Was it a polar alignment issue? Problems tracking near zenith - but fine at low altitudes - suggest that you might be misaligned in azimuth but not altitude.
Also, if your mount is slipping - how did you go about calibrating PHD at zenith? (Sorry if this is obvious... but long story short - it's easiest to re-calibrate PHD whenever you point at a different part of the sky.) If PHD's calibration is off, then it'll never be able to fix the drift...
|