6millionsteps: Steep Climb

Greetings from Idylwild, CA,
mile post 180, our most recent resupply point. We arrived here after a steep 28-mile long climb through the San Jacinto mountains. Our highest elevation before a 2 1/2 mile descent into town down the Devil's Slide trail, was 8,600 feet.

At the upper elevations, we encountered huge patches of snow which made it difficult to navigate the trail.

There's a lot of elevation here compared to home-even the valleys start at 5000 ft and things go up from there.

It was fun to camp about 10 miles from Palm Springs and to look down upon that brightly lit city at night while surrounded by patches of snow. Our guess is that most of the residents have never ventured into these lovely mountains that are so close and so different from their terrain. We saw fresh Cougar tracks in the snow and heard coyotes at night, and yet we were able to look down upon and clearly see a brightly lit, wealthy city just a few miles below us. And above us, the cloudless sky was filled with stars.

We've sent home a lot of gear to cut down our weight (of course now we hear the weather is cooling off and it may drizzle!) I no longer have to worry about my air mattress going flat at night because, in a fitful attempt to reduce my backpack weight, I accidentally mailed the damn thing back! I felt pretty stupid until we realised Mike had also accidentally mailed his heavy hiking pants home. But--this morning, while donating some excess items to the local hiker box, Mike found a perfect pair of lighter-weight pants that will suit his needs ( sadly, there were no air mattresses in the hiker box).

Oh well, it will all work out, I'm sure.

Tomorrow morning we will begin the next episode of our odyssey, up onto the higher elevations of San Jacinto Peak, which we have been told is a sheet of ice, and we are a bit anxious. There are alternate routes but we prefer to stick to the PCT unless there is no choice.