Renowned naturalist John Burroughs wrote memorably of his climbs up Slide, and it helped get the Catskills added to New York's Forest Preserve.

Like most other Catskill peaks, Slide's summit is gentle and rounded, taking the form of a narrow ridge that rises to a wider bump on its eastern end.

Due to land disputes and schemes that dated back to the colonial period, no complete, impartial survey of the entire Catskill region had been carried out until then.

[citation needed] But it ended when Guyot announced that he preferred Slide, as he had followed local custom wherever possible in naming the peaks for his survey.

While it runs over privately owned land and has been abandoned since 1941 save for the final section leading across the summit ridge from the west, it still exists and can be followed.

Some of the other private lands near the mountain had been utterly deprived of any value by tanners who had decided to boost their profits by neglecting to pay their property taxes and simply leaving the area.

A 10-foot (3.0 m) wooden fence was built around the whole area to protect them from poaching, and eventually 95 deer were released back into the wild, successfully re-establishing the species.

He tried to climb the mountain several times with friends, and his account of his successful ascent from nearby Woodland Valley, "The Heart of the Southern Catskills," is one of his best works.

Only in the late 20th century did newer research methods such as DNA comparisons prove that it was, indeed, a separate species, setting off a scramble to save habitat and learn as much as possible about it.

In December 2000, Timothy O'Lear, a Boy Scout from Long Island drowned when he fell in and was caught under some nearby tree branches when returning after a weekend backpacking trip.

In 2023 a family from New Jersey was ticketed by a DEC forest ranger after they brought several homemade Adirondack chairs to the summit, assembled and left them there, with the intent that people could sit on them and enjoy the views.

Catskill forest researcher Michael Kudish has found an anomalous grove of sugar maple at roughly 3,900 feet (1,200 m) in elevation just off the trail near the western end of the mountain's summit ridge.

These are found nowhere else in the Catskills, and since it is likely that they would not have survived the Wisconsin glaciation, it has been speculated that Slide's summit may have been a nunatak during that time, protruding above the ice which buried all the other peaks.

The most common route up Slide has always been from the pass between it and the mountains to the west, where the high elevation at the trailhead has greatly reduced the vertical ascent required.

After crossing the upper west branch of the Neversink at the trailhead, 2,400 feet (730 m) in elevation, the yellow-blazed P-EB trail works its way gently up slope and over some lesser streams 0.7 miles (1.1 km) to the old carriage road it originally followed through the Winnisook Club property.

Reached from the same starting point, the Curtis-Ormsbee Trail adds more distance to the overall trip but is a favorite with serious hikers since it offers an additional viewpoint and passes through more scenic stretches of forest.

It is named in memory of William Buckingham Curtis and Allan Ormsbee, two hikers from New York who died in a sudden snowstorm in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire's White Mountains on June 30, 1900.

Just above the signs indicating the camping and fire restrictions that NYSDEC has put in place for areas above 3,500 feet (1,100 m) in the Catskills to protect the montane forests, there are two viewpoints just off the trail.

The most challenging route to the summit of Slide begins at the Burroughs Range Trail's eastern terminus, Woodland Valley State Campground south of Phoenicia.

It is not surprising that this is often done as an overnight backpacking trip, since the long col between Slide and Cornell features a spruce grove that is an excellent place to camp, and the state has accordingly designated several sites in that area.

It is 0.65 miles (1.05 km) to the junction with the blue-blazed Fox Hollow Trail, which leads north to Giant Ledge and Panther Mountain.

After one of the last, alert eyes can find the beginning of the "Fisherman's Path," an unofficial trail following the East Branch far upstream into the wildest country in the Catskills.

Further upstream, as it passes the usual points of departure for Lone, Rocky, Balsam Cap and Friday mountains, the path gets increasingly disused and harder to follow.

There is no trail whatsoever through this country and the boreal forest on this part of the mountain itself is reportedly difficult to penetrate, even by the standards of other peaks in the vicinity.

Just to the west, however, used to be the much wider clearing of Burroughs Ledge with a sweeping view to the east in which Ashokan Reservoir was prominent, the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge used to be glimpsed.

The neighboring high peaks to the east used to be able to be seen, and seemed like small hills and the Devil's Path and Blackhead Range in Greene County used to be visible to the north.

At one time the view was very expansive, but since camping on the summit is now banned except during winter and in emergencies, the balsam fir has grown back in around the edges of the clearing, giving the area a more natural look.

On June 15, 1985, the summit received its most visitors ever at a single time when at least a hundred hikers, nature lovers and DEC officials gathered there to commemorate the centennial of the Forest Preserve.

In the late 1990s, when DEC updated the Slide Mountain Wilderness Area's Unit Management Plan, it considered rebuilding an observation tower at the summit to provide the long-absent views.

However, despite the historical precedent, wilderness area values governing DEC policy that were in place at the time led to the idea being rejected during the planning process.