Big Slide — 46 Hiking Highs

The “Guys Annual Fall Outing” dwindled to just the three of us this year. We had breakfast at Noonmark Diner and decided that although there were clouds, the forecast was promising enough that we’d shoot for a hike with a view. So, we hit the trail from The Garden parking lot at 8:50 a.m. with a plan to climb Big Slide Mountain. Getting to the lot, we could see the damage done to the roads and to Interbook Road’s bridge over Johns Brook, caused by Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee just two months earlier.

We began our ascent up The Brothers Trail, which is a series of three gently sloping promontories (creatively named First Brother, Second Brother, and Third Brother), as you head in a general westward direction from the Garden. The ground was leaf-covered and slick with recent rain, but we very quicky got up to our first of many views. All along The Brothers we stopped to take in the scenery of the Great Range on the others side of the Johns Brook Valley to our southeast. It was beautiful, even though it was very overcast and most of the foliage was already gone. An older couple stayed a bit behind us our whole way up. By the time we got to the Third Brother, it was raining steadily, and it was obvious we’d soon be in the clouds, and not get the views of the Great Range that we’d hoped for at the top. So much for that forecast! There seems to be a theme of these Guys Fall Outings: bad weather. My big takeaway has been not to hike in late October and early November, but that seems to be the only time that works for some of the others (who were not even with us today!).

A view from one of the Brothers

Another view from The Brothers

Shortly after we turned right to bypass the “Big Slide Trail” that came up on the left, we got to a long, steep ladder that intimidated me a bit, but I just took a breath and climbed it. This was the first time I’d encountered a long ladder like this on one of these hikes. It really wasn’t too bad. Shortly after that, the trail abruptly ended at a cliff’s edge looking out over a broad landslide (this landslide covers much of the south face of the mountain and gives it its name). Joe checked if he could navigate this by trying to head upslope to the right. No way! That would have been it for me. I confidently proclaimed that this absolutely could not be the trail and went back to see what we missed. Happily, we were grateful to discover that I was right, and it was not the true trail. We’d missed a right-hand turn in the trail just a bit further back.

No rain in the forecast, huh? So, what are those vertical lines?

We summited the mountain at 12:10 p.m., just as it began to snow. A shiny brass marker embedded on the rock identified the summit for us. We saw absolutely nothing but white clouds and one other hiker, who was awaiting the rest of his group from Montreal. All in all, it felt like it was an easy hike. Although we couldn’t see any of the views, we were grateful that we’d seen them from The Brothers. We lunched at the summit and decided since we still had plenty of time today, we wanted to continue to Yard Mountain. Although not a High Peak, it would give us a longer hike, and let us do a loop.

Trail info at the top of Big Slide

No summit view today

The ridge trail through the woods to Yard was easy, and very wet. The snow turned back into a light rain, and we got to the summit of Yard at 1:30 p.m. This summit was completely unremarkable—just a trail ending in the woods. Continuing our loop, we descended to the Klondike Notch Trail and then down to Johns Brook Lodge where we rested awhile and met up with two hikers from Binghamton (Kevin & Emily), who joined us for the hike back to The Garden. We got back to the cars at 5:25 p.m.

A rock creature greets us on the way to Yard.

Lots of debris in the streams from the storms that hit several weeks earlier.