"We had been advised to skip lake Arnold and the floating logs so this loop hike turned into an out and back on the van hovenburg trail. Summiting Marcy a second time on our return was fun and so was grey and our little “fall” skylight was an easy up and down" — Anurseandapainter • Jun 21, 2023

"Got to the Loj at 6:15 am, lot was already full. Had to park about 0.75 miles down the road, added some distance to the overall hike. Easy hike to Marcy Dam, Lake Arnold trail was a good climb. Descended to the floating logs, which were tricky and wet. Mount Marcy climb was a long ascent to the Gray Peak herd path, which was also steep and muddy with a few technical scrambles. Gray summit was mostly wooded but had a few lookouts with views all around of Whiteface, Colden, Marcy, Dix, etc. Descended to the Gray junction then made our way to Skylight junction. Trail up to the summit was basically a creek bed, a little less wet and difficult than Gray's ascent. Skylight summit was wide open with amazing 360 views of all the surrounding ranges, one of the best summit views in the Adirondacks. Returned the same way we came. Overall an ideal weather, but long, wet, and muddy day." — gregoryskiba • Sep 26, 2021

"After Redfield, we ate lunch at the Uphill brook campsite only to find a man had decided that of all the trees in this campsite area and in the entire wilderness, he wanted to pitch his hammock within arms reach of James' hammock. "You better not snore," I muttered as I walked by, not knowing he was taking a nap in there. There were open campsites around ours, but for some reason, this guy decided to just camp within ours! We pushed it out of our minds and then proceeded to Gray and Skylight. Gray was a steep, rooty herdpath to the top. View was good but we didn't stay long because we also had to do Skylight. We saw lots of people around Lake Tear of the Clouds. Skylight was our final 46er peak. The view was great and a nice guy at the top took our picture. We finally had good weather and it was sunny. On the way down, I convinced James to stay one more night at Uphill brook. This was a big mistake. The man who decided to pitch his hammock about 1 foot from James' snored loudly ALL NIGHT. Even when you hike 8 miles into the backcountry, you can still be kept up all night by someone else. We didn't sleep a wink. What a way to end the 46." — hanawalton • Jul 28, 2021

"Tom and I did the trio of Cliff, Redfield and Gray on a cloudy drizzly day with wind on the summits. No views and plenty of water and mud on the trails/herd paths to soil ourselves quite well. Puts Tom at 39 peaks towards his 46r quest." — Nimblefoot • Sep 1, 2020

"Went from Upper Works to the Loj because I wanted to explore all of the above treeline of Marcy. Trip to Gray was great, including the climb down the ledge early on. Went up to Skylight where the blue skies were gone, it turned cold and I could see rain in the distance off to the west. Climbed steeply up the southern approach to Marcy. Arrived on the summit of Marcy for #44 in the rain. Stayed for only a couple of minutes then headed down while assisting a hiker who had lost the two women in the group she was hiking with. She was reunited with her hiking mates just below the summit crags and then the sun came out. I returned the 1/2 mile back up to the summit of Marcy where I could see my finish line in the distance: Whiteface. Stayed up at the summit to see the full 360 of mountains that I had climbed and had a bite to eat. Was so pumped that my ADK journey was soon coming to a close." — JMindlin12463 • Jul 29, 2020

"Tom, Black and I left the Upper Works lot at 6 am @ 48 degrees in a light breeze. We planned on hiking Redfield and or Cliff today. We didn't realize that we missed the Redfield trail till we hit the Feldspar trail a half mile beyond. So we continued on to Gray Peak. Left Gray summit and headed to Skylight. Returned to car at 5:55 after submitting Skylight." — garyogden • Aug 25, 2019

"We took advantage again of a 3 day weekend to do Gray, Skylight, Cliff & Redfield.We arrived on Friday at the Upper works trail-head and started around 1h00pm. We set out to camp at the Up Hill Lean to. It took us about 5 and a half to get there. The weather was hot and it slowed us down during mid point. Still we felt good about the hike. We intend as always to camp in our tent. luckily, there were not many people (benefits of arriving on a Friday afternoon).We were glad that the camp site was next to the uphill brook. We had fresh water to filter.We started our hike on Saturday morning around 8h00am.  First we headed for Gray mountain. Our pace was good. There were some good climbing near the summit. The last main one appear quite difficult and a little bit dangerous. Fortunately, someone that was already at the top of the section, told us of a passage on the right.So at 10h30 we were at the top of Gray. We took a 30 minutes break to take some pictures and snack. Next stop: Skylight. The hike getting there was absolutely amazing. We kept stopping to gaze at the view and taking pictures. It took us 2 hours to get at the top of Skylight.After staying a little. We started to descend..." — CPaquin • Aug 2, 2019

"What an EPIC Day! With three w46er Mountain summits climbed, Grey Peak, Skylight and Mount Marcy highest point of New York State. 18 miles covered with Matt Topgun Peacock. Snowshoes most of the way, good pack trails, Started around 7:30 am till 8:30pm, out in the dark and totally exhusted but we did it! It was steak for dinner tonight! Enjoy" — ramjet1963 • Mar 9, 2019

"I had never planned to finish on Gray, not even when I started the day. The plan was to finish on Marcy, but I read the map wrong and took it as a sign that I should continue on the path and hit Marcy first, Skylight second, and finally my 46er finish on Gray. I couldn't have asked for a better day. It will be one I always remember and hold dear." — Right-On • Oct 27, 2017

"#44, with Caet Cash. I waited for over a month for a weather window during one of my days off, and when I finally saw one for this day, I jumped on it, despite predictions of well-below-zero temperatures. We started out from Upper Works, at about a 0645. We made good time out to Flowed Lands, and scurried along to Calamity Brook, where we saw a few other hikers, all of whom were headed up Marshall for the day. A pair of them warned us they had failed to get Gray the previous day. With that in mind, we kept our faces covered and continued on to Uphill Leanto, and then toward the 4 corners. The trail conditions were fantastic, all slick trails, only microspikes required- a welcome relief as snowshoeing on a long hike like this would've been brutal. We ran into two guys at the start of the trail to Gray who had just came down, and let us know there was an odd reroute due to a serious ice slide on the trail proper. There were a few strange herd paths here and there, but we located the correct one, and as we were told, it was a long-ish route wayyy out to the right which then swung a hard left before continuing up again to the actual summit, which we hit at 13:15. This path was pretty ..." — kellieirene • Mar 5, 2017