Sherrill Mountain

The story behind the mountain

Fourteen of them have no trail.

There are 35 peaks in the Catskills above 3,500 feet. Fourteen of them have no trail. Sherrill is one of those.

To reach those summits you follow a compass bearing through dense forest, watch for ledges that drop out from under the ridgeline, and hope the tree you are looking for is the one with a blaze-orange PVC canister bolted to it. Inside is a notebook and a pencil. You sign your name. Nobody reads it.

Fewer than 5,000 people have finished the list since 1962.

I started climbing them in a year I would not want back. The mountains were not therapy. They were somewhere to go on a Saturday when the apartment was too small and the week had been too long. I kept going because each peak taught me something the next one required. Later I led hikes for other aspirants, which is a polite way of saying I walked twelve strangers into the woods and promised to walk them back out.

You learn the Catskills by elevation and by smell. Hardwood at the parking area. Balsam and fir as the grade steepens. Above 3,000 feet the firs thin into bushes and ferns, and the air goes cold and wet and green in a way you can identify with your eyes closed.

That is what I am trying to get into a jar, a bottle, and a room.

Sherrill Mountain started with a candle because it was the hardest thing to get right and the fastest way to find out if I could. Everything that follows it holds to the same rule. It has to come from somewhere specific, and I have to have been there.

None of this is on a map. There are no Wikipedia entries for the pregnant tree on Friday Mountain. Only the people who have walked the herd path know which one leads to the canister on Southwest Hunter. It is knowledge that has to be collected in person, one weekend at a time, and it does not transfer any other way.

Sherrill Mountain is made in small batches for the people who went and got it.