San Jacinto Peak hike, June 28, 2003

On Saturday, I hiked up San Jacinto Peak outside of Palm Springs, CA. The pictures are here.

Originally, I had wanted to take a trip which had been listed on the Sierra Club's website. That trip was to Cornell Peak (near San Jacinto Peak), and it involves some Class 2 or 3 climbing. It sounded interesting. Here's a trip report from a past SC trip. However, when I got to the designated meeting place in Monrovia, there was only one other person there. He'd been waiting without luck for the trip's organizers to arrive. However, no one besides we two showed up.

However, my interest piqued, I decided to head off to Palm Springs by myself, perhaps to check out Cornell Peak. I had been up to San Jacinto Peak before, there are pictures from that trip here.

As before, I took the tram up. I asked a few people about Cornell, and as I got somewhat unclear and conflicting information, and since they said there wasn't even a use trail, and moreover a couple of the rangers said that no one else would be up there, I decided that just doing San Jacinto Peak would be the better option.

I took the heavily-used route from the upper tram station through Round Valley and to the peak, for a round-trip of about 11 miles with 2400' of gain. The hike itself is fairly easy; the problem is in going from Palm Springs at 450' to the summit at 10,804' in less than five hours. Time going up was about 3:15, time going down was about 2:15. I carried 3L of water with me, all of which I had drunk by the time I got back to the tram. I'd drunk 3+ liters while driving in, and I filled up at the tram stations as well.

I started from the Long Valley ranger station after 2pm, meaning that almost everyone else was going the other way. Unfortunately, one of my hiking poles' sections was stuck, and even with a ranger-supplied wrench I couldn't get it working. So, I decided not to use the poles, which would had made things a bit quicker and easier. However, as I had hardly used my power glutes during the hike, I was able to go up the cement ramp heading to the upper tram station without stopping by taking long slow rest-steps.

Epilogue: On a visit to REI earlier today, they replaced (free of charge) my two-year-old poles with a brand new pair.

UPDATE: Also, I wouldn't recommend starting as late as I did. I did that because a) I was slightly familiar with the route, b) I knew approximately how long it would take me, c) the sky was clear, d) I had a specific turn-around time which I would have stuck to, e) I knew there would be people both on the trail and camping at Round Valley, f) I had extra clothing, and g) I knew I could run back moderately quickly if the need arose.

OutdoorSports · Sun, 06/29/2003 - 19:01 · · Importance: 1