C2C2C - Character-Building Life Choices

[lizolas]

C2C2C - Character-Building Life Choices

In which I finally do a >30 mile hike

What’s worse than an uphill battle? A downhill battle. Downhill is supposed to be the easy part, damnit. But if I wanted easy I probably shouldn’t have taken the harder variation on what’s considered the 5th hardest day hike in America (it’s not; whoever decided that it was explicitly harder than Whitney has seriously flawed assessment criteria and/or superhuman lungs). Like all type 2 fun, I spent the majority of the hike down wondering why I didn’t just take the tram, but as soon as I was back at the car not only was I immensely glad I hadn’t, I was thinking about how I’d do it better in the future. I’m a slow learner.

With a day to kill between Joshua Tree and my WFR course in San Diego, San Jacinto seemed like a good peak to check off on the way. I’d had to put it off on New Year’s Eve when my car wasn’t ready in time. I drove to Palm Springs and found a Walmart that allowed overnight parking (a surprising number don’t, despite their reputation as a place for overnight stays). I ate dinner, then organized and packed everything I wanted to take on the hike the next day. I like to think of myself as a punctual person, but when hiking I seem to be that friend you need to tell to be ready at 6 when the party doesn’t actually start until 8:30. I decided that midnight was earlier than necessary for me to start, and I could start at 2 instead. Somehow I slept through the 12:45 and 1 alarms, woke up at 2:45, drove to the Palm Springs Art Museum, and started up the trail just before 4.

The trail was clearly marked and easy to follow in the dark, although I was going more slowly than I think I would have been during the day. It’s a lot easier to follow trails when you can see where they go more than 10 feet in front of you. I never got off the trail, but I often had to stop and look for which way I was supposed to go next when it curved. The white paint on the rocks helped, but I think it would have been easy to see the trail even without that after I got used to the idea of looking for more of a path than just space between two plants. There’s no doubt it’s a steep trail, but from online descriptions I was expecting something a lot more heinous. This didn’t feel substantially more difficult than a lot of the Bay Area hikes I do, although upon further consideration, with those I tend to actively seek out the steepest options.

I stopped at 6 for a snack near the 4300 rocks as the sky started to lighten. I felt awful for a while after that, but I think eating is still the right decision for 18+ hours of hiking - which at the time I thought would be more like 12-14 hours of hiking. At that point I felt good about the time I was making. Now it was light, I’d start going faster, and I’d finish the 10 miles to the summit before noon at that pace. It was cool to watch the landscape change with the elevation; desert transitioned to scrub and then into sparse evergreen forest.

Sunrise.

Things slowed down markedly shortly before Grubbs Notch. The trail turns onto a steep, north-facing slope that had accumulated some snow and ice. Having apparently learned nothing from last fall, I didn’t have anything with me but hiking boots and poles. It wasn’t impassable by any means, but it meant slowing down a lot to navigate the trail safely. I knew it was unreasonably optimistic to hope that the trail would be clear higher up, but I hoped anyway.

Narrator: It wasn’t clear.

I got to the Ranger Station around 9. I topped off my Camelbak with 2 liters of water, filled out my wilderness permit, ignored the warning sign, and continued up the trail. While the area around the tram and ranger station was clear, the trail quickly disappeared under several inches of snow. Great, more practice navigating trails under snow - just what my adventure needed. My adventure might also have benefitted from better footwear. My hiking boots are only “waterproof” when not fully immersed in something wet. Eventually I’ll get better about loading topo maps onto my phone to navigate with, but for now all the stupid snow hikes I do have been on trails that show up on Strava.

Well, I had poles anyway. I’m not sure what microspikes do in powder.

The trail after the tram gets markedly less steep, so the main issue was that I was wading through several inches of snow in boots that claim to be waterproof but aren’t. For the most part the trail was easy enough to follow, but I got lost for about 20 minutes at one point when I lost all traces of tracks in a large flat spot. At some point I took what turned out to be a shortcut up a section of the trail and only noticed when I was trying to navigate down it on the way back. The trail exited the shaded, north-facing area and moved into exposed scrub and sparse trees. The final portion of the trail to the summit reminded me of my favorite section of the Clouds Rest trail - clearly outlined by manzanitas, with expansive views of the surrounding area. I would have enjoyed it even more had I not been regretting leaving both my sunglasses and my sunscreen in the car. A bit of snowy scrambling and I summited at 1:15, well after I’d initially thought I would, but not awful. I still had a long day ahead of me.

Obligatory Summit Photo
Gratuitous, contrived shirtless photo
Another gratuitous, contrived shirtless photo.
I was told there would be clouds?

About half an hour of snacks and selfies later, it was time to leave. I was expecting the lower section of the trail to be easy during the day, but I already knew I was likely to run out of day at least an hour before I was done hiking - and that assumed a ~3 mph pace the whole way. The snow and ice I’d come through on the way up would be slower, even downhill, but at least this time I’d have my own trail to follow (and, as it turned out, the trail of the dozen or so other hikers coming after me). Before I left the summit, I saw the first other hiker I’d seen all day - even passing through the tram/ranger area previously I’d seen nobody. He’d come up on the tram, and on my way back I passed more people who had disregarded the warning sign at the Ranger station advising microspikes to continue. For most of the way back to the tram, I hiked within sight of the other guy I’d seen on the summit, which was how I found out that a part of my path up that was too slick to comfortably descend was actually way off the trail. He repeatedly encouraged me to take the tram down rather than hike down, saying it was easy to get on without a ticket and they almost never checked. I think he thought my main reason for wanting to hike was the cost of the tram, and didn’t understand that I just wanted to do the whole hike to say I’d done it.

Back at the tram station by 4 - note that my delayed departure would have been fine if I’d only been trying to take the last tram down - I was looking forward to having only a bit more snow ahead of me until I was back on dirt trail. I stopped and briefly looked around the visitor center, then continued down. After I left, I realized I’d neglected to fill up my water again as I passed the Ranger station, but it didn’t seem worth turning around. The steep, icy part of the trail was a bit disconcerting in a few spots but thankfully not very long. That didn’t stop me from falling several times. Less than a mile later I was back to dirt. And rocks. I forgot about the rocks. They’re almost more difficult to descend than to ascend, because you have to try harder to make sure you don’t fall or twist an ankle. It took me 9 hours up and 8+ hours down; I’ve never had a worse ascent:descent time ratio. I had hiking poles and was using them the whole time, but my knees began complaining shortly after I started hopping down piles of rocks in the trail.

The sun was almost down from the top of the sky.

From there, it’s the typical “I walk a lot slower than I think I walk” story. I’d made it from the summit to the tram - ⅓ of the way - in about 2 hours, so I was hoping I’d get from the tram to the 4300 rocks - ⅔ of the way - by 6, and be back by 8, maybe 9. A couple hours hiking in the dark, but that was fine; at this point I’m shocked when I don’t finish a hike in the dark. I didn’t pass the 4300 rocks until after 7:30. Between the overuse and the repeated falling, my left knee wasn’t at all happy with me at that point. Somewhere still several miles - and several hours - from the end, I ran out of water. The downside was that I was out of water until I got back to my car. On the upside, it meant I’d done better than I usually do at drinking while hiking. There was no threat of serious consequences from dehydration in the time that I had left, with the cool February weather. How anyone even wants to do this, much less succeeds, in the summer is beyond me. The guy I talked to on the way to the tram said he and a friend had run it when it was 114℉; he took the tram down, and his friend got heat stroke running back down.

The final chapter in the “I walk slowly” story tends to be “I start crying because I’m alone in the dark and I’m scared and tired and want to be done but that’s not an option.” I’m predictable, if nothing else. I thought I was going to do really well on this hike, as there seemed to be no way to get lost on the way down as long as I followed the trail. I was annoyed that it was taking so long, but far more relaxed than I usually am toward the end of a hike after several hours in the dark. Then I got to the picnic tables, and could not for the life of me find the trail out. Several use trails leading out of the area dead ended after a few dozen to a few hundred feet. I knew the approximate angle of the turn I’d made on the way in, but both the trails I saw in that direction going out were obviously not trails for very long.

I tried repeatedly to use the Strava track I had going to just line myself up with the path I’d used on the way in, then follow that out. For some reason it wasn’t working. At one point, I rubbed my eyes and both my contacts fell right out; I think a side effect of a medication is dry eyes, and wearing contacts for most of a day doesn’t usually work for me anymore. With the few drops of water left in my Camelbak tube, I rehydrated them and put them back in my eyes. I’m sure this was the optimal, sanitary way to deal with the problem. I gave up on finding my way out and sat down at a picnic table and replied to a text from Ian asking me to let him know when I finished and if I was ok. I told him I was fine, just lost. At the picnic tables, where any tourist should be able to navigate to and from easily. This exchange eventually turned into him calling me and telling me to stop and take a break, then try again. In typical Liz fashion I agreed that he was right, hung up, then tried again immediately without taking a break to calm down and think. I’d like to think I would have gotten myself out of that mess on my own even without cell service. I call myself dumb a lot, but right when I start believing it, I get really obstinate and determined to prove that I’m not. I knew where the two trails were that dead ended. The trail I wanted was supposed to be right between them. With that conviction, I very easily found the trail I wanted between two useless trails that were more visible.

It still took me an hour from there to go the ¾ mile back to the parking lot. By the end I was barely moving and using my poles more like crutches than like hiking poles. But I made it. I’d planned to drive straight to Jamul where my WFR course started the next morning, but I called Ian (who was driving all night and couldn’t text) to tell him I’d made it. Two people who really like talking does not make for brief phone calls. About 11:30 we hung up, and I started driving. At 1:30 I decided that caffeine was not going to sufficiently keep me awake, and pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot to sleep. The next morning I drove to San Diego, realized I hadn’t accounted for weekday morning traffic, and arrived just in time to go to class in the clothes I’d worn for 18 hours of hiking and then slept in. Because why would you ever stop being a dirty climber?

Next Time:

• It doesn’t get better. Deal with it.
  I kept expecting the next portion of the trail to be better. After the initial steep 10 miles, it’s supposed to flatten out….except there was snow; After the summit it was all downhill….except there was still snow, and the rocks were hard to descend. I’d have mentally done a lot better if I hadn’t expected any part of the hike to feel easy compared to the last portion.
• Walking in the dark is slower than you think
  Between taking more breaks on harder, longer hikes and going over more uneven terrain - even on trails - than I’m used to, I need to stop planning on going 3+ mph when hiking and plan for more like 1-2.
• I’m not hopelessly dumb, just kind of dumb.
  This is a mountain that people routinely get lost on, even with the trails and signs. I only feel incompetent relative to people who have done it multiple times and people who have been climbing mountains for years. I like to think I’ve been hiking my whole life, but all I’ve done until this past summer is walk around county parks with perfect trails in broad daylight. Yeah, it could have gone better, but all things considered, it went fine. Losing the trail was frustrating, but I didn’t do anything dumb like decide I could make my own trail through the sparse vegetation. Bad judgment supposedly leads to good judgment eventually.
• Maybe someday I’ll learn how snow works?

Epilogue:
One of the people in my WFR class had done some work for the California Conservation Corps, mainly restoring and maintaining trails. While discussing my C2C2C hike, he said even he’d gotten lost at the picnic area before in broad daylight, and thought that for being such a highly-used trail, it deserved some improvement to make the real trail more distinct from all the surrounding use trails. I didn’t see the lower portion of the trail in daylight at all - on the way up it was dark until about the 4300 rocks, and on the way back it was also dark 5 or so miles from the end. (Tragically, I never got to see the big cactuses along the lower portion of the trail in daylight.) It’s possible that I misjudged how easy that section of the hike should feel, and am not actually as incapable as I felt at the time.