Ulster County High Point Trip Report
Slide Mountain (4,180 feet)
Date: March 11, 2000
Author: Dan Case
I have climbed Slide four times as of this writing: March 28,1998; January 1, 1999;
September 16, 1999 and March 11, 2000.
The first two were regular and winter climbs for membership in the
Catskill Mountain 3500 Club.
There is a more physically challenging eastern approach.
Follow NY 28 west from the Thruway as you would to get there the usual way.
However, shortly after Phoenicia, watch for Woodland Valley Road on the left.
Turn and follow down to the state campground at its end, six miles away.
Opposite the parking lot, the red-blazed Burroughs Range Trail leaves from the
back of a campsite. It is four miles, half level but with some very tricky rock
chutes higher up to Wittenberg Mountain with a fantastic view to the east,
then 0.8 miles to Cornell Mountain (very challenging ledge to get up near the summit)
and then 2.4 miles, the last part very steep (but with a spring a quarter-mile from
the summit), to Slide.
Also, from the west, a longer but more scenic and interesting approach can be made
via the Curtis-Ormsby Trail. From the trailhead, follow the yellow trail over the
West Branch of the Neversink River and up to the old carriage road. Instead of
turning left up the mountain at the red trail, keep going another mile or so to the
Curtis-Ormsby Trail, marked by blue DEC disks (with a monument to the two men the
trail is named after, dead in a snowstorm on Mt.Washington a century ago).
This goes up some interesting rocky areas and allows, at various points, for views
west and southeast, before joining the regular red trail on the summit ridge.