Eagle, Diagonal and Finger slides. Giant Mountain.

[Neil]

Being an extremist and a seeker (I asked Timothy Leary but he couldn't tell me either) I felt that some slide climbing would clear my head of Sawtooth bushwhacking cobwebs. Dunbar aided and abetted me (and stalked me all day with his camera )

Trip report to come but the salient features were

• 2 awesome slide climbs and a slide descent.
  
• Forum gathering on Giant's summit. Myself, Dunbar, Gregory Karl and who else but Corey who climbed Giant in 70 minutes. The pics will tell most of the story.

I think I'll quit my job, quit bushwhaclking and peakbagging and spend the rest of my life in a state of Giant Nirvana.

Great pics by Dunbar.

[FlyingCow]

...

[billandjudy]

Cool stuff Some of it looks a bit STEEP

[AlpineLamb]

Now those are some slides!
Great pictures, they really show the steepness.
Amazing that Dunbar can climb and take all these photos of Neil at the same time

#34 looks like you are ready to plunge backwards, bungey jumping style

[i12climbup]

Wow ..... those are some incredibly impressive shots! Nicely documented trip.

I like that there is a person is just about every picture ...... it gives it scale. Just one more reason to not climb the slides solo!

[looncry]

Originally Posted by Neil

Being an extremist and a seeker (I asked Timothy Leary but he couldn't tell me either) I felt that some slide climbing would clear my head of Sawtooth bushwhacking cobwebs. Dunbar aided and abetted me (and stalked me all day with his camera )

Trip report to come but the salient features were

• 2 awesome slide climbs and a slide descent.
  
• Forum gathering on Giant's summit. Myself, Dunbar, Gregory Karl and who else but Corey who climbed Giant in 70 minutes. The pics will tell most of the story.

I think I'll quit my job, quit bushwhaclking and peakbagging and spend the rest of my life in a state of Giant Nirvana.

Great pics by Dunbar.

Perhaps we all can climb Giant Nirvana where the ''former Rain has passed away'' Looking forward to pics by four pals. Looncry

[looncry]

Dunbar's pics and a story to go with it,Neil forgot his eel?! Looncry

[Charlene]

You boys even dress alike... is that like gang "colours" or something?

I'm in awe.

[Neil]

And now for the report:

Dunbar and I had gotten to the summit of Giant for the second time onn the same day when I saw a familiar looking guy walking along the summit ridge from the northern direction. I could tell by the way he looked at me that he was going to ask me if I was Neil and I was pretty sure that he had come up a slide and not the trail from the 9N.

Sure enough , it was Gregory Karl and he thought he came up the Bottle Slide (but wasn't 100% sure). I thought it was fitting that we met Gregory immediately after we did different slides on Giant. We're sitting there for 5 minutes looking over the array of slides at our feet and Corey shows up. I shake his hand and it's soaking wet with hot sweat. I guess I'd be a tad damp if I just hiked Giant in 70 minutes.

The four of us (and Corey's friend) hung out eating Corey's oreo cookies before going our separate ways.


At 6 Dunbar and I had started up the Roaring Brook trail and made it with little effort the base of the Diagonal Slide. En route we switched our plans from going up the Bottle and down the Diagonal 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 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 so 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 allthough 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 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 trail really didn't seem very steep after all.

[Skinney]

Great pics Dunbar and TR Neil!

What is a good beginner slide?
I see you had approach shoes also.
What are these?
Do you need or should you have this type of shoe for all slides?

Sorry about all the questions but I am intrigued about slide climbing and I have never done one other than the Macomb "rubble" slide.