Lily Pond

Lily Pond, Harriman State Park (12/31/2011)

For the last hike of 2011, we headed back to Harriman to do a circuit of my own invention made entirely of woods roads, camp roads, unmaintained trails and a small walk on Seven Lakes Drive. Nearly all of it was unblazed, except for the first tenth of a mile or so. We also worked in a spur to the bank of Breakneck Pond.

We parked at the Lake Sebago boat launch on Seven Lakes Drive and started by taking the ski trail NE. At Seven Lakes Drive, instead of continuing on the ski trail (a stretch we already hiked a year ago), we headed north on the shoulder of Seven Lakes Drive, and then headed east on the woods road labeled Pine Meadow Road on the NYNJTC Southern Harriman map. We took this all the way to the woods road labeled Cranberry Mountain Trail and continued on that path east. Before making a left on the pave Old Turnpike, we climbed Cranberry Mountain to the banks of Breakneck Pond, a lovely lunch spot (though in our case it was too early for lunch). Heading NW on Old Turnpike we eventually ended at Lake Welch Drive (which was still open to traffic, surprisingly). We took the unmaintained trail heading west to Lily Pond, another beautiful lunch spot and one that we took advantage of, eating atop a nice rock overlooking the lovely pond.

After lunch we continued west eventually coming out on Lake Welch Drive. We walked the shoulder (less than a few minutes) to Seven Lakes Drive which we took south for not more than 5 minutes, next taking a woods road south, skirting Brundage Hill just north. This turned into a paved camp road which we took to Seven Lakes Drive. We walked the shoulder of that road for not much more than 5 minutes, seeing four deer up close (ironically all the wildlife was on a paved park road). Finally we took the ski path back to the car.

Total distance hiked today was nearly 6 miles in 3.5 hours.

(Click on the thumbnail to bring up a bigger image in a pop-up window)