cactus to clouds 12/14/14

previous tracks: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/88736488

hopefully there's a bunch of new snow from Thursday night.  bringing micro spikes, an iceax and snowshoes (possibly too optimistic).

Leaving sd @3am.

Expecting to be at the tram by around 11, and off by 2pm.  all times hugely guestimated.

mammoth area long weekend

Using the last of my mammoth flight pack.
I was going to hike to yosemite and take YARTS back, but my plans were dashed when i called them and found out that their schedule changes in sept to weekends only.

i might instead just take the JMT to 1000 islands lake and then the PCT back to mammoth.

August 18th Whitney via the Mountaineer's Route


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This was the main target we had driven up for, Emerson was an acclimatization hike of sorts.  I had not been up the mountaineer's route before, but Chris had done it a couple times.  Chris' coworker had obtained lottery permits for Monday and had a sweet condo in Mammoth.  After the Emerson climb we spent the night in Mammoth and headed down to lone pine (at the whitney portal family camp) for Sunday night.  The group of hikers were all really cool people and we had a good time on our rest day, including a wonderful chicken rotisserie dinner, which is one of the best meals i've ever eaten while camping.

We made plans to start hiking around 4, and were only 8 minutes off our goal (started at 4:08).  We made the turn off at the north fork lone pine creek crossing (right before the crossing), and were at the lower boyscout lake just after sunrise.  From here as we continued up the route, I stayed too far too the left (and everyone followed me); At the time this felt like the safest option in the talus/scree, however we ended up paying for it when we were literally hedged in by TONs of shrubs (willows? they had a bunch of white cottoney things on em like dandelion seeds).  We were able to navigate through the shrubs on what appeared to be use trails, but it definitely took much longer than if we had stayed on the rocks/talus to the right.

We got to Iceberg lake (and the sweet view of Russell) at 830.  Here we refilled on water and food and got ready for the climb (helmets).  We had chosen to not bring a rope, gear or harnesses.  The third class up to the notch was mostly uneventful, the piece that i remember was that one of the group had decided to do an "icebucket challenge" so we filled our helmets up with corn snow near the top (~13000ft) and dumped it on him.  There was one section where it appeared a large chock stone was blocking the gully, but we were able to ascend on climber's left via slabby stuff.

When we hit the notch, the group decided that they did not want to ascend the first chute to the left as there was ice on much of it.  I think if we had brought a rope and some anchor stuff (to use as a hand line) the others would have been fine ascending the chute, so I'll take this as a lesson for future trips.  Bring a rope if someone in the group might need it.  Due to this, we contoured around the mountain to the left.  After a couple hundred feet, we followed a leftward ramp up and were able to join with the whitney trail to the summit which we reached shortly after 1245.

The group consensus was that we should take the trail down instead of the mountaineer's route and we started down at around 115.  Having a group of 6, and staying together for the most part meant that the descent took a fair amount of time.  At Mirror lake however, we decided to just go out without waiting; Chris and I reached Whitney portal at 6:30.  This worked out wonderfully as there was a group of hikers there that needed their picture taken; and were extremely generous with their food and cold beer.

Aug 16 Mt Emerson via the South East Face.

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map: http://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=37.23391,-118.62924&z=14&b=t

Drove up with Chris on Friday night, leaving SD at 8pm (late).  We stopped in BLM land near Independence for the night around 1:30am and slept.  We randomly ran into a couple of guys in a truck that were looking for a place to stay as well (they said Onion Valley was full), so we let them know that we were on BLM land, and that sleeping there was ok.

In the morning we got up just after 6 and continued on to Bishop.
Gearwise: we had a 30m dynamic rope (~9.8 mm), and 100ft static pullcord(7mm), we also brought a set of Hexcentrics and 5 cams (red link cam, red + yellow camalots and 2 master cams), We brought climbing shoes and real harnesses as well, and of course helmets.  I was wearing altra lone peak 1.5 shoes, which i enjoy for their comfort, but were REALLY shredded after this one trip.

We were at North Lake trailhead and on the trail just after 830.  Having been on the Piute Pass trail less than a month ago (for Mt Humprhey's), I knew what to expect, it's really nice!  We got to the turn off for Emerson's South East face (at the tiny 3rd stream crossing, right as the trail starts going up rock stairs) in about an hour.  From here, we headed towards the visible chimney (the start of the route).

 (picture here)

At the base of the climb I noticed that there was someone just above us, Yelled "hi" but didn't hear a response.  The first pitch was supposed to be the crux of the climb and it was, this was basically the only vertical section.  it's roughly 80-100 feet of fairly easy (rated 5.4) facey climbing in a chimney.  There are big solid placements for hands and feet if you keep your eyes open.  We looked at this from the base and decided to not rope up, but we did put on climbing shoes.

After the first ~100 feet, there's a flattish platform and then more chimney climbing, however it's much less vertical and more slabby.  We started moving to our right onto the slab as the chimney area was damp and had a little trickle of water in it.  After climbing the next 100-150 feet we ran into the climber from above.  I was trailing ~10 feet behind Chris, but i was able to hear a response of "Do you guys have a rope?".

The climber was planning on soloing the route however was experiencing some cramping and needed help bailing.  He didn't accept any of our food or beverages, just wanted to be lowered.  He did not have a harness or much gear (i think he had had 4 carabiners, but nothing to attach them to).  On the platform that we were standing, there was not many good placements (on the route in general actually), But Chris was able to find a spot for a good red camalot and a mastercam, which he backed up with a link cam (on a long extension), while i tied a webbing harness (patient pick off) for the climber.  The climber said he was comfortable being lowered, so i did not go with him.  We lowered him to the first platform from our anchor by tying our ropes together and passing the knot via using 2 ATCs + a prussik.  At this point we were starting to plan to build anchor to lower him the rest of the way when another climber appeared in the chimney.  She seemed really confused (and a little unhappy) to see what was going on at first, but the climber explained the situation, and she was really helpful by the time i went down to see what was going on.  She explained that she was at the end of her 60m rope just below the platform, so that it wasn't likely we could get him down in one rap with our franken rope, and didn't trust her anchor for lowering.  She then belayed up her partner who built an anchor lower in the chimney (on much better placements) and lowered the climber the rest of the way on their 60m rope.  Chris and I were really lucky that they showed up when they did, as it allowed us to get back to climbing, without having to build 2 more anchors and lowering him.

We resumed climbing after this, which ended up being about a 2 hour delay.  The immediate next sections were mostly in the chimney, but it eventually flattened out and was a lot more of a scree chute.  At this point we switched out of climbing shoes.  For the most part we followed the chute (going right to avoid a large chock stone) until we got to the part where it hits the ridge.  Follow a steep right sloping ramp to the ridge.

The ridge is awesome, it's really long and really knife-edgey, it's definitely the highlight of this climb.  There isn't much actual climbing on  the ridge, (e.g it's kinda flat), but it's definitely long, and there are several pillars of stone to pass over.  At one point while I was testing my weight onto a large stone, it came loose and hit me on the knee before dropping down, but most of the rocks were solidly in place.  One thing to note is that you can clearly see the descent gully while on the ridge (it's the chute directly below, towards Piute Pass).

The scree gully descent is just typical sierras, there's not really anything to add, We were able to see all the way down to the water from basically the entire way, it's fairly long, but there isn't anything tricky to it.  The descent is longer than the approach, as you exit off the Piute pass (west) side of the mountain, as opposed to starting on the other side.  However once you hit the trail (and water) it's pretty easy.

8/9 - 8/10 Three T's

Overnighter to test out some hammock stuff.  starting from icehouse canyon TH sometime today.
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My goal for the weekend was to test my hammock, setting it + the tarp up, sleeping in it and etc.  However i couldn't find my knife, and thus ended up hiking without a knife.  having brough 30+ feet of cordage that i intended to cut to the appropriate lengths meant that the setting up tarp goal of the trip was an epic bust.  However everything else went pretty smoothly, the new shoes i was using Altra lone peak 1.5 were really comfortable.

I started hiking around 3pm on saturday after taking some hikers back to their car at manker flats.  Due to flooding the week before the trail is washed out in many places.  I took the cedar glen trail instead of the regular ice house canyon trail thinking that this would avoid most of the trail damage (this climbs up immediately and traverses to the saddle).  The washed out areas on the trail are all really well marked with lots of trail tape.  Past the cedar glen campsite the trail traverses over to the saddle, and here there were tons of flood damaged chutes.  For the most part they're easy to get around, but there are some unsafe spots, the sediment left over in the chutes is actually really firm (i thought it would be soft), kind of reminiscent of avalanche debris, but is really slick.

I hit the saddle around 6pm and continued up to timber mountain.  On the summit ridge of the mountain were tons of well situated trees so i just set up here.  Due to the full (super?) moon, it was really bright, so i did not sleep as well as i would have liked, however that was going to happen just about anywhere.  In the morning i decided not to go to telegraph and thunder, and just hiked out instead.  On the way out i took the icehouse trail instead of the cedar glen.  This trail is easier to follow for the most part, except for one HUGE washout near where the trail departs the creekbed and starts climbing.

Fortunately for me, there were some timely hikers coming up so i followed their voices to find the trail.

7/26 Humphreys and Emerson

part of car2car hell for sdmrt. caltopo map


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Drove up Friday night with Elise and met up with Brian and Erin at Four Jefferey Campground at around 11pm.  They had met up with the rest of the team before we arrived and the plan was to get up and leave for the North fork trail head by 5am.

We arrived at the trail head and started hiking by six.  We had 7 SDMRT members and carried some extra webbing, 2 ropes, helmets and harnesses, but not any pro.

We cruised up to Piute pass in about 2 and a half hours, This was a super pleasant hike past lots of nice terrain, lakes, meadows and more.  The trail is very well maintained with 2 log stream crossings as well as dozens of rock steps/water bars.

From the pass, we initially stayed on the trail heading down to summit lake for bee-lining for Mt Humphreys across the bowl.  This area was a LOT nicer than i expected; there was lots of grassy sections as well as firm footing and nice rolling terrain.  I guess i'd gotten used to walking on moraines and really loose talus.  We took a break for water at one of the tarns near the peak.  At this point one of our team members was ill and threw up, after a short discussion he and Adam decided to stay and rest and then head down when able.

We decided that we needed to set a turn around time that would give us a shot at the peak, but that we absolutely needed to get back on the trail by dark (e.g. it would be really hard to find the trail in the dark).  We decided that we had to be off the summit (or headed down by 4pm), which would give us time to get back to the trail/piute pass by 8 (sunset), and then back to the trailhead at 10:30-11.

The remaining 5 of us headed to the peak, once at the peak, we traversed over talus (no more gentle rolling meadow) to the left most ramp (as indicated in beta from summitpost) and started up.  A couple hundred feet up the chute, we ran into a giant chock stone that was filling the entire chute, and as indicated in the beta, headed up a side gully to the left.  From this we were able to re-join the gully up higher, and continued on.  Can't remember anything exceptional or tricky about the rest of this until the notch, it was just regular talus/scree in a gully.  At the notch I saw that there were a couple of climbers descending, so took a break while waiting for them to be off the route.

One of the team members decided that he didn't want to try the upcoming 3rd/4th sections and elected to stay at the notch.  This left 4 of us for the summit, we climbed unroped (but brought a ~120' static 8mm) past the first 4th class section as marked on summitpost.  Around this corner however, we had a little issue, the line drawn on the beta we had seemed to indicate that the route was up this steep left leaning ramp (towards an anvil shaped split rock) as opposed to an easier arete (which i had initially decided seemed easiest).  We decided to stick with the image, and i went up the ramp, however by going up this, i ended up under the anvil shaped rock, and would have needed to pull around it (v2 at least).  I actually thought about this, and almost attempted it a couple times, but eventually decided to go back down.
Being a little sketched out now, i elected to lead on the rope and check out the arete before we bailed.  Luckily it turned out to be the correct route, I built an anchor with a large piece of webbing and belayed the rest of the group up.  From here, we walked to the top (we summited ~330), there was a lot of exposure, but nothing particularly difficult.

On the descent, we choose to rap, and were able to descend past both 4th class sections in 2 ~60ft raps off of previously placed gear (webbing + pitons).  There was a LOT of gear left in on this face, and as such i felt fine using it instead of adding to it.  Besides the two rap stations that we used, there were at least 4 other places where someone had left webbing behind and apparently rapped off it.  I felt best in using the spots that we did as it made a more direct line to safer terrain, and the anchors (including the pitons) seemed solid.  as we had 4 climbers, we rappelled simultaneously in pairs.

On the descent, instead of leaving the way we came, we stayed more to the left (beta provided by the other 2 climbers).  I think the quality of the descent was essentially the same (aka crappy), but it led us out slightly closer to the trail that we wanted to find before dark.  Here I made a slight navigational error (i had read people went too far west an overcompensated i guess) and went too far east while descending, this led to probably an extra 20 minutes of hiking on the rim of the basin towards the trail.  Our time estimates from before worked out pretty much as I had called it.  We were on the trail about 20 minutes before sunset, and as such had all the navigationally challenging stuff out of the way before dark.

From the trail we cruised back (trail felt interminable) to the north lake trailhead, and were out before 1030.

7/3/14 - 7/6/14 Shepard's pass peaks

Going up with SDMRT folk for mountain climb training.  Planning to hit some combination of Williamson, Tyndall, Junction and Keith.
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Departed SD ~5pm on Thursday afternoon, picked up a permit from the lone pine ranger station's overnight box (they had provided us the wrong code, but we were able to get our permit out anyway) and arrived at the Shepard's pass trailhead by around 11pm. 

Due to my having seen the conditions at nearby Lone Pine Peak last week, I did not take crampons or an iceax.  The only technical gear that I carried was my helmet. 

7 of us (6 SDMRT + 1) got up around 6 and were on the trail by 6:30.  Due to the low snow year the first few crossings of Symmes creek were fairly straightforward, however after the 3rd (maybe 4th) crossing, we messed up a bit and stayed in the creek drainage instead of following the (washed out) trail up and to the left.  This was quickly remedied, as there was really nowhere to go along the drainage.  The trail was in pretty good condition and really easy to follow besides at that last crossing and at the big drainage between mahogany flat and anvil camp.  This second washed out area was navigable by heading up the drainage to a visible flattened section and then crossing. 

We took a short break at anvil camp for lunch and water.  The creek is flowing very nicely, and although it is fairly wet, there were not that many mosquitos, which is really nice for this time of year.  Moving on up to the pothole area, the creek is flowing nicely, and there no major trail issues.  From the pothole to Shepard's pass, the trail has moved a bit since I was last on it (2011), but is still there and fairly easy to navigate, there was one ~100ft section of snow near the very top that was really soft and fairly easy to cross (~5pm). 


Crossing the snow section near the top of Shepard's pass

Once atop the pass, we set up camp and decided to start hiking by about the same time in the morning, our plan was to hit Williamson first and then go to Tyndall time/weather permitting. 

Heading up to Williamson was very dry, there were a couple patches of snow, however it was never required to walk on it.  The lakes all had water and there were numerous streams throughout the Williamson bowl. 

This was the 3rd time I have climbed the "Black stain" route up Williamson, and this was by far the driest.  No snow for crampons means lots of talus and scree.  On the way up, once past the black stain (most easily bypassed on the right side) I found that by sticking to climbers left of the gully, I could use the granite wall for support, and some class 3 as opposed to staying in the sloppier scree/talus in the center.  The chimney section near the top is one move of class 4, and is easy to protect by fixing a line from the top or midway.

Due to the extra scree and talus slogging it took us a fair amount of time to reach the summit, so we took our time up there enjoying the views and talking to some new friends we had met along the way.  We also had really clear wonderful weather with very little wind, so there was little fear of thunderstorms. 

Team descends into Williamson Bowl, Mt Williamson in the background
 

Our descent was basically along the same route back, I managed to snap one of my trekking poles (carbon rei/komperdell) when I jammed it between some talus while descending.  This was a little disappointing, but I wanted new ones anyway :P. 

We were back atop Williamson bowl at 5, leaving us with not enough time to properly attempt Tyndall so we just headed back to camp. 

At camp, we had some excitement when the snowfield by the lake calved off a huge section into the water. 

Snow calves off and falls into lake, Mt Tyndall in the background

In the morning, It appeared our weather luck was finally running out, dark ominous clouds were everywhere.  This killed any lingering thoughts of hitting Tyndall on the way out.  We packed up camp and headed back to the trailhead.  I wasn't keeping track of exact times, but I think we got out fairly fast (<5hours).  Overall, it was a good weekend trip.  As a mountain climb training I think it went fairly well, everyone had a voice in our decisions, we didn't exceed anybody's safety margins and we all made it to the summit and back in one piece. 

6/28/14 lone pine peak via north ridge

Drove up to Lone Pine on Friday night after work.  Got into town just before 11, met up with greg and headed up to camp at lone pine campground.  We set our alarms for 5 am and went to bed by 1230.

camera phone pano: Lone pine peak, Leconte, Irvine, Mallory, Whitney

In the morning we hit the meysean lakes trailhead, geared up and started hiking by 620.  I've thought this before, and have improved, but i think i still waste too much time gearing up and starting.  Why bother waking up so early just to pack?  I'd like to be completely ready to go before getting to the trailhead especially in situations like this where most of the gear we used was greg's.  i should be able to just stuff whatever i am given into my pack and go.

Heading up the trail i felt a little sluggish, but we didn't do all too poorly; finishing the trail portion and hitting the notch in about 90 minutes from the trailhead.  The class 3/4 to notch A was long and mostly high quality rock.  Upon descending into the notch, we took a short break and got geared up for the climbing.

Meysan lakes basin

The route was rated 5.4 or 5.5 in all of the beta I had looked at, and i can mostly agree with those numbers.  In my estimation the hardest actual climbing moves were generally the very first sequence out of the notches. In the case of the first technical section after notch A, we belayed 2 climbing pitches and then traversed/downclimbed unroped.  In retrospect, only the first section really needed a rope.

Placing pro by the huge flake pitch2

When we got to the section with the pitons, it was really nice to confirm that we were doing exactly what we should be doing.  Having not been climbing much this year, the layback move past the piton and again shortly above it was a little harder than i would have liked, but I still made it without any issues.  Again in this section, we probably stayed roped a little bit longer than we needed to, once it got really sandy we took off the rope and continued without it to the notch.

Greg checking out the route

We set up a belay across the first really exposed ridge traverse, and then descended into the last notch.  From here, the "zigzag crack" mentioned in the beta looks fairly hard from the bottom, but really isnt.  again the first move was the hardest, and we only belayed for one pitch.  Afterwards we decided to simul climb as it didn't seem very difficult.  I took a ~50ft lead and we tried to keep 3 pieces of gear between us.  As we got up closer to the summit, it became harder to place gear (mostly just giant blocks everywhere) so we unroped. 

Knife edge ridge traverse to notch C, summit block beyond

From the summit, the descent is into the northwestern gully.  There are actually more than a few gullys that look like they would work, but the beta warns you to use the one that you can see all the way down (or face cliffiness).  The descent is in my opinion really nasty, it's a really rocky scree field.  The large amount of big debris made it fairly hard for me to just plungestep/slide down without falling down. 

Chilling on the summit

Once we were down into the lakes basin we just traversed west until we found the trail (amid a swarm of mosquitos).  From here it was approx 2 hours on trail back to Whitney portal. 

We were back to the car at around 730, overall 13 hours for the trip.  I'm pleased that we were able to summit and successfully return to the car before dark, but I need to work on my overall conditioning and climbing level to get back to where i want to be.  Our navigation/route work was pretty much spot on all day which was a huge plus.  The transitions we made too were also pretty clean and we didn't waste too much time switching stuff.  We could have saved some more time by going unroped a bit more, and we probably had too much gear (i think doubles up to #2, hexes and stoppers) but that's easy to say now.  

Thanks to greg for coming and leading most of the technical stuff.

edit:  the real gear list.

Mastercam #1, 2, 3

BD 0.4, 0.5, 0.75, 1, 2(x2)

Full set of nuts

Two hexes (largest and second largest)

10 single length slings racked as alpine draws (each with 2 carabiners... probably should have taken fewer biners)

2 double length slings

two 20-28ft 7mm cordellettes + 6(?) locking carabiners

A16's 3 peak challenge.

So A16 decided to host a 3 peak challenge. It's sort of a non-race version of their (i think?) 8000m challenge. The point is to summit all 3 socal 10k peaks within a certain period of time (24h, 72h, 3weeks, 3 months), and they'll give you prizes.

I found out about it on wednesday and as i hadn't had any weekend plans, decided i would go for a 24h attempt. Here's what went down.

From my perspective, the hardest part of this was going to be getting a gorgonio permit. Vivian creek is really popular, and i've long had bad luck picking up walk-up or day of permits for that trail. The other trails for gorgonio are longer and require more driving as well so that could potentially wreck any sort of speed attempt. I think the ideal plan for hitting all 3 of these peaks in 1 day, would be:

1. go up the palm springs tram as soon as it opens, then you have a ~10mi RT hike (~1500ft elev gain) to the summit.
2. Vivian creek trail to gorgonio ~18 miles rt (~5500ft elev gain)
3. Baldy hut trail ~9 miles rt (~4000ft elev gain)
4. -> totals: 38 miles 11000 ft elev gain

However what I ended up doing was a bit worse due to the way i decided to deal with the permit situation.

My plan:

1. Leave San Diego ~9pm
2. Summit baldy in the dark
3. grab any left out permit for gorgonio (i was prepared to take any permits left out for vivian, south fork (dollar lake), or san bernadino.  at around 4-5am.  If none available wait for ranger /nap and try to get a walk-in permit for anything that i could summit from.   
4. summit gorgonio via whatever trail i was able to get a permit for
5. drive to palm springs tram, and hike the summit, camp overnight (last tram down is 9:45pm) at round valley.

I felt that this was a solid way to be able to hit all 3 summits in 24h, the negatives were that i'd have to carry overnight gear on san jacinto (i guess i could have stashed it on the way), and that it was very dependent on whatever walk-up permits were available at the gorgonio (mill creek) ranger station.

My friend Elise from the mountain rescue team wanted to go hiking and came with.  She seemed a bit worried about slowing me down, but i was not worried about it as even if we went really slow (~1.5-2 mi/hr) the 28 miles shouldn't take over 24h, and having the company was much more fun.  

We ended up leaving san diego closer to 10 than 9 and got to baldy by just before midnight.  It was really pleasant night hiking conditions, with a moon just over half full providing some good light and gentle breezes to keep us cool.  Past the bowl (on the ridge) the wind picked up a bit and it was downright chilly on the summit, we had enough gear to stay warm (although i should have brought some gloves).  We made solid time, hit the summit by 3am, and were back to car by 5:20 just as it started to get light outside.  We saw a couple of other groups of hikers getting started, they seemed confused that we were leaving.  

Now came the part of the trip that was out of our control.  We got to the mill creek ranger station by just after 6.  I was surprised to see that there were already 3 groups (or more) waiting by the ranger station.  From what i remembered the ranger station usually opened at 8 on Saturday, but i guess they had changed it to 7.  However before jumping in line, i checked the left-out permit desk and saw one left, It was for fish creek TH, which was a little bit longer (10.1 miles RT), but started considerably higher up (at 8200ft vs 5500 for Vivian).  Elise seemed happy with the trade off of ~2800 feet of elevation for another .8 miles (one way) too, so we grabbed it and left immediately instead of sticking around and seeing if we had a chance to get a permit for something else once the ranger showed up and opened up shop.  

I'm not sure if i had ever climbed fish creek trail before, but i had topos for the area on my phone, and we grabbed a road map from the ranger station.  The problem ended up being that there was a 7 mile dirt road to get to the trailhead, this made it significantly longer to get to compared to vivian or even south fork/forsee creek.  It ended up taking just over 3 hours between leaving baldy and getting to the trailhead for gorgonio.  The fish creek trail itself was really pleasant.  The trail is very well graded and maintained, has tons of tree cover and a couple of creek crossings.  It also goes by plane wreckage (also accessible from dry lake), which is always interesting to take a look at.  We again kept a good pace and hit the summit at 1pm.

It was at this point that we started to think we might have issues.  I figured it was about an hour drive from the 10 to the tramway, and we had just discovered that getting to the 10 would probably take another hour (or more) due to the dirt road.  Working backwards from the 8pm last tram time, we had to be back at the car by 5 to have a reasonable chance of making the 8pm tram.  While descending is usually a lot less strenuous than climbing, it also has a bit more impact and really long descents (like the 10.1 miles we had) can get mind numbing (doesn't help if you have not slept).  We made it back to the car by 5:45, which was a bit worrisome, but couldn't really be helped.  Elise decided that she was going to not hike the 3rd peak, but would wait for me in at car, she also managed the impressive feat of sleeping through me driving over a really bumpy/rutted dirt road.  By the time we hit the ranger station area (where i get cellphone data) it was 7pm.  Google maps suggested that it would take just over an hour to get to the tram station.

Having never taken the tram up (I've been on the tram at least 5 times, but every time it was on the way down after hiking up skyline or snow creek).  I was not sure at all how getting there and hopping on the 8pm ride would be.  So my options were to speed to tram station and hope to get on, or go to idylwild and take marion or devil's slide.  As we discussed this, We saw it as a ~5 mile hike with 1500ft gain vs a 6 mile hike with ~4k gain.  I'm not exactly sure why (probably the sleep deprivation) but i totally did not remember that devils slide was more like 8 miles ~5k gain.  Due to that bit of wrong information, i decided to not bother with risking the tram and went straight to idylwild where i picked up a walk up permit at the station and pizza.  

I'm not exactly sure why, but i love hiking devils slide trail (humber park to saddle junction), its 2.5 miles and about 1600 feet, but it never seems that long to me.  Having started hiking (alone) at 920, i hit saddle junction at 1020.  From here, things went a little bit downhill, my memory failed me (or the sleep deprivation), but i thought it was just a quick jaunt on the PCT to wellman divide, but it took FOREVER.  In thinking san jac was 6 miles from humber park, i had managed to remember devils slide, and the wellman-> summit parts correctly, but i had totally mis-remembered the middle section, which was both twice as long, and nasty (lots of pieces of shale, which does not feel great underfoot after having hiked 30+ miles already).  I realized my mistake when i finally did hit wellman divide and saw this sign.

Ooops!  I had already hiked 5.5 miles of the 6 i was expecting, and suddenly had 2.3 remaining.  I've gotten really good at knowing how much food/water i need while hiking so i did not have much extra for the additional ~4miles.  I considered turning around at this point, but eventually kept going.  Actually managed to summit fairly uneventfully by 1am.  The night hiking conditions were even better than on baldy, there was just light cooling breezes and an even bigger moon providing more light.  

On the descent i actually did pretty decently until devil's slide.  I guess i just ran out of energy (not having food left hurt) what took me only an hour on the way up ended up taking almost 90 minutes on the way down as i kept stopping to sit down, and hallucinate that rocks and trees were other things (really odd, slightly funny).  I eventually got back to the car at 545am and woke Elise who drove us back to San Diego, I don't really remember anything about the drive back except that i had a pillow.  

Final tally, i did manage to meet the letter of the contest rules (be at the 3 summits in a 24h period) since i summited baldy at 3am saturday, and jacinto at 1am the next day; even had 2 hours to spare.  However it was done really un-efficiently.  

Baldy: ~9 miles, 4000ft gain (the only one that we did according to plan)

gorgonio: 20 miles 3500ft gain

jacinto: ~15 miles 4500 ft gain.

total: 44miles 12000ft gain

Hiked about 6 miles more than i intended to (basically turned a mellow victory lap into a death march) and pretty much didn't sleep for 47 hours (i woke up at 7 friday), the human body is kind of amazing isn't it?

also, I'm pretty sure that i won't hike san jac from humber park again for a while.