Cowboy Slickrock Trail Review: Rounding up the Best Slickrock Slabs
Short Trail, Lengthy Slickrock
Cowboy Slickrock doesn’t give you much trail. What it gives you instead is surface — wide open granite slabs that link and fracture and link again, a reflecting pool that has no business being so beautiful, and just enough route-finding to make you feel like you earned it. The line isn’t always obvious, but it’s always there.
Stats
- Distance: 0.79 miles
- Elevation Gain (east to west): 32 ft
- Elevation Loss: 145 ft
- Difficulty: Intermediate to Advanced
- Surface: Granite slabs, jumbled boulders
- Connects: Rattlesnake Trail → Upper 50 Year Trail
- Access: Around the Mountain → Rattlesnake → Cowboy Slickrock
- Trailhead: Golder Ranch (via network)
The Trail
Cowboy Slickrock isn’t a trail—it’s a linked series of granite features. Big slabs. Jumbled boulders. Long rolls on smooth rock. The art is how the route puts it all together.
Don’t be fooled by the sub-mile distance. Finding your way through here takes figuring out, and if you drift off-route it’s rugged country. There are no cairns, no markings. You navigate by tire tracks off the slickrock sections and a good sense of where the line should go. A trail app helps.
The technical level sits between intermediate and advanced—steep ups and downs, a few consequential moves that are worth your attention. What makes Cowboy special is the length of the slab sections. More length than those on Upper 50 Year, and less steep. Beautiful sustained slickrock passages, up and down.
Once you know the route and can comfortably ride the features that present themselves throughout, Cowboy Slickrock delivers. The views alone justify the effort—giant vistas back down over the 50 Year / Golder Ranch trail network, across Sutherland Valley, all the way to Pusch Ridge over Catalina State Park.
Cowboy can also be accessed via Tank Trail, dropping in from above through the Charouleau Gap jeep road area. Most people hit it at the end of Around the Mountain.
Worth Riding?
Think of Cowboy Slickrock as the ultimate start to Upper 50 Year. If you can handle Upper 50, you can handle this. But Cowboy steps up the commitment—further out, harder to navigate, more time to access. You need to be prepared to go higher and get deeper into the system to get to this.
Ride Cowboy Slickrock when you want to feel like you’ve fully exercised the network (and yourself). Skip it when time’s tight or you’re not prepped for the remoteness.
Most people ride it clockwise, descending. The standard approach: ride Around the Mountain, jump onto Rattlesnake, split off onto Cowboy Slickrock. From there it tees into Upper 50 Year with multiple return options.
After rainfall, there’s a standing pool in the middle of Cowboy Slickrock on the biggest slab section. A reflecting pool with the Santa Catalinas behind it. Worth timing a ride for.
