Cat Mountain Trail from Valley Woods Road

Start on the blue-marked dirt road from the Valley Woods Road parking area. After about 0.7 mile, yellow turns toward Thomas Mountain; stay with the Cat Mountain route. Roughly two-thirds of the direct walk follows a logging road, so the first stretch has small rises and steady, uncomplicated footing. Old logging roads cross the marked trails in this preserve. Follow the destination signs at junctions, especially if the blaze colors on the ground don’t match the older map.

The road gives way to a narrower, rougher woods trail for the final third. That’s where the climb steepens and rocks make the pace slower. The return is the same way, so those rocky sections are downhill too; they can be slippery. It’s a long walk but the hard footing is concentrated near the top, rather than spread across the whole route.

Cat Mountain ends at open rocky ledges with a 270-degree view of Lake George and the Adirondacks. The lake and the long mountain ridges make a proper pause worthwhile after the wooded approach. For a photo, include some of the summit rock in the foreground; a frame filled only with distant hills loses the sense of being on the open ledge.

If you want less road walking, the separate route from Edgecomb Pond follows the red trail and then blue to the same summit, listed at about 1.9 miles each way. It’s a more direct approach, but it starts at a different trailhead and is not the Valley Woods route described here. Don’t use the shorter mileage for this outing.

The Cat and Thomas preserve covers 1,909 acres. The Lake George Land Conservancy acquired this parcel in 2003 and sold it to New York State in 2013 for the Adirondack Forest Preserve. Keeping this large tract intact protects part of the Lake George watershed as well as the hiking route.