And now for the report:
At 6 Dunbar and I had started up the Roaring Brook trail and made it with little effort to the base of the Diagonal Slide. En route we switched our plans from going up the Bottle Slide and down the Diagonal Slide to going up the Diagonal and down the Question mark and then over to the Eagle.
The Diagonal proved to be quite a bit more difficult than I thought it was going to be and I was glad we weren't going down it. The so-called Question Mark Slide is really nothing more than sections of bulging bare rock and cripple bush so we decided to go down the Finger slide. We had views straight across to both the Finger and parts of the Eagle and I was thinking maybe that the Diagonal was harder than the Eagle.
Anyway, after the bushwhack and scramble to the summit we headed over to the Finger. Thanks to GPS technology we came out right at the top of the slide. We figured that if it wsas too steep to descend we would just bushwhack down and over to the Eagle. It was steep but quite manageable going slowly and sitting down to slide over the steeper steps.
The Slide gave way to a narrow Alder-choked stream bed with large loose rocks that were easily dislodged so we bailed and had a very short whack over to the bare rock of the mythical Eagle Slide.
You hear so much about the eagle (like the Trap Dike) and it can be intimidating to think about climbing it. However, when you stop and think about how many people do it you say to yourself, "Well, if all those other people did it then so can I"
We wore sticky soled Guide 5.10 approach shoes and in spite of what I had read to the contrary I would not do any of the Giant slides without them. I am sure all the slides are very do-able without approach shoes but you would have to be a lot pickier about your route.
The Eagle can be fairly easy if you stay right and do a series of shorter hops from island of vegetation to island. Out in the middle though is where you really get the full effect and sweeping feeling of the exposure.
Dunbar and I each had different waypoints for the 2nd feather (mine: 2nd from the left, his: 2nd from the right) so we traversed over to check his and although the narrow slide track was very interesting it was also a series of alternating very steep short vertical steps and heavily grown in sections. You can see on pic 48 how we went up it a short ways before turning around and heading over to the left and widest 2nd feather.
There are some pretty steep sections all along the way but there was always a route through. It was important to look and plan ahead to avoid getting boxed in and having to delicately back-track, which was not a lot of fun the 2 or 3 times I did this.
At the top there was a rough but obvious herd path that led us in 3 minutes to the near top of the Ridge Trail.
On the hike out the Ridge trail to a spotted car I made the remark that the Ridge Trail really didn't seem very steep after all.
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