Plateau Mountain

Today's hike: 6.6 mi | 5.08 h | 1.3 mph

This was my third hike up a Catskills 3500. As before, I was joined by Maggie's boy. We started at the Devil's Path trailhead off Stony Clove Road. I was worried we might not get a parking spot here due to it being the Labor Day weekend. In fact, while it was a bit crowded, there was still plenty of parking left! Good. We started off around 9 AM, and finished about 2 PM.

It could be that I've forgotten the difficulty of the previous Catskill 3500s we've done. But this one seemed the toughest so far, probably because it took a couple hours longer than previous hikes. According to Catskill Hiker, the elevation gain is 2270 ft and the length of the route is 6.6 miles. According to AllTrails, the length was 6.3 miles and the elevation gain was 2020 ft. Which one should I believe? I'll stick with Catskill Hiker's numbers, since I've used those before.

Here's a short comparison of the current route and our previous ones:

Plateau Mountain Sep 5 2026 | 6.6 mi | 2270 ft elev gain | 5.08 h

Blackhead Nov 5 2025 | 4.4 mi | 1740 ft elev gain | 3.4 h

Slide Mountain Oct 29 2025 | 5.6 mi | 1760 ft elev gain | 3.4 h

So that's about an extra 500 feet up, this time, combined with an extra 500 feet down for a total of 1000 extra feet of elevation change, which is not trivial. Also, there was an extra mile or so of hiking. We didn't exactly get up off the couch to do this hike, but we haven't been training for it either. So we were both feeling beat up by the time we got back to the car.

Despite the aches, this is a fun, straighforward hike. It starts on nicely constructed stone stairs. After a short distance, you enter the now familiar Catskill zone of choss and pebbles. It wasn't bad; going uphill over this was not a problem for us. Warning: we found a broken piece of a trekking pole in here! Those things are not all they're cracked up to be (pun intended).

Here we are at about 30 minutes of hiking uphill

About 30 minutes in

There were loads of mushrooms to be found after recent rains. These were right on the trail.

After about an hour of hiking, we came to this brief talus field.

Nearing the plateau.

On the way up, we met exactly one trekker. He told us that most people don't take the trail in the direction that we were going. I don't know why. This approach seemed the quickest and shortest to get to the summit.

There are two ways to approach the summit. There's a short boulder problem that was easy enough. There's also a set of constructed stairs that bypass that. Of course, I took the boulder problem. YMMV. I forgot to take a pic, sorry!

Squashberries near the overlook.

After hiking up and up, across a couple of switchbacks, perhaps 1.5 hours, we eventually reached the beautiful overlook. We were lucky to have a nice view and some sunshine! We took a short break here. There was a second outlook a bit further on, but it was taken by others, so we didn't dawdle there, but kept moving.

The first overlook! This is the best place to take in the view.

From then on out it was mostly flat hiking over a pleasant trail through evergreens. 

Crossing the top of Plateau Mountain

About half way between the overlook and the summit, we found a small pile of personal items to the left of the trail. This was ... disturbing. It would be annoying if it were just a pile of garbage. But someone had left a headlamp, a hat, a deodorant stick, and a kit of fly fishing lures. This would be merely a head-scratcher, but it made us concerned that it might a sign of criminal activity of some sort. We hope whoever lost this is okay.

Strange pile of personal items at the top of Plateau Mountain

As we hiked along the top of Plateau, we passed perhaps 5 groups of hikers. They were all going in the opposite direction from us. We wondered if they had cars parked at both ends of the trail. Anyway, this experience supported the words of the first hiker that we met - most people follow this trail in the opposite direction. We are contrarians.

Near the summit, we noticed lots of moss. Actually there's moss all over the place at the top of Plateau. Shamrocks grow straight up out of it, together with toadstools. It looks like a fairy wonderland! Nice time to be there.

Fairy wonderland with moss, shamrocks, and toadstools

The summit of Plateau is boring. Not even a cairn, just a sad little blaze marked with the name, like an afterthought. Better than nothing!

The peak of Plateau Mountain

When we finally reached the summit, it was a surprise. It didn't seem like a summit - there was no steep uphill climb to get to it.  Well, there's a reason this mountain is named "Plateau." But AllTrails and the small blaze agreed on this point. We hiked down a bit further, to be sure. The trail does descend from here. Then, we turned around and retraced our steps.

The trip back was a slog but otherwise not notable. Again, we passed the small disturbing pile of personal items. And this time around, the second overlook was available. We stopped briefly. There's a large boulder here, covered in stone graffiti. It was hard to read.

There's a second outlook close to the first one. This one is capped by a graffitied block.

Going down the steep descent was a chore! We had to pick our way downhill over scrabble, which slowed us down.

We were relieved to get back to the car. Even so, can't wait for our next hike!

Blackhead

Today's hike: 5.4 mi | 3.4 h | 1.6 mph

Seems like the stats for today's hike of Blackhead were almost identical to last week's stats for Slide Mountain. That's curious, because today's trail had a section that was much steeper than anything we'd encountered on Slide. The steep part was fun. You have to clamber up some rocks and tree roots. The not-fun part was that quite a lot of the trail was wet, even on the steep section.

I was hiking with Maggie's boy again, today. This was our second 3500-footer in the Catskills. We started at the Big Hollow Parking Area, and went clockwise over Blackhead. Originally, we thought we might go over Black Dome as well. But we ran out of gas, and descended after covering only the one peak.

Aside from the one steep section, there were a few interesting things about the trail that we took. First, the lower portion of the trail is criss-crossed by several well-made wooden footbridges. Presumably that's required because there's a large stream that flows near the trail in this area. The footbridges are high up above the stream. The fact that the stream was quite lively and wide at this time of year, after an extended drought, made me wonder how high the stream would get during a wet year.

mini waterfall along the wide stream

On the way up and down, over a short band of the trail, we encountered a lot of small moths fluttering about madly. It was a surprise for this time of year. The temperatures were in the high 40Fs or low 50Fs, but it's certainly been freezing overnight.

small light brown moths fluttered around. can you spot this one?

A little higher up, there's a lean-to close to the path. Not sure I'd be tempted to camp there. It seems too close to the trailhead.

lean-to sign

We had seen some small, bright red berries on the trail at Slide, and the same was true here. We sometimes saw these on tall trees near the trail, too. I haven't figured out exactly what they are yet. Are they possibly winterberries? Note: we also heard birds now and again. I think they were nuthatches, and maybe some titmice and chickadees as well. I wonder if they like these berries. Maggie's boy saw some birds hanging out in a small pool of water on a rock at an overlook! I missed them, since I was lagging behind him.

bright red berries on the trail in the Catskills

Near the top, it was cold enough that we saw some icicles hanging off a moss-covered rock face.

icicles! The trail is so cool here!

There's nothing to mark the top of Blackhead, too bad! Just a trail sign. The peak is covered in evergreen trees.

trail sign pointing to Black Dome at top of Blackhead

Shortly after crossing this area, you get to an exposed section of the trail with rock slab, a bit of "graffiti", some lovely, newly constructed slab stairs, and great views.

We didn't linger for the views. As we'd hiked up Blackhead, the trail was sheltered from the wind with lots of evergreen trees, or maybe there was no wind on that side of the mountain. Once we started our descent, the woods became mostly deciduous, and were bare of leaves. The section of trail with rock slabs was fairly open and exposed, so you could see Black Dome to one side, which was nice. But it was very windy and raw here, and overcast to boot.

view of Black Dome with stone "graffiti" in foreground

Overall, the trail quality was mostly similar to the trail we took up Slide. We rarely come across a tidy dirt trail. It was either loose chunks of rock and/or pebbles and/or running water covering the trail. It makes me wonder how these trails were made!

We were pretty tired by the time we got back to the car. This is a cool trail loop, and I hope to get back to it sooner or later! I'd like to check it out in the warmer months.

Slide Mountain

Today's hike: 5.6 mi | 3.4 h | 1.6 mph

I'm no longer in NH, but I hope to get back to the White Mountains and complete the 4000-footers over time. Who knows!? The Catskills are now the closest challenge, so I've put the 3500-footers in my sights. My first was Slide Mountain.

The weather was not welcoming: upper 30s, with a slight wind, and completely overcast. We decided to take the shortest possible route as described by the DEC. This meant starting at the "Oliverea Road South (Slide Mountain Trailhead) Parking Area".

We began by hiking up the Phoenicia East Branch Trail. We knew that we'd need to turn left onto the Burroughs Range Trail in about 0.7 miles. Soon, we came to a "T" in the trail. We turned left and hiked on for about 2/10 of a mile before realizing that we'd made a mistake. We turned too early, and were on the wrong trail. We turned around and headed back. This trail needs more clear blazing and a sign to make the way clear! Here's a picture of the current unclear sign where we went wrong.

bad sign (not clearly visible when hiking up)

For the rest, it was a pretty straightforward hike: up 1,780 ft and back down again. But there are a few fun points of interest. First, here's something that might be described as a "slide"? This starts after you've done most of the uphill slog, so the grade is quite mild here. (I still don't understand why this is called Slide Mountain).

slide on Slide Mountain?

The footing on this trail is poor because it's often covered with pebbles and loose rock. Here's a look at one section of the trail where you can see where those pebbles are coming from.

some kind of conglomerate rock on the trail near the top

Here's the marked top of Slide Mountain. My first Catskills 3500-footer!

peak of Slide Mountain

There are some artifacts at the top. A slab of concrete?

concrete (maybe) at the peak

As we hiked back down, we noticed little flakes of frost on the ground. It was that cold! Some of the pine trees were covered in a fine layer of ice.

ice on pine trees near top of Slide Mountain

All in all, it was a fun hike, despite the gray day. Pretty easy compared to the NH 4000-footer hikes that I've done. I think Slide Mountain is one of the easier 3500-footers in the Catskills. Some of these mountains involve a bushwhack to the top. That will get interesting, for sure!