The Cornell Slide

This was a very special hike. I had been eyeballing this place for a long time. One thing I love to do, is go onto google maps or satellite maps and check out the photos that the satellites took recently of earth. Sometimes, you might find something that not many people have seen before or even had visited. While I was exploring the maps I found a little gash on one of the mountains. It looked like a ledge had fallen and wiped out a decent amount of trees as it went down the mountain. In geology terms, we call this a slide.

Slides are fairly unusual in the Catskills. Further up north, like in the Adirondacks and the White Mountains, slides are common because of the loose and thin soil on the rock of the mountains. The soil will become wet and heavy and eventually will lose grip on the rock of the mountain, causing a massive slide of mud, rock and trees. The Catskills have very thick soil and not much slides occur on the mountains. Actually, some mountains in the Catskills were used for farming!

I had contacted my then facebook friend James about this slide. James has explored so much of the Catskills and I had a feeling that he would have knowledge on this slide. James is a 3500er, a Catskills 67er, Catskill 100 highest and a Catskill 200 highest. He's also has many other clubs under his belt, like the Adirondack 46 and he is on his way to the Vermont 100 highest and the Adirondack 100 highest. He is a very knowledgeable man of the mountains and if someone were to know of this slide, he would be one of them. James confirmed that he knew about the slide and wanted to explore it. We set a time, place and date. This is going to be epic.

The slide we found had occurred on the south west side of the massive Cornell Mountain. Standing at 3,860 feet, Cornell is the 8th highest in the Catskills. You can approach it from Slide Mountain or from Wittenberg Mountain, which both are marked trails. Because of the location of the slide, we couldn't approach it from either of those ways. It was too steep to descend down and therefore, too risky. It would also add a lot of extra miles to the hike. We decided that we had to bushwhack up from the south. This was still a very risky way to approach it, because it's super steep. James had hiked Cornell from the same way once and said that it was almost too steep to climb up. But he eventually found a way up and around.

Now, I had never met James face to face before, but I admired his amazing stories of his hikes and adventures that he takes. Some of his hikes that he does are unbelievable. He finds the oddest stuff that has an amazing amount of history behind it and peruses it. I was very excited. Travis said he would also like to join on this hike. I told him it is not one to miss!!

Since the hike was very unpredictable, we had to get off to a very early start. The whole hike is a total bushwhack through some of the most secluded areas of the Catskills. Not many people hike here, only the dedicated ones who enjoy the total serenity of the forest and what it has to offer. We were also going to be facing some crazy terrain along the way. Near the slide, it is super steep with young conifer trees blocking the ground, so taking our time was critical. We met James at the Moonhaw parking lot and were on our way.

We had to skirt around some private property in the beginning, but after that it was smooth sailing along one of the Wittenberg Brooks. The one thing that was a pain in the ass was the damn nettles. It was mid summer, so they were in full bloom standing at waist high. If you don't know what nettles are, look them up. Pain in the ass. Actually, more of a pain in the skin!!

We usually call these areas the "sea of nettles'.

The first 1.5 miles had little elevation gain, as we followed one of tributaries of the Wittenberg Brook. It was pretty easy going because there was a lot of logging roads from the past days.

James capturing the beauty of the Moonhaw.

One of the many cascading waterfalls we saw on the way up.

One of the many battles we had to face while climbing up. Blowdown, massive boulders and small, slippery rocks gave us a run for the money.

We got to a fork of one of the creeks and we decided to check out another slide. The Friday Slide. This slide happened in the mid 70's and was a big one. One of my friends climbed it back in the days and said that it was very messy and smelled horrible. The rotting wood from the slide stunk up the valley. Once again, slides are very rare in the Catskills, so it was a big deal.

Now since, this slide happened in the 70's, a lot of it was overgrown and filled with small saplings. We checked it out briefly, took pictures and headed back down to the fork. Here's some photos of the Friday slide:

The view of Cornell Mountain from one of the embankments of the slide. We are headed about 3/4 of the way up that massive mountain!!

Travis and James climbing up the steep side of the Friday slide.

After checking out the Friday slide, we finally started gaining some elevation and started our way up to the Cornell Slide. In just under .7 miles, we had gained almost 1300 feet of elevation! It was a straight up battle with loose rocks and boulders all over the place. Cornell is a super steep mountain from this direction, so boulders and rock have been falling from this mountain for millenniums. Another thing that was tough was the rock traps. Moss, leaves and fallen trees have decayed over the rocks and made the holes between the rocks that are unseen. Our shins suffered a lot of pain that day!! Here are a few pictures of what it was like going up the mountain:

Travis and James navigating through the rocks and trees.

James battling the boulders fallen from the past.

This was another amazing thing about the mountains. You could see the direction that the wind flows by the stretch of the trees. Powerful winds draft into the Moonhaw Valley below from the top of the mountains, making the branches of the trees flow with the downward slope of the mountain. Cool stuff!! As you can see from the picture, it was beginning to get super steep!!

As we gained more and more elevation, it got steeper and steeper. It wasn't vertical, but it was tough to battle. The rocks were slippery and we used the trees as handles to pull ourselves up the mountain. As we got higher, we also battled some short, thick conifer trees. some were about knee high and some were about as tall as myself. They are super thick and they block almost everything ahead of you. They're kind of like Christmas trees, only flexible. To be sure we were going in the right direction, I checked my phone to see our position. We were right next to the slide. Not even 25 feet away. But where was it? The thick trees must be blocking our view. We kept pushing through the thick forest and suddenly, the trees were gone. BOOM!! The fallen ledge was right there!! This piece of rock was huge!! About the size of a small house.

As you can see from the picture above. The fallen ledge was massive. As we got closer, you could see the path it made when it separated from the mountain and completely obliterated everything in its path. The tress were either thrown to the side or broken in half by the ledge. There was a huge opening on the side of the mountain that the ledge created that gave us a beautiful view of Friday and Balsam Cap.

As we went up above the fallen ledge, we could see the path it created on the side of Cornell Mountain. It was about 200 yards long and everything was destroyed when it fell. It was amazing.

In the picture above, you can see where the ledge had dislocated from the mountain and started its decent.

Below is a picture of Travis and James climbing around the broken off ledge.

James took a fantastic picture of Travis and I posing by the ledge that had fallen from above. It really doesn't show how massive it was though.

As we moved further up the slide, it opened up the view a little more into the Moonhaw Valley.

We continued up the slide, as we wanted to reach the top of it and see the view. It was truly incredible what it looked like from thew top. The fallen ledge had completely destroyed everything in it's path, leaving only a scar on the mountain.

James and Travis climbing up the slide.

James returned the favor and took an amazing picture of us from above looking down the slide and into the Moonhaw Valley.

Above is a photo from the top of the slide. It gave us a great view of Friday Mountain and Balsam Cap and some more of the southern Catskills!

From the picture above, it doesn't look steep. But let me tell you, it was a whole different story when we were climbing it. The very loose rock and dirt didn't help either. With it being super steep, any fall of stone or dirt would tumble down below and possibly hit one of us. But we kept our distance from each other and spread out so if anything did fall, it wouldn't hit us. When we reached the top of the slide we discussed how we were going to get out of here. Should we keep going up and find a easier place to descend or just start going down from here. We decided to actually move parallel with the mountain at the same elevation and find an easier spot to descend from there. The only problem was that the trees were super thick in this area and the ledges were all over the place. Every step was a critical step. One slip and it we could fall a good 30-40 feet. We took it slow and made our way around the mountain to an area easier to go down. We also stopped and had lunch!

After lunch, we continued to descend down the mountain and into the valley. Along the way, we ran into some unusual work by mother nature.

I spotted this from a long distance away, not knowing what it is, but wanting to check it out due to how big it looked. I thought that if I could see it from that far away, it must be huge!! And it was!! This boulder was a little bit bigger than the size of a motor home. As you can see from the pictures above, it was massive. I have never seen a boulder of this size ever. The amazing thing was that the boulder wasn't near any other boulders or even a ledge. This rock had two options of where it came from: it either fell from the top of a ledge above a very long time ago or it was moved by a glacier thousands and thousands of years ago. After taking a few pictures, we continued to descend down the mountain. It was very slow going.

The place we were climbing down was called a cirque. A cirque is a half-open steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley or on a mountainside, formed by glacial erosion. Small and large rocks were scattered all over the place and the floor of the mountain was covered by leaves and moss. Every step was a guess. Would we fall into a hole between the rocks or would it be flat? It was brutal descent, but we eventually made it to some old log roads, which it made everything easier and faster.

so after 8 long hours of hiking and only going near 5 miles(it felt like 20), we were back at the parking area and discussing how awesome of a hike that was and how we couldn't wait to get back to our homes and finally rest!! What an epic hike!!