park is managed by Palisades Interstate Park Commission, and I’ve heard of other people having similar issues.
For a few years, the unmarked woods roads, which are used regularly to make loop hikes, were off limits to all hikers and one particular officer would hike in to the site and ticket people seen coming off of the woods roads. It was made a huge deal in the hiking community, and I understand that was all stopped fortunately.

The only interaction I’d ever had with Palisades Commission officers was in Sterling Forest when, during a conversation, I told a Ranger that we had hiked a bit of an old railroad bed that was not at the time part of the official trail system. He went on to scold me quite a lot and said it’s not allowed, and if I wanted to go off trail I should go to National Park Service properties.
As the hike continued that day, two officers followed us, and appeared at every parking lot we went to just to make sure we showed up there. Like they had nothing better to do but to wait at each parking lot I told him we would be passing by. At that point, I see it more as harassment than enforcement.

The trail did get better as we moved on along it, and we came out to the boat launch. A path from there brought us through to Old Sebago Beach. There is no sand there or anything, just grass and picnic grounds, which were surprisingly pretty full. The old beach area was first developed on the lake in 1931, and closed to swimming in 1952 with the new one opened.

We continued through from there to the southwest along the shore in the grass. When I had last hiked this, we had to go up bushwhacking to the road, but this time it was far better.
I imagine I must have just missed it the previous time, but there was a great trail right along the water that continued! We just followed that to a spot with a little island with trees and rocks, and took another dip. An excellent spot.

We moved on from here, and we emerged on a causeway of sorts approaching the Sebago Dam. I understood that there was no way to get through here because of some private property that still remained ahead, but Jason told me there was a new trail that went just below the access road, which was developed specifically because so many people were trying to hike through. This was my first time hiking that, and it worked out perfectly. We came out to Seven Lakes Drive, and only had to go a very short distance to reach the Tuxedo-Mt Ivy Trail, one of the long ones that went between two railroad stations of the same names originally.

A lot of trails used to terminate at Lake Sebago, including Hillburn-Torne-Sebago Trail, but now that terminates just a little bit down the T-MI Trail. 

We headed down hill parallel with the Stony Brook. I think Eric and Tom might have walked the road the entire way below here but I’m not sure.

We turned right from Tuxedo-Mt Ivy, and followed Hillburn-Torne-Sebago Trail only briefly to the Stony Brook Trail on the right. This lovely route follows the Stony Brook for a long way to the Pine Meadow Trail, and then Pine Meadow Trail continues along the brook all the way to Sloatsburg.
I had never followed this all the way through yet, so that was my last goal of the day.

I spent some time walking and talking with Tina about postpartum depression and such and she gave me some great advice on things in my life, which was nice (she was an OBGYN for years).
The trail comes to a really great deep pool at some point, and we stopped and took another great dip there. This part of the trail is great because fewer people make it to the spot. Parking is no longer available close by at Sebago, so it makes this spot more private.
We really needed to cool off again after the last section, and timing was perfect.

Jason went way ahead quickly, as he tends to do that when we’re on the home stretch. I think Tina went fast ahead with him. Linda and I were left in the middle, and Tom and Eric I think were out on the road, which was bad because they had to go up and down another hill up there and missed the nice brook.
We crossed the Kakiat Trail and passed Twin Egg Falls on the way.

I told them to turn off at the Reeves Meadow center and parking area.

Linda and I continued along the trail and Pine Meadow Trail came in from the left. This was an older trail as well that takes much of its original route and connects to Pine Meadow Lake.

We continued past some more people that were just walking in from Reeves Meadow when we got closer to that area. 

At Reeves Meadow, the trail crosses a bit of a meadow area, then takes on a height of land a bit more than I was expecting it to before descending to the Stony Brook again. The Stony Brook went to the other side of Seven Lakes Drive so we were up on the slope.

The trail returned to the side of Stony Brook and ended at a sort of driveway right on Seven Lakes Drive in Sloatsburg. From there, we just walked back to Rt 17 and headed south along it back to where we started the hike.
I drove back up to Reeves Meadow and picked up Eric and Tom to bring them back to the lot.
It was once again a fantastic day, even though we did probably over twenty miles. It blows my mind that so much history and diversity can be found in a park known for just being woods and mountains.