Big Slide- An 11.8 Kilometre (7.4 Mile) Hike in the Adirondacks, NY

Big Slide is one of the 46 High Peaks in the Adirondacks. These mountains have become a bit of a personal challenge for me. I would love to climb all 46, and we’re chipping away at them slowly.

These mountains are way more challenging than anything I’ve found in the Ottawa area. For me anyways! Maybe that’s why I keep coming back…

Big Slide is one that we actually attempted to summit a few years ago. We had my brother hiking with us, and his knees just couldn’t take it.  We didn’t get past the 3rd Brother (read on to understand more!) that time, and that’s okay. If you find yourself hiking with a group that always wants to go too fast or push too far for your comfort, and aren’t mindful of safety in the mountains, then you should find yourself a new group!

It was actually kind of fun to re-hike Big Slide and have a sense of the trail going in. That doesn’t mean it was easy though!

Dogs are allowed on the trail for Big Slide. We didn’t bring ours though, because she’s just too old for the mileage and elevation gain Big Slide demands of you.

Big Slide is a favorite for many people because there are SO many spots with great views along the route.

Getting There

Big Slide Mountain is in Adirondack State Park. But keep in mind, Adirondack State Park is huge, and the trailheads for the different High Peaks are quite spread out. We chose to drive down the day before and stay over, because we knew we wanted to get an early start. It’s just over a three and a half hour drive to get to Keene, NY, where Big Slide is located.

The trailhead for Big Slide starts at the Garden Parking Lot. There are a few trailheads that start here, which means the parking lot is VERY busy. We chose to get up and get there pretty early. When we parked at 5 a.m., there were only seven parking spots left.

You can use these coordinates to get there: 44.189107, -73.815853. If you’re trying to Google the location, it’s called the “ADK Garden Trailhead” on Google Maps. I’ve never heard anyone call it that in real life so it took me a little while to find it.

The goal: hanging out on the summit of Big Slide!

Parking There

There’s an attendant who works at the parking lot from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. And they are VERY sticky about parking, so don’t think you can arrive late and park just anywhere.

Because we got there ahead of the attendant, we went to his little cabin (at the front of the parking lot) and got an envelope to put our payment into. We put $10.00 into the envelope and dropped it into the drop slot in the side of the cabin.

Totally worth the parking fee.

If you get there late and there are no spots available, you can turn around and head to Marcy Field. They run a shuttle from there to the trailhead. It costs $10 per person for a round trip. You can use these coordinates to get to Marcy Field: 44.218673, -73.788476. The last shuttle runs at 7 p.m. so if you use this option, you have to make SURE you’re back to the trailhead by then. Otherwise you’re going to add a long walk to the end of your hike, and that’s no good.

There are porta-potties at the parking lot, which is really nice for before and after a long hike. Okay, not really NICE, but very convenient.

The Trailhead

The Trailhead for Big Slide was at the opposite end of the parking lot from the attendant’s cabin. There was a roofed shelter at the trailhead where they request you sign in. PLEASE DO THIS. This is one way for Rangers to have a sense of who has gone into the mountains, and who hasn’t come back out (even though they were planning to). You should always let someone know where you’re going and when you expect to be back for these big hikes. But, if you don’t do that, and the attendant sees that you wrote down you were going to only spend the day, this might prompt the Rangers or Search and Rescue to come looking for you. And if the reason you haven’t returned is because you got a little bit lost or got hurt, this would be a very good thing.

Big Slide shares the trailhead with a few other trails and mountains, but there was a sign right as the parking lot ended/the forest began, which pointed us in the right direction.

Immediately, the trail went off to our right, and we followed it. Just as immediately, we were heading uphill. Spoiler alert- the uphill didn’t stop for a LONG time.

Follow the arrow for awesome views and a general feeling of happiness.

The Trail

The trail for Big Slide was fairly rocky from the outset, but not too technical near the beginning. We had chosen to reach the summit of Big Slide via the Three Brothers.

Big Slide’s trail is a “marked” trail, meaning that there are trail markers all the way to the summit. The markers are spaced closely enough together that they’re fairly easy to follow. And, the trail has been so worn in by people travelling along it that its very easy to pick out just by looking around.

Follow the trail markers!

One of the best things about this route was that there are views all along the route to the summit. After hiking for only 1.2 kilometres (0.75 miles), we hiked over the first big open rock face that we had come across, and got some great views over the valley.

Ah, the beginning of the trail. Steep, but deceptively easy.

We reached the first real “scramble” on the trail after hiking for 2 kilometres (1.25 miles). None of the scrambles on the trail were very challenging, but most of them were steep!

Just past the first scramble, on our right hand side, we came across a cool rock cave. This spot would be the best on the trail to wait out unexpected rain, if the need ever arose.

DON’T hunker down here if there’s lightening, or the risk of. Instead, try some of the tips we found here.

The Brothers

Going over The Brothers was a fantastic way to reach the summit of Big Slide. I like to think that I’m actually getting four peaks for the price of one! We reached the summit of the First Brother after hiking for about 2.4 kilometres (1.5 miles). Things levelled out a little bit there, then dipped, and not long after, we reached the Second Brother after hiking 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles).

We got the first great view of the slide that the mountain is named after when we had hiked 3.9 kilometres (2.4 miles). At this point on the trail, there was a break in the trees to our left, leading to a smaller rockface away from the trail. Stepping off the trail here, we got the best view of the slide from a distance that we would get all day.

We crossed the summit of the Third Brother at the 4.3 kilometre (2.7 mile) mark. Even in spots where there were no trees to affix trail markers to, there was something to help keep us on the trail. Where there was only rock face, small yellow marks had been spray painted to let us know we were on the right path.

Trail markers on rock.

Beyond this point on the trail, the forest began to change a bit. After a while, everything began to get really green- there was so much moss along the sides of the trail that it lent the forest a really lovely feel. Things also got a little bit flatter for a bit, which was a nice change of pace.

Things also got a lot wetter! Hiking up the trail, I was thinking to myself (because of the way it looked) that a lot of water must have run right down the trail this season. As we got closer to the summit, the trail was actually still flooded in spots, with water running down the trail where there was an elevation gain.

The trail. Pretty flooded even in late June.

We crossed a small stream when we had hiked 4.7 kilometres (2.9 miles). Rocks in the bed of the stream made for a really easy crossing. The stream would probably be fuller earlier in the season- I didn’t get my feet wet, but there’s always a chance you might.

Reaching the Summit

We were VERY happy to see a sign on the trail telling us that we were only 0.3 miles (half a kilometer) from the summit. There was also a split in the trail here, which some people us to make their hike a loop. Instead of heading to the summit, we could have headed down to John’s Brook Valley. Obviously, we chose the summit! From that point on, the trail became quite steep as we approached.

What a beautiful sign!

The trail was so steep, in fact, that there were wooden ladders built onto the rock face to help hikers climb up. The first ladder was in okay shape. The second “ladder” didn’t actually have any rungs left, because they had rotted away. I chose to avoid it all together and just scramble right up the rock face.

This was the ladder that was in GOOD shape!

Just under the six kilometer mark, we saw a little heard path and stepped off the trail to our left for a bit. This let us check out the slide up close and personal. It was pretty cool, and we stayed for a bit. The trail continued straight on though, and after a while, so did we.

The slide on Big Slide!

To get to the summit itself, there was one final scramble up the open rock face of the summit.

Because we had started so early, there were only a few people on the summit when we got there. We took a nice long break at the summit, and they left after a bit, so we actually had it to ourselves for the rest of our time there! The rock face on the summit of Big Slide was fairly small, and backed by the forest opposite our approach. Since Big Slide is such a popular trail, I can picture the summit being really crowded during peak (haha, get it?) season, or later in the day.

The views from the summit were absolutely spectacular. We are TERRIBLE at knowing which mountains we’re actually looking at while on a summit. But, research afterwards informed me that we were actually looking at Gothics, Saddleback, Basin, Haystack, Marcy, Gray, Tabletop, Colden, Phleps, Algonquin and Wright. There were probably more in sight, but even though we didn’t know exactly which mountains we were looking at, we knew the view was stunning.

Views from the summit of Big Slide. Totally worth the work to get there!

Heading Back

As mentioned before, there’s an alternate route that some people choose to take, in order to turn the hike on Big Slide into a loop. It’s via John’s Brook Valley. If we had wanted to take that route back, we would have gone straight at the split in the trail on our way back. However, we chose to return the way we had come- you just can’t beat those views, and I kind of like knowing what the trail is going to feel like on the way back. We turned to our left at the junction to go back the way we had come.

By the time we had arrived back at the trailhead, we had been on the trail for just under eight hours (seven hours and fifty-five minutes, to be precise). Our GPS tracker had recorded the route as being 11.83 kilometres (7.4 miles) long, for the round trip.

While it seems like it took us a long time to hike the trail, this might not be the case for you. We took a LOT of breaks, a ton of pictures, and spent a bunch of time at the summit. Our actual “moving time” was recorded as only being five hours. So trust me, Big Slide can definitely be done in less time (but what’s the fun in that?).

I hope this trip report has enough info to get you there too. Let me know in the comments, or share and tag a friend to start planning your next adventure!

Basically how I get down all scrambles- on my bottom.

Map and Elevation Gain

Our map of the Big Slide Trail.

Whenever I’m hiking somewhere new, I tend to wonder about who was on, and who took care of that land before me. I’ve enjoyed using this website as a place to start learning more about the indigenous people whose land I’m on: Native-land.ca.

Elevation gain on Big Slide.

Gear We Brought

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