{Journal entry for February 13, 2010; Day hike to The Egg]. I park at the Reeves Meadow Visitors Center off of Seven Lakes Drive in Harriman State Park. The day is overcase with temperatures in the high twenties, Fahrenheit. About eight inches of snow is on the ground. I don my snowshoes and my day pack and set out along the Pine Meadow Trail, stopping several times to admire ice formations on Reeves brook. My favorites are rows of icicles that hang down from logs and boulders to just above the level of the brook and whose shafts widen to round bulbs (and not narrow points) at the bottom. Many people are about. Some are on showshoes like me, others are just in boots. This part of the trail is well-packed, so the folk with just boots are doing fine. Reeves Brook bifurcates into two tributaries, Stony Brook and Pine Meadow Brook. The trail follows Pine Meadow Brook, and crosses it via a wooden footbridge. A little beyond is Ga-Nus-Quah Rock, a large glacial boulder that sits besides the brook near a little waterfall. A little further upstream, the brook widens into a wetland. I bushwhack across it, viewing snow formations swept out by the wind. I cross a little rivlet and fight my way through a Mountain Laurel grove and rejoing the trail, just downstream of the Pine Meadow Lake outflow.

Pine Meadow Lake about halfway to my destination. I stop at the dam, and view the lake. It's not especially spectacular, especially in the grey light of this overcaset day. But its north shore has a set of interesting rock formations - large angular blocks of granite that, like many of the other south-facing vertical scarps in the park, were formed by glacial plucking during the Ice Age. The ice on the lake looks pretty uneven. Some of it looks slushy and there are even a couple of patches of open water. I then follow the Pine Meadow Trail along the northern shore of the lake. Someone has skied this section. I pass old waterworks and a ruined stone building. Its inner walls are made from hollow red bricks, which are pretty badly decayed, in contrast to the stone exterior, which is in fine shape. I switch onto Conklins Crossing Trail when I reach the far end of the lake. It is unbroken. Here's where my snowshoes excell. I tromp uphill until I reach the ridge crest and the Suffern - Bear Mountain (SBM) Trail. The Egg, a rounded rock outcrop of the granite that makes up the long ridge that runs along the southeastern boundary of the park. The area commands a nice view of the lowlands to the southeast.

I continue north along the SBM, and cross a big gulley. It is full of big boulders and its sides are steep enough to make for difficult showshoeing. Here my poles come in handy! The Edgar Stone Memorial Shelter is perched on the northern lip of the gulley, in a open, rocky area. I meet another hiker there; he has come up from the south, via the Tuxedo - Mt Ivy Trail. We chat as I set up the MSR Stive and make my lunch: a rice dish and hot cider. The shelter, which was built un 1935, is in pretty good condition, though its floor has sagged a bit. It seems to be built up against a rock face, for its rear wall seems to be one big slab, and not a series of fitted stones like the other walls. Unlike many of the other Harriman Park lean-tos, this shelter has a front-central column, also of fitted stone, that seconds as a fireplace. It closes up the shelter a bit, which is probably a good thing on a cold, windy night. After lunch, I take Pine Meadow Road back to Pine Meadow Trail. This woods road crosses the gulley a bit further north than the SBM, in a place where the gulley's walls are more subdued. The gulley appears to end just a little uphill from the road. I detour up to the terminus, and find that it widens out into a wetland. It is the source of the little stream that flows in the gulley, and which is the shelter's water source. My map shows that a large patch of land north of the road is marshy, with some parts being drained here and others by streams that lead down to Pine Meadow Lake. I reach Pine Meadow Lake again, and detour over to the cliff face, examing the large angular blocks that stand about twenty feet above lake level. The lake looks especially deep here, so I suppose that I am seeing only the top section of a now-submerged cliff. The area around the dam, where several trails meet, has become quite crowded with hikers. I chat with one of the big groups; they have come up from New York City. The sky has been brightening throughout the day, and I can now see the sun through the overcast. I can see my shadow now. I continue along the Pine Meadow Trail, taking it back past Ga-Nus-Quah Rock and Reeves Brook, back to the Reeves Meadow parking lot. About seven hours, overall.