[Journal entry for January 31, 2010] The day is perfectly clear with temperatures in the mid-twenties, Fahrenheit. I park in the lot below the Lake Ascoti Dam, off of Seven lakes Drive. The lake is mostly frozen and snow covered but the skating sign says its ice is too thin to be safe. I hike westward along the Long Path, first along the lakeshore and then up through laurel groves and woods to join the the Dunning Trail. It runs along an old mining road that served the Hogencamp iron mine. I can see several piles of mine waste, their mounds plainly anomalous amongst the boulder strewn landscape. I can also make out a pit and several trenches of the mine, itself. Many of the cliff faces along this section of the trail - and there are many - are adorned by beautiful icicles.

The Bowling Rocks area is part of a region of the park that has little topsoil, only sparse vegetation and many areas of bare rock pavement. The Bowling Rocks is an especially large open area, the bowling lanes, dotted with glacial boulders typically three to five feet in diameter, the bowling balls. I walk around the area for a few minutes, viewing it from different perspectives.

I then bushwhack northward, joining the Ramapo-Dunderburg trail near Ship Rock. I pass much beautiful scenery, made up of the building blocks of this region - tan rock pavement, tan to brown boulders, beige grass, red to brown bushes, isolated trees on the skyline and gnarled fallen tree trunks. I cross one sizable gulley, the same one that makes a little canyon further downstream and which I visited on my Lake Skannatati hike last year. I've been here before, because the gulley harbors a little stream that is the water source for nearby Bald Rock Shelter. The rock here, a very solid gneiss or granite, is cut by many aplite dikes. I pass a few boulder caves on the side of the gulley. Ascending the gulley is a bit difficult. I am woken up when I grab onto a sapling whose trunk turns out to be encrusted in small thorns. I connect with the Ramapo-Dunderburg trail at the top of a bit rock outcrop, a little further to the north.

Ramapo-Dunderburg takes me back down into the valley, past a stand of now-dead Hemlock trees, to the trail intersection called Times Square. I connect with the Long path, and take it back towards my start. I pass a triangular archway between several house-sized blocks. It is big enough to walk through. Nearby is a tall vertical cliff, one of the many in the Hudson Highlands formed by glacial plucking during the Ice Age. It is decorated by many icicles.

I veer off of the Long Path as I approah Lake Kanawauke, and take a woods road that runs along its shore. I am delighted to come across a sizable stream that has created a sizable delta as it flows into the Lake. The delta is vegetated with hummocky grass, and sports several distinct distributary channels, two of which are too wide for me to walk across - I must step from stone to stone. I follow the channels uphill, and find a beautiful little waterfall, running through a pile of angular boulders. Nearby this general area is a decaying concrete structure that may be some sort of flume.

I am always amazed to come across new places like this one. I have been hiking ih Harriman Park for many years and thought I had seen all the sights. But the Park continues to suprise me, now and then.

From Lake Kanawauke, I head north to the Lake Skannatati dam, which is located on that lakes's south shore. I then walk over to Seven Lakes Drive and follow it back to my car. The sun is getting pretty low on the horizon, making interesting shadows of trees stretches out on the snowy surface of the lake.

About two and a half hours.