My buddy TBPDPT and I completed our 10+ year journey to visit all of the 3k peaks in the title wilderness area. This was probably the easiest of the bunch.
We parked at the (roped-off) Jackrabbit Trail and hit the woods right around 8:30am. There was no snow on the ground though there was still a more-or-less continuous monorail on the trail itself. We left the trail after about a mile, following the major drainage that comes down from the col between Black Mountain and Slide Mountain. As we were on the south side of the mountain, we didn’t encounter any snow until around 2200 feet. By 2500 feet it was enough for us to put on snowshoes.
We enjoyed open and easy woods right up to summit plateau with one small pocket of matchstick forest on the final ascent. The snow had a good crust up high. There is what appears to be a white DEC trail marker at the summit itself, just like I remembered seeing on the summit of the Slide Mountain proper some ten years ago.
TBPDPT led us to a small blowdown field on the west side of the summit ridge which opened up to give us some nice views of the Lake Placid area and surrounding peaks. We followed the same route downhill, and snow was noticeably softer than it was just an hour or so earlier. We left the snowshoes on until around 2400 feet. Back to the car after 4 hours on the dot of hiking. Faster than expected!
In terms of difficulty, I’d rank the Sentinel range peaks as follows: Stewart, Sentinel, South Sentinel Peak, Kilburn, NW Kilburn, Slide, North Slide