Well, yesterday was the big day, a big day in the sense of what I set out to do.
But first a little history. A good friend of mine likes to run marathons, not my idea of fun, but who am I to judge. Well this friend has been ask
ing me to guide her and some friends up the Skyline Trail in Palm Springs. This is a climb I've done about 4 or 5 times, most recently about 15 or 20 years ago. Now I love the outdoors and hiking,
but this is one of the most serious hikes in the area. It features eight thousand feet of elevation gain in about eight miles. I had been putting my friend off with the excuse that the snow covering the last 1,000 feet or so of trail would require ice axe, crampons and expedition clothing. None of her group has that kind of gear, so I was spared. Of course guilt finally overcame me and I picked a day earlier in the month. I was "saved" when I ended up having to work, but I had to commit to another date. Well, since I had was going anyway, I invited my son Calvin and any of his friends he wanted to bring, plus some people from work.
I e-mailed my friend last week to remind her about the hike and she called the next morning to tell me her husband had purchased tickets for a play and she would be unable to go. I did some scheming and convinced the coworker and her bo
yfriend to go climbing instead. They took the bait and I was relieved, of course my son was still planning on the hike. Well, my coworker sent me an e-mail the day before the hike telling me she couldn't go since she was being forced to work. Now, with only Calvin going, I decided we should do what he wanted to do and that was to hike the Skyline.
The first time I did this route the trail had fallen into disuse and was difficult to follow. This had been a very popular trail from about the 1930's until the Tram was built in the early 1960's. Since then the trail had become quite overgrown and was no longer even considered a trail but a cross country route by the State Park.
Fast forward to the 1990's and suddenly this trail becomes very popular, especially with runners. One thing about runners is that they are very competitive. They love to compare times. The route for average folks takes about 10 hours, but people I knew were running it under 5 and trying to get their times under 4. The lack of trail maintenance was causing them to lose precious seconds, or even minutes if they got lost.
Normal hikers were also getting lost, sometimes with fatal results. This created headaches for the state park and local search and rescue teams. Both the authorities and the trail runners decided to fix the problem. The trail runners were hiking the trail with gardening tools and trimming away branches that were encroaching
on the trail. The authorities decided that RMRU would hike down the from the upper tram and clean up the trail. This effort required heavy equipment, including a chain saw to cut away fallen logs. Between the two groups, the trail is now fairly easy to follow, at least in my opinion.
I wanted to start at the first possible light, but the best laid plans... . We slapped on sun screen and started hiking at the crack of 7 am. I was in shock, I hadn't had any coffee, my pack was too heavy and I had about 4 hours of sleep. Any sensible person would have turned back, so off we went.
We hiked from the Palm Springs Museum (www.psmuseum.org) for 30 minutes and were only passed by one runner, who didn't have pack or water, so we knew he wasn't going to the top. We saw 2 women start up behind us and didn't see them again for 5 hours. We took our first break at the picnic tables and then continued on up.
There were a number of signs warning us that the trail ahead would be difficult and fraught with danger. Some of the interesting facts I learned was that the trail is 8 miles long with no water. That you should beware of danger from heat, snakes, getting lost and there is no water. Of course being sleep deprived I ignored these sensible warnings to turn back and continued on my merry way.
I had forgotten how long the trail goes but at least I was able to find it, along with other people. I have only seen one other group on my previous trips. On this outing I saw a group of two women and a man ahead of us that we caught up to in the middle third of the hike, three mountain bikers who were going up to "flat rock" and then riding back down, three hikers who caught up to us in the middle third, the two women we saw at the start, a man and his son that went almost half way and turned back and a solo hiker who hiked up to "flat rock" and then was going back down.
I tried to "pace" myself by taking picture of some of the flowers. So far this has been a fair year for flowers.
Calvin was excited by all the lizards that we saw and I was excited by another reptile we saw just inches off the trail. I heard a rattle sound, not full on rattling, but enough to make me look. Too bad he kept moving and didn't pose.
During the middle section we passed and were passed by other parties over and over again.
This continued all the way to "flat rock". We stopped there for lunch, 5 hours since we started. There we met the two women that had started just behind us. They told us that they started up and then had to turn around when they realized they forgot their wallets. Their second start had been at 7:30. While eating the solo hiker showed up, I was amazed he was going to hike back down, he seemed to be in much better shape than me so I guess all the downhill wouldn't be too hard on his legs and knees. Moments later the bikes started showing up and we continued on.
We never saw most of the hikers again, with the exception of the 3 guys that had caught up with us in the middle. They started slowing down more than me and after a while we passed them for the final time and didn't see any again till Long Valley.
The first part was nice hiking, good weather and great views. The middle part had the best flowers, but was hot and with hazy air quality the views weren't so good. The top part was a grind, by that time I was dragging and it got cold, but all in all I'm glad I did it. What really made the trip was that I was able to do it with Calvin.
