Thanks to Eric's preliminary scouting we knew were we wanted to begin, off Forest Road 111 just past the junction with road 101. Though you can't see it from the road there is an easy to follow trail that heads off in the direction of Slide Mountain. Though we only came across once blazed tree this seems to be an old trail, large fallen trees have been cut through, trail bench cut etc.
There were some interesting finds along the way including three camp spots the last one being the most interesting. There were also a seemingly never ending supply of walking sticks left along the trail & even more at the camp sites. This final camp is about a mile from the road and from here the trail splits into 2.
One goes down to the nearby stream & from what we could see ended there.
The second continued in the same direction toward Slide Mountian. Shortly after the camp though the trail faded out completely and no further signs of a trail could be found. We decided to head over to the Southern ridge line & continue heading West. The going was easy until we reached the 2.5 mile mark were we hit a wall of Rhodies! Actually the problem was it wasn't a wall they just slowly increased as we continued forward until we found ourselves surrounded and trapped liked flies in a web! Nothing for it but to continue battling forward though! Besides if I had turned around I would have met Chiyoko who was bringing up the rear & after being stung on her neck I didn't think she would be in the best of moods being led into the Rhodie Maze :^)...Eventually they thinned slightly again and we eventually found ourselves in bright sunshine on the Summit of Slide Mountain with a great view of Hood directly in front of us.
We were also drenched from all the dew on the Rhodie leaves. Its not a bare summit but with with some moving around you can get good views to the North & South as well as the West.
There was some talk on the previous thread about weather or not it would be possible to continue from here along the ridge line to the PCT. We didn't have time to investigate further on this trip & since we could not see the whole ridge line we can't definitively say yes or no but it's certainly worth investigating further.
Thankfully our return trip was much easier. We left the Summit staying closer to the North ridge then moved over to the South side as we descended. On our return trip we encountered virtually no Rhodies even tough sometimes we were only about 100' North of were we had climbed up! We also checked out the creek North of our entry point on our way down, before returning to the same trail and back to the road.
In Summary:
We can't say for sure that we found any trace of the Original Slide Mountain Trail. I think that my neck hurt more than my legs the next day from all the looking around in vain for a blaze on an surviving old tree! Weather or not the trail we followed for the first mile was part of this old trail we can't say but it seems to be in the right place. The timber on Slide looks to be quite young with frequent dead old growth Cedar trees that show basal fire damage. Did this hillside burn in the 40's or 50's destroying the trail I wonder?
The summit of Slide Mountain can be reached with a moderate 3.5 mile hike through the trees - Devils Club & Rhodies can be avoided.
The possibility of continuing on to the PCT is definitely worth further investigation.
For those wanting to explore further we did tie a piece of pink ribbon just back off the road to mark our starting point.
Here is Eric's GPS map, red is up, yellow is down. If you go I would recommend following our red track up to about 3750' or so then moving over to our yellow track for the rest of the trip to avoid the Rhododendrons.
As always lots more photos here if interested.
Cheers
Guy.
Nice to live vicariously from your great pics, and I'll definitely have to follow your footsteps up there..! Here's the 1938 map clip from the old thread:
