Start 175.4, end 190.5, 15.1 total miles
8234 elevation start,7624 elevation end, topping 9,000 feet. High 63, low 43. Calm winds. Total ascent, 3361 feet, total descent 3686, nearly all of it on snow!! 462 feet per mile avg elevation change.
Today would end up being the hardest 15 miles that I’ve ever hiked. I was constantly bogged down in the slushy, sometimes steep snow which was anywhere from 2 feet to 6 feet deep with much higher drifts. Just to give an idea of how bogged down I got, I began hiking at 5:00 AM and stopped at 4 PM. That’s 11 hours to hike 15 miles. You can do the math!! I probably burned over 6,000 calories on this day. It was the most strenuous, hardest hiking I’ve ever done.
This day rewarded me with one of the top 10 best sunrises I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness.
When you look at the pictures above, it’s hard to believe that the temperatures only dropped to 43 degrees, and that the high was in the 60s! This forest is largely Ponderosa Pine, and Spruce, which smells absolutely wonderful!
We would begin to tackle the infamous Fuller Ridge on San Jacinto. Fuller ridge is about 5 miles of steep hillside, all under a lot of snow. This was a very scary hike, and became quite frustrating as I would post hole and fall, slide backwards, have to progress at a crawl on the ridges, or have a crazy steep climb straight up a very tall snow drift.
I began to realize that I wasn’t going to make it off of the mountain today. Not even close. At one point, I post holed and fell down, hard. Zach began to laugh at me, then he immediately fell down, and we both laughed hysterically at our situation!
My mind began playing games with me well into this day. Every extended hill of snow that I had to climb made me very upset. At one point, I even yelled an obscenity at a very long, steep snow covered hill that I had to ascend, after I came around a corner!
After rounding another dangerous hill and a short descent, we came to a really neat creek that was completely encased in snow, except for a little tunnel that had melted out. We filtered some water here and filled our water bottles. You wouldn’t think that water would be a problem, being surrounded by snow, but at the rate of exertion it took to get through this mountain, I was going through water very fast, so this creek was a nice surprise and I took full advantage and drank nearly 2 liters here, and refilled 2 more liters. I would end up filling another 1 liter bottle with snow at my campsite, and it was completely melted by morning, leaving me with over a half liter of melted snow! That’s an extremely high water content for snow!
I eventually found a clearing in the snow, enough to set up a few tents in. I was dead tired after fighting the snow for 11 hours! Zach joined me in camp, along with 2 others that came up from the other side of the mountain, taking a side route up from Idyllwild, a much safer route.
I should also mention that the majority of hikers are completely skipping the entire San Jacinto section of the hike due to the danger factor, and I don’t blame them. When somebody tells me they skipped, I remark that it was a very smart decision.
There’s a group of people that are attempting San Jacinto, about 1-2 days behind us. I sure hope they get over the mountain rather quickly because there’s a storm that’s supposed to move in sometime tomorrow. I’m actually kind of worried for them. My goal for tomorrow is to get the heck off of that mountain before that storm rolls in!!
Glad you made it over the hill.