Catskill reqd winter peaks in not so winter conditions TR

This weekend I met up with a couple buds for some Catskills Peakbagging. While it was still winter, it certainly did not feel anything like winter.

Crazypace and I hiked up to Giant Ledge last Thursday night in tshirts. It was atleast 50 degrees at the start of the hike at 11pm that night. We barebooted it up the icy trail and only slipped a few times. The wind was howling up on the ledge. We were supposed to meet another friend up on the ledge. Jackstraw arrived before us and should have already been in camp, we were hoping he'd have a riproaring fire going, but he was no where to be found. He's an experienced hiker/camper and a scout leader, so we knew he'd be ok. I still searched the length of the ledge just to be sure. The wind was so loud, he'd never heard me.

Sleep that night was scetchy. I straight up bivvied. The wind was so loud, the gusts would wake me up every now and then. Crazypace, trail testing out his new BD lightsabre bivvy, got tossed around in the wind that night and got almost no sleep. I managed to salvage most of the night.

The following morning, after breakfast and while packing up camp, we found our lost hiker. Turns out he was camped a mere 50 yards from us on the other side of a rock ledge.

We stashed our packs and headed up to Panther. The trail was icy and snowwy in some parts, but we made it to the top by bare booting it. Jackstraw had a nasty fall on the way down, but was ok. The views on Pather, albiet a tad socked in, were amazing. Especially on one of the ledges on the way down from the summit.

We got back to the trailhead around noon and then drove down the road to the Slide Mountain Trailhead. We hiked up to Slide via the WCS trail. The trail is a grind, climbing almost 2000 feet in 3 miles, but it's not that steep, it just goes on and on. Again the trail was pretty icy, but we managed with the crampons remaining in the packs. The snow was fairly deep above 4,000 feet. The view near the summit was stunning. You could see more than half of the high peaks. We hung out on the summit rock for a few minutes and then turned back for the descent. We bootskied on the way down while there was a lot of snow. That was a lot of fun.

Friday night we stayed at the black bear lodge and stuffed ourselves with steak and beer. We were all crashed out before 9pm. We had to make up for not getting good sleep the night before. The next day's plans called for a long day.

TBC

part two

Saturday morning came fast. My alarm went off at 6. We got up and had breakfast and coffee and we were on our way to McKennley Hollow around 7 where we met up with Pennsy. We had over night packs and day packs. We stashed the overnight packs in Crazypaces vehicle and shuttled over to Burnham Hollow with our daypacks in Jackstraws vehicle. The goal was to camp at the McKennley hollow lean-to, which is a short distance from the trailhead at a half mile. We planned to hike down to the cars, drop off the daypacks and then return to the lean-to with the overnight packs.

By the time we were saddled up and ready to hike, it was nearing 9am. We checked the compas one more time and headed due south and before long we were bushwacking up the north face of Fir Mountain. We followed the ridge up. The route was pretty straight forward. Every now and then we would see a cairn or prints in the snow, so we knew we were going the right direction.

Pennsy had his GPS and he was monitoring it as we neared the summit. As soon as he said three tenths of a mile, I could see the height of land in the distance and I darted ahead. I wanted to find the the canister with out instruments. I walked straight to it. That was my first canister. I've been on SW Hunter, but it's such a jungle up there, I couldn't find the canister. Fir was really straight forward. I really enjoyed this peak. This was my first true bushwack in the Catskills.

From there we set our sights on Big Indian, although, we could not see it. We had it orienteered on the map and the specs on the GPS. We were intent on locating the ridge that separates the two mountains. The ridge is tricky to find, because Fir isn't that open and there is no recognizable ridge coming off the mountain. We got lucky after heading a little too far north. We spotted a lower ridge and almost started hiking towards it when Jackstraw found the one we wanted. We then made our way over to that ridge and hiked down into the saddle.

Coming off of Fir the snow got really deep. Nearly every step was knee deep and waist deep at times. In the lowest (narrowest) part of the saddle, every step was waist deep. The climb up to Big Indian was pretty easy. Again the cannister revealed itself without much searching. We had lunch at the canister and then hiked down to the Pine Hill West Branch Trail and turned north towards Eagle.

The trail seemed somewhat over grown, but well marked. By this point, it was the warmest of the day. It had to be around 60. It was beautiful.

We summited Eagle, found the rock cairn just off the trail and continued north, hiking over Haynes and met up with some other hikers out for the day while descending Haynes.

We stashed our daypacks in the col between Haynes and Balsam and quickly climbed Balsam for the last peak of the day. The views seemed grown in, but you could still Olivera down below through the brush.

It was starting to get cloudy. The hike down into McKennley Hollow was super steep, but beautiful, especially when the steep part ended. The McKennley Hollow leanto is in the perfect spot. I definately need to camp there sometime.

Due to the forecasted rain, we decided to skip the camping and we all headed for home after the abligatory post hike dinner at the Alamo in Phonecia.

The trip was a success. We got 3 out of the 4 winter peaks during winter, but minus winter conditions. Crazypace and I already got Blackhead last month. All the other peaks were bonus. We missed Halcott which was planned for Sunday, but that peak will be waiting for us another day, perhaps when we return for North Dome, Sherrill and Rusk.

Sorry I missed you guys on Sunday at the LCCS. I'll have to loop for your respective TR's.

I'll be returning to the 'skills April 7-9th to get Lone through Friday. Hope to see some of you.

Pictures to follow.

Glad you're enjoying the Catskills. Your experience on Fir is typical of many peaks-it's "real" bushwhacking, but yet not too difficult. A great way to have a little challenge w/o a great deal of risk. Some of those next peaks you're after are like that too-Rusk, Halcott, etc. Nice that you've gotten those 4 peaks in before winter's end, so now you're set to finish whenever.

Did you guys see the John Burroughs plaque on Slide? It's on the side of the summit rock.

Matt

Hey EarthNSky, are you planning on going to the catskills 3500 dinner in Kingston, you don't have to have finished, but it sounds like you're well on your way. We have 1 full table and 1 table in progress on a thread at adkhighpeaks.com/forums in the catskills section there...

If you did Halcott on Sunday, you'd probably have a good shot of catching us at LCCS, since we were there fairly early since Windham is a quick peak to do. I think we were there around 2pm and was there til 3:30ish

Jay