The next peaks I am going to do will start the bushwacks.  First up, I'll be doing Bear Pen and Vly.  These 2 are described as relatively easy as it starts off with woods road and then it's snowmobile tracks to Bear Pen and following the park border the opposite side to vly.   I can come in to that ridge "trail" from the north or the south, and I believe I' will do it from the north as it allows me to get to Halcott easier.  The only issue I'm having with map planning is that these are not trails so I'm relying on someone's All Trails GPS tracks for how to do these, and they have wandered from what I can tell.... but we're talking about 7 miles here and a couple thousand feet elevation gain/loss.  It should be an easy hike.

Then we will go and do Halcott.  This one is truly a herd path that can be followed.  It's basically go up the spine of the mountain until you hit the ridge, then follow the ridge to the peak.  Again, there are no trails on the maps out there, so it's following someone's GPS tracks for planning.  There is a secondary way from the parking area that you can go to make it a loop, but recent reports are that is rather overgrown.  So, I don't plan to do that.  This will be 4 miles and another 1800 foot of elevation gain/loss.  A little steeper, but still not that bad.

With the Catskill 35ers, they are a decade or so behind the 46ers in how the trailess trails are and the use of canisters.  The 46ers were forced by the DEC to abandon the use of canisters on the trailess peaks where you could write in your name/date so you are verified to have done the peak.  The 35ers still require that.  The 35er trailess trails are also still not well defined, unlike the 46er herd paths.  So, bushwack is a more apt term for them.  This will probably be the first time in years that I actually take my compass out of my pack, take a bearing, and use it.  It will be fun!  (and GPS will be there so I can verify I'm not off track)