Sleeping Beauty Mountain Trailhead — Attraction in Town of Fort Ann

Ok so the seasonal road closure happens before you want it to for the winter, usually late December. There is a gate basically where shelving rock road branches off and it's closed, so you have to walk the last 1.5miles to get to the sleeping beauty trailhead from there. The parking lots at both locations are HUGE. The last three miles of driving to get to the closed gate are unpaved, as is the road you'll be walking on. It's pretty good quality for an unpaved road, not a lot of washout or big rocks, it's easily do-able with a normal car. After the gate, the road gets significantly more narrow (one lane) so if two normal cars met and one couldn't handle off-road, it would probably be a problem. There is a register pretty close to the start of the yellow trail (straight). FYI the trail register by the closed gate has been knocked over, so most people are signing the one at the trailhead for sleeping beauty only.

Obviously the hike itself is great, the view from sleeping beauty is amazing. This is also the trailhead for erebus. Erebus doesn't have a view and the bushwhack is extremely steep. Both peaks are part of the Lake...

Some pix from yesterday's hike with my daughter and new son-in-law at Sleeping Beauty in Ft Ann (Washington County) NY. We arrived at the Hogtown lot 9:00 am and walked the 1.5 miles along the one lane (and recently improved) road to the Dacy Clearing parking lot. Followed the well marked blue trail to the Sleeping Beauty summit, continued along blue trail to Bump's Pond. We returned via the yellow trail which loops back to Dacy and Hogtown at 12:45pm where DEC officers were on site preventing new arrivals from parking alongside Shelving Rock Road - glad we arrived early as dozens of cars were in line waiting for a parking spot. Trail conditions were clear, surprisingly dry after the recent storm and free of trash. A...

You HAVE TO go up early on weekends. We arrived at about 7am and had no issues parking, and the lookout was relatively vacant, but by the time we returned around 11am people were struggling to find spaces. Otherwise a relaxing and nice way to spend the day. The hike itself isn’t too hard, the only thing is the mud can be challenging if you don’t have proper footwear. I also strongly recommend taking the loop (by Bump’s Pond) back to the parking lot. Beautiful views, and minimal traffic make it a nice way to end the hike. And it only adds about .7 miles to the overall trip. 10/10...