If I were to say “I got 3 of the 4 Seward peaks” I suspect all ADK hikers would be able to guess which one I didn’t get… Yeah, it was Seymour..  
 

I started from the parking lot on the rd from Coreys. I took this trail past the first lean-to and onto the truck rd. I found the herd path marked by a cairn next to a bridge. I would later learn from another hiker that this path is known as the north path.  
 

This was the first time I’ve ever been on an Adirondack herdpath before, and let me say: it was both a pleasure and a horror at the same time. The pleasure was that it was very well defined; the horror was that it was badly eroded, very wet, and had very poor footing! The going was very slow up this path but I made it alive: as another trip report said “there are lots of opportunities to break your leg on this path”. 
 

The clouds were still low at the time I summitted. The best view on this peak was looking north from the so called “headwall” which is a giant slab of vertical rock resulting in a wall like structure. 
 

The herd path between Seward and Donaldson started off with some fairly dense spruce but opened up and became an eroded rocky path which swung east and avoided some of the smaller sub peaks. The path reached another better path at a cairn just below the summit. I had absolutely no idea what this path was at the time. 
 

There was a vista with great westward views just before the actual summit which had even better views looking eastward.  
 

The path leading to Emmons was not much in the way of vertical but it was plenty in the way of mud! All the people I met while hiking I met on this section, all 12 of them! On Emmons there I encountered a man with extensive ADK knowledge. He asked me a question that was asked of me a few times before “which way did you come up?” I didn’t quite know how to answer this. He said “Caulkins?” I ignorantly said “yes”. We talked a bit more when I finally figured out that Calkins was the other path I encountered near Donaldson. He told me all these wondrous stories of what a great trail it was and all these horror stories about the dreaded North trail. He also informed me that there was not likely a herd path leading down the col to Seymour and the only way I would be able to tag that peak was to do the dreaded route of heading back down to ward brook and all the way up to Seymour (that’s a lot of miles).  
 

I opted to take Caulkins down to the road instead of dealing with the north path! Sure enough this trail was in excellent condition and even had chain sawed blow downs! Caulkins path reached the horse trail/road at a right angle turn (I turned right). This road leads to the main path which leads to wards lean to at the sign indicating 1.2 miles from the parking lot.