Slide Mountain - Winter Hike

Slide Mountain. The tallest mountain in the Catskills. It stands at 4'180ft and is one of two 4'000 footers in the Catskills. Today we are going to cross another winter hike off the list. Me, Travis and my good friend John. My friend John and I were very good friends back when we worked together. Life got in the way and we got disconnected somehow. My wife saw him in a grocery store and he gave her his new number and I get back in touch with him. Turns out that he was getting into hiking also and wanted to pursue the 3500 like Travis and I! Off we were to Slide mountain!!

The night before we left for Slide it had lightly snowed in the higher elevations of the Catskills. About an inch or more fell and it was perfect for hiking without the need of snowshoes. But we still had an idea that there would be a good amount of ice underneath the fresh snow. Slide Mountain is one of the most visited hike in the Catskills, simply because it is the tallest and people just want to brag and say that they did it. People also think that because it's the biggest mountain in the Catskills, that it's going to have an amazing view on it. It does have a view on it, but it's definitely not the greatest and its very limited.

We arrived at Slide early in the morning. Fresh snow blanketed everything and made it look like a perfect winter day. The sun was out here and there and it wasn't too cold. No wind at all. Near perfect. No cars in the parking lot, so we would be the only hikers on the trail, which was awesome.

The trail isn't difficult at all. Since it's the tallest mountain in the Catskills, it has been traveled on a lot. Even back when it was first discovered. They use to have old carriage roads leading to the top so it's no where near the steepest mountain to climb. It's still almost near 6 miles round trip so it isn't the shortest hike.

The trail basically looked like that the whole way up. Rocky trail here and there and some parts that were normal hiking trails, where there were no rocks at all. But there was still ice underneath the snow. We had our microspikes on and we were still moving at a good pace up the mountain. Slide doesn't pose any big threats, like massive ledges that you have to climb or unmarked trails where you can get lost. Since it's a heavy trafficked trail, it is well maintained. So what I'm trying to say is that this hike was very easy, the grade was still there to slow us down, but overall difficulty was easy.

At around 3'700 feet, you start going into the beautiful conifer forest. With the fresh snow and no one else ahead of us, the view of the trees and the trail was perfect:

Once again, we were walking through a winter wonderland. This was also very odd at the same time. We were in the beginning of February and we have barely gotten any snow at all. So far, the only big snowfall we got was when Travis and I hiked Panther Mountain a couple weeks ago. So this was sort of good luck at the same time. It was truly beautiful.

Just before we hit the summit of slide you come to a stunning viewpoint that overlooks the eastern part of the Catskills. With the fresh snow on the ground and with the clouds finally leaving, it was absolutely stunning:

Above picture is a close up of Giant Ledge and Panther Mountain

The snow really made everything pop out. You could see all the different types of terrain on all the mountains and you could see pretty far off into the distance even though it was cloudy for most of the hike up. The ledge wasn't that big either, so we all had to take turns taking pictures. We were all blown away by the beauty of the snow and mountains when they were combined.

After the view, you are only a couple hundred feet from the summit. We hiked up to the summit, which use to have a fire tower on it, and had our lunches. The fire tower was torn down because it later became the Slide Mountain Wilderness Area, which encourages as minimal human impact as possible, to keep it forever wild. John brought out the weirdest lunch I've ever seen while hiking. A cold hamburger. Maybe other people do it to, but I was just used to sandwiches and chips.

We had a rough time on the way back down because of the ice. It was definitely more threatening on the way down. When you stepped up, you could grip more teeth from the microspikes, but stepping down doesn't get you a full grip of the teeth and there is more chance of slipping. I've said it before, most of the mountains don't have 500ft drops that you can slip off of, but if you slip you could break something and being 3-4 miles away from a car or civilization, it could be extremely difficult and you might not make it.

We were doing fine until John started to slip a little bit here and there. Most of the time he caught himself and just slid a little down the trail. One time he fully slipped and slammed his shoulder on the ice and slide down the trail for about 5 feet. We asked him if he was ok and of course he said he was fine. He was laughing his ass off for some reason so we thought he was ok. Turns out 2 days later he went to get it checked out and he had broken part of shoulder from the fall!! The odd thing was that he never told us that he was in any pain on the ride home. He thought we would judge him and call him a wuss for telling us. WHAT AN IDIOT!! He should of told us what happened so we could of taken it seriously and maybe prevented him from another fall and possibly another broken shoulder!! We also found out later that John had gotten microspikes that weren't the greatest in length and was a big reason why he fell so much on the way down.

We finally got back to the parking area and there were still no cars there. It was very odd to be the only ones to hike up Slide Mountain on that day. I would say we are very lucky. There are times I've heard that the parking lot fills up(which could hold 25 cars) and people park along the road for a mile or so. So there are usually a lot of people hiking on the mountain. That day, we had it all to ourselves.....