[citation needed] The mountain takes the shape of a longitudinal ridge in the center of the rough circle mostly formed by Esopus and Woodland creeks.

Today it is within the Slide Mountain Wilderness Area, part of the Catskill Park, managed by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

He found, when looking at the bed of Esopus Creek, that much of the exposed sandstone and shale showed an unusually closely spaced fracture pattern — every foot (30 cm) instead of every meter (3.3 ft), as is seen elsewhere in the Catskills.

He reasoned that if a crater wall lay beneath, the debris from the impact and the sedimentary rock already in the area would have settled more compactly and been more prone to sagging and fracturing over time.

Since the walls of a newly formed impact crater are often unable to support themselves, landslides occur and build up a mound of rock and soil in the center.

As he had expected, the gravity in the area was slightly lower than other mountains of comparable elevation in the Catskills, adding more weight to the crater theory.

[3] To prove his hypothesis, Isachsen needed to drill deep into the rock under the mountain and find direct mineral evidence of a meteorite strike, but this was beyond his resources.

These cuttings were examined carefully, during which graduate students working for him found microscopic iron spherules — to him irrefutable evidence of an impact crater.

[3] Isachsen believes it is possible that there may be significant hydrocarbon deposits, often associated with ancient buried impact craters, very deep beneath the mountain.

Later logging climbed to a higher elevation, particularly near the hamlets of Big Indian and Phoenicia due to nearby train stations (Garfield Mountain's summit does not appear to be in first growth).

[6] The Fox Hollow-Panther-Giant Ledge Trail across the mountain used by hikers to reach the summit today was cut in 1935, based on a contemporary Conservation Department pamphlet.

Hikers typically park at the trailhead lot, 2,100 feet (640 m) in elevation, where Ulster County Route 47 bends sharply about three-quarters of a mile (1.3 km) north of Winnisook Lake, midway up or down the hill between it and Big Indian Hollow.

Here the P-EB leaves the road again and leads southeast uphill 0.7 miles (1.1 km) and 500 vertical feet (150 m) to the GP in the level area between the ledge and Slide's north ridge.

A climb of 0.15 miles (240 m) up the steep, rocky south slope of the ledge, sometimes assisted by rock steps, levels out at 3,200 feet (980 m), where the trail stays close to the east side.

There are many viewpoints from the cliff tops here that take in the nearby Burroughs Range (Slide, Wittenberg and Cornell) to the south; the valley of Woodland Creek below with a small area of Ashokan Reservoir; and the Devil's Path to the northeast.

Not too far beyond, in the middle of two steep, rocky chutes, the trail passes the sign marking 3,500 feet (1,100 m) in elevation, above which open fires are forbidden and camping is only permitted in winter, due to the fragile high-montane environment.