The Fourteen Peaks With No Trail
Twenty-one of the thirty-five Catskill high peaks have a trail to the top. This post is about the other fourteen.
They are the bushwhacks. No blazes, no worn tread, no sign at the junction because there is no junction. To reach the summit you take a compass bearing off the map, pick a line through the forest, and hold it while the terrain does everything it can to push you off it.
The canister
You are not walking to a view. Most of these summits have none. Balsam and fir close over the top and the trees stand about your height, so the true high point is a guess until you find the proof.
The proof is a canister. A length of blaze-orange PVC bolted to a tree, with a notebook and a pencil sealed inside. You sign your name and the date. On a good day the last entry is from that morning. On Halcott or North Dome it can be three weeks old. You sign, you close it up, and you start the harder work of finding your way back down.
How you actually navigate
Bearing first. You set a heading before you leave the trail and you trust it more than you trust the ground, because the ground lies. A ridge that looks like it runs to the summit will bend away from it. A clearing that looks like progress is a blowdown patch that will cost you twenty minutes.
Then herd paths. On the more-climbed bushwhacks, Southwest Hunter, Big Indian, Balsam Cap, enough people have walked the same rough line that a faint path shows in the duff. It is not a trail. It disappears at the worst moments. But if you know it is there, and you know where it starts, it saves you an hour of fighting.
The rest is balsam. Above 3,000 feet the firs grow in tight, and getting through them is less like hiking and more like swimming. You come off Rocky or Lone with sap on your hands, needles down your collar, and the smell of crushed fir in everything you are wearing.
Why none of this is online
You can read that Friday Mountain has a canister. You cannot read which tree. There is a particular deformed fir near the top, split low into two trunks, that people who have been there use as a marker, and the only way to know it is to have stood next to it.
That is true of all fourteen. The map gets you to the mountain. It does not get you to the summit. The last quarter mile is knowledge held by the people who went, passed hiker to hiker, and it does not exist in any other form.
Sherrill is one of the fourteen. It is the one we named the company after, because getting it right meant going back more than once.
If you want to try one
Southwest Hunter is the gentlest introduction. An old rail grade does most of the climbing, the herd path is well established, and the canister is not far off the grade. Save Balsam Cap, Friday, and Lone for later. Bring a compass, know how to use it, and tell someone your bearing before you go.
Catskill Forest No. 01 is balsam fir, hemlock moss, and bluestone. It is built off exactly this: the smell of the balsam above 3,000 feet, which is the part of a trailless peak that stays with you longest.