[Journal entry for February 10, 2013; Lake Wanoksink, Harriman State Park NY]. About a foot of snow fell two days ago, and the cold weather has preserved it well. It is still sparkly and powdery. I parked at the hiker’s lot off of Seven Lakes Drive, by Lake Sebago. The lot has only been partially plowed. I have brought my snow-shovel and used it to enlarge a spot for my car. I donned my snowshoes and walked first down to the public boat launch. The surface of Lake Sebago was blazing white in the snow. A few water-logged footprints near the dock suggest that the ice beneath it is not strong enough to bear weight. After admiring the view, I headed up towards Seven Lakes Drive. A White Tail Deer was standing by the parking area and allowed me to approach within a few feet. I suppose other hikers have been feeding it, but it got no handouts from me. I crossed the Drive and headed up the Seven Hills Trail (blazed in blue). A steep little climb through woods beautifully covered with snow got me over the summit of Conklin Mountain and down into the next valley, where I crossed Diamond Creek. The creek has open water, but all the protruding boulders are covered with high and smooth pillows of snow. I stoped at Monitor Rock, just past the creek, one of the south-facing scarps in the park, plucked by glaciers during the Ice Age. The Rock has two sections, a higher eastern knob with a glacial erratic boulder perched on top, and a lower, more slab-like western section that has a bit of an overhang. I have heard the western part referred to as Slab Rock; every feature in this long-hiked and much beloved park seems to have attracted its own name.

I connected with Woodtown Road, a one lake woods road, taking it eastward. Just before reaching the intersection with the Tuxedo – Mount Ivy trail (blazed in red), I sighted a small brick structure on a low ridge just north of the road. I detoured over to it to investigate. It’s a furnace or oven, a brick cube about eight feet in each dimension. It has many small hinged doorways, of the sort one might find on a wood stove, though the doors themselves are missing. It’s ruined now; I do not know its original purpose.

I continued on Woodtown Road until it joined Pine Meadow Road. This road crosses very flat terrain and is particularly good for cross-country skiing. A half-dozen or so skiers passed me as I snowshoed along it. It parallels the eastern shore of Lake Wanoksink, a long, skinny lake about two-thirds of a mile in length. The lake is anthropogenic, impounded by a long earth-fill dam on its southwestern side. The road crosses the outflow stream, which is in a broad marshy area. Snow has covered grass hummocks and built them up into white cones. I left Pine Meadow Road, taking an unblazed trail that followed the lakeshore, eastward. It afforded good views of the lake, which is pretty, though without any especially-remarkable features – just trees lining a rocky lakeshore, and bushes growing on the dam. I took the right fork when the trail split. It climbed up a cleft in a highland region, which I believe is called Pine Meadow Mountain.

I took a detour up onto the summit of the eastern part of the highland region. I was attracted by the broad snowfield atop, which I hoped would afford a nice view of Lake Wanoksink and which appeared quite pretty in its own right. I followed a deer track that ascended through a gulley in what was otherwise a fairly sheer rocky cliff, perhaps fifty feet high. The summit area had just a few trees and most of them dead; I suppose that it had burned off recently. The view northward to the lake was indeed very nice. I then retraced my path back down, continued along the trail, and soon reached Pine Meadow Lake.

Pine Meadow Lake is much larger and more interesting than Lake Wanoksink. A small rocky peninsula juts from the northwestern shore, full of huge and tumbled blocks that rise twenty feet or more above the lake. It is quite picturesque, seen from across the lake. The outflow from Pine Meadow Lake joins that of Lake Wanoksink to form Pine Meadow Brook. The section of the Wanoksink outflow between the lakes is set behind a small ridge, and flows through a small marsh. I accessed it via a short section of woods road that branches off of Pine Meadow Road and which crosses the ridge. I think that this road was built during the construction of a dam across stream. The dam seems to have been intended to create another lake along the outflow stream; it was begun but never finished. Instead, a large beaver dam crosses the stream, impounding a sizable pond upstream, though one that is quite shallow. After viewing the two dams, I retraced my way back to Pine Meadow Road and took it back. I paused where it crosses the outflow from the main Lake Wanoksink dam. I could see a lively cascade of water flowing over a broad, gently sloping rock ledge, set a few hundred feet back from the road in the woods. I was tempted to investigate, but decided in the end to leave it for another day.

I then retraced my route back to Lake Sebago. The sun was getting pretty low in the sky, so that the tree trunks on Conklin Mountain were glowing in its light.

About three hours.