The "Catskill 9" was posted by Mike Siudy:
The "9" is a classic, tough loop hike in the Catskill Mountains of NY that traverses 9 high peaks above 3500ft. It is obvious enough on a map, there is a big crescent of trails that covers Table and Peekamoose mountains to the south and The Wittenberg, Cornell, and Slide to the north. The catch is, to connect these sections of trail you have to bushwhack the other peaks, Lone, Rocky, Balsam Cap, and Friday, as they are trailless. Each of these four summits has a canister maintained by the Catskill 3500 club, that you can sign to show that you were there. This trailless section is extremely thick woods in places requiring experience with map, compass and/or GPS navigation, all the while trying to move quickly. While I know of many people to have hiked the 9, I don't know of anyone who has tried to run it for time.
I started from the Denning parking area and headed up the Phoenicia East branch trail. These are my splits to the summits:
1. Table 56:52.
2. Peekamoose 1:06:47
3. Lone in 1:40:43
4. Rocky 2:05:58
5. Balsam Cap 2:47:11
6. Friday 3:13:25
7. Cornell 4:06:34
8. Wittenberg 4:24:12
9. Slide 5:16:50
Car 6:07:50
The whole loop was 19.6 miles with about 5700 feet of elevation. Here's the GPS track log. connect.garmin.com/activity/169726485#
As there are at least three places to start this loop. The course is up to you, but you must start and finish at the same place.
Catskill 6: This is a shorter point-to-point route summiting the first 6 peaks above. Between Moon Haw Rd and Peekamoose Rd. About 11.5 miles with 4000' of elevation gain.
