[Bill Menke's Journal Entry for Martin Luther King Day, January 16, 2006]. I snowshoed around Island Pond in Harriman Park this afternoon and took some photos. I parked at the crescent-shaped pullout on Route 106, east of Tuxedo, NY, and headed north along Island Pond Road. The stream there is flowing briskly from all the recent rain (as indeed were all the streams that I would encounter later in the day). The snow here is thicker than in southern Rockland County, and is perhaps four to six inches deep. I guess that some skiers consider that sufficient, for there are tracks here. I suppose that I would, too, on a golf course! However, I prefer snowshoes, because they handle better in thin snow that has protruding rocks, and because they can take more abuse. Yet they offer better traction than do boots alone. Island Pond Road has some pretty spots, today: places where it is overhung by arching, snow-encrusted evergreens; places where it crosses streams that are lined with ice and which have protruding snow hummocks; places where it crosses marshes full of phragmites grass. A small stream flows over the road at one of these marshy spots. I tiptoed across it - if one can tiptoe on snowshoes - on a rather-too-thin branch that some previous hiker had left as a bridge. I met a park ranger, a woman in her 40's dressed in a Smoky-the-Bear uniform, on Island Pond Road. I was surprised to meet a ranger so far from the highway, and without any sort of vehicle. She is only the third such that I have met in hundreds - perhaps thousands - of miles of hiking in Harriman. I made a short side trip to the Boston Mine, one of the many Revolutionary War Era iron mines in the park. Its adit was decorated by many icicles, which sparkled in the sun. Very photogenic! Island Pond itself proved harder to photograph. Its edges are overgrown by laurel and other tall bushes, so it was hard to get a good shot from its west bank. I did quite a bit of scrambling to manage even one halfway decent vantage point. I crossed the Island Pond exit stream via the Appalachian Trail foot bridge. Its bed has been modified with some sort of old spillway, made of stone, but which is pretty eroded now. I met two hikers at the bridge, who introduced themselves as Mike and Fred from Monroe, New York. They had left the parking lot at Lake Skannatati, off of Seven Lakes Drive, and had walked a section of the Long Path. But they were lost now. They had water bottles, but they seemed to have little other equipment. I pulled out my trail map and discussed options with them. This section of the Park has a very complex maze of trails, so much so that one multi-trail junction is called Times Square. In the end I decided to lead them partway back, to where they could follow a relatively simple route back to their car. We had several challenging stream crossings, but Mike and Fred handed them well. I led them southward, first along the AT, but then along a complicated series of woods roads and trails that that generally paralleled the eastern shore of the Island Pond, finally to a point on the White Bar Trail where it intersects the Dunning Trail. At that point, I offered to either give them directions to their car, which was perhaps a mile or so away, or to lead them to mine and give them a ride. They opted to hike. I retrieved a pen from my belt pack and drew them a map, making sure that they saw the plethora of safety gear that I carry with me on hikes such as this one. I then pointed them in the right direction and saw them off with a handshake. They were young - in their late twenties or early thirties, I guess - and seemed pretty fit, so I don't imagine that they had any trouble. Further down the White Bar Trail, I came across a very beautiful, if ephemeral, snow sculpture: a set of concentric rings carved in the snow by a leaf, anchored to a short stem that just protruded from the snow. The strong wind last night must have blown it round and round, slowly scraping deep, circular grooves in the snow. I reached the car about two hours and forty minutes after beginning the hike. I stopped by Jessie's Bagels, on Route 17 in Sloatsburg, New York, for a snack as I drove on home.