I actually had never been here and my friend Mike had climbed it for the winter summit. He said it was mighty steep and since we had barely a few hours of daylight left we decided to camp at the McKinley lean-to, forgo the tents, and head up to the ridge in the morning.
McKinley Hollow near dusk
After working for 7 hours, driving for 3 hours, and hiking for 30 minutes I'm ready for bed
Glad the fire-ban is over!
In the morning we got up with the bird shrill before 5, and then I couldn't get back to sleep. We started moving around by 5:45 and got breakfast going. We filled up on water for the long day we had ahead of us. Since we camped at the base of the mountain we now had to climb all 4 peaks, and hike the entire length of the ridge in one day.
McKinley Hollow has some really nice elevation gain right after the lean-to. It crosses the stream and then takes you up past some stairs and some switchbacks.
From McKinley we dropped our packs and headed up to Balsam summit with just water and my camera.
Balsam summit
Once on top we headed over to our only anticipated viewpoint for the day and found out we were in the depths of a cloud =*(
After returning to our backpacks we shouldered the load and headed up Haynes mountain. This was a spot I had never been to and the ferns were in full presentation. I enjoyed this side of Eagle more than I remember any other of my climbs up Eagle. There were some really cool rock formations and a nice little balsam fir forest after passing 3500.
3500 sign on the north/east side of Eagle
Summit of Eagle:
After summiting we headed over to the col and then up Big Indian. I decided to start the bushwack 1/2 mile early, and instead of heading all the way around the false summit, down and then up, we just cut right through to the top. The vegetation was extremely wet and thick and I was glad I brought long pants.
Bushwacking on Big Indian:
Summit canister on Big Indian:
From Big Indian we had to make it across the col to Fir. I had also never been in this particular spot in the Catskills since I had only ever climbed Fir from the Biscuit Brook. On the way down to the col we encountered several cliffs, some thick vegetation, and a few obstacles. The first was a series of cliffs near the summit of Big Indian. There was a couple that were at least 20 feet but it looked like an easy descent according to topographic maps. Also there were several very flat spots. These can be just as dangerous as the steep parts, since without any visual landmarks it is hard to walk in a straight line on flat spot.
Further along there was a small "knob" of about 10 feet of elevation gain which we started walking around until I said it was silly and we decided to go up and over. The next issue was toward the edge of that limb, before the final descent into the col there was a thick patch of Firs with a clearing in the middle. This clearing was bare rock and there was a small cairn on it. I called it a "campsite" but who knows? From here there were two apparent paths, to the left and to the right. After heading out of the "campsite" we started going down too many cliffs and were descending down the wrong side and would miss the col. I had to re-route us back across the limb and into the col. Just a warning to people working without GPS that it can get very dicey with navigation when there are full foliage cover, as we had no landmarks for navigation.
A map of the bushwack:
![Image](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-pVAe1_bUFgM/VWtkx78A0tI/AAAAAAAApjM/tgtocRQUan0/s640/MAPS-bushwack2.jpg)
From the col up Fir it's actually pretty easy. There are few if any cliffs, and the elevation gain is mostly slight.
"Censorship on Fir"
After this summit I knew the way, and that it was all downhill, I forgot about the wet seeps on the southern side of Fir but we just tromped around them and then down to the Biscuit Brook. This was one of the best sights of that day:
"Civilization"
Take a hike!
Total hike was around 14 miles, including 4 miles of bushwacking. I don't know how much time it took as we had lots of breaks, the overnight. We finished by 1:30pm on Saturday.
-jon