Anyone up for a second helping?

Final Stats:

18 miles, 16800 ft

Skyline – Back to Back

Map your trip with EveryTrail

“Palms to Pines”, “Desert to tram”, “Skyline”. Whatever its called, the hike up from the Palms Springs floor all the way up to the upper station of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway is no joke.

With 8,000+ ft elevation gain over 9-10 miles, it is essentially the equivalent energy of a marathon. Except you are in the desert, need to carry all your water & gear with you, and you can’t just stop in the middle of it. It is only for the experienced hiker who understands the preparation needed. Many have suffered fatal injuries from the wrath of the mountain.

That being said, if you are prepared, it is an extraordinary adventure. And one which some people wanted to do twice in one day! Not an easy task, but one that is feasible for those who were experienced with the trail.

The first goal was to hike up once and reach the tram station just before 8am, when the first tram goes down. We wanted to catch the first one so that we could start the 2nd hike as early as possible to avoid the severe heat.

Everyone started at different times, from 1 to 3am, to pace themselves to make it up in a comfortable time. Lee, Steve, and I left just before 3am. The moonlight aided my sight and I didn’t even use my headlamp. The temperatures were okay and felt even better when we got about halfway up.

I wanted to keep a pace that would get us up there just before 8. Since we would have to wait anyways, might as well conserve energy for the next trip. But Steve was feeling good so we followed him at a bit faster rate all the way up to Flat Rock. Of course I was giving him shit for the pace, but I stayed in front past Flat Rock and slowed us down a little bit. Early on we had met up with Rick and Mike, and then met up with all the others along the way near the end.

We will made it up at like 7:15 for a 4:20 time. Too fast! Oh well, I felt fine. Others arrived shortly after and we hung out in the tram station for the first car down.

At the bottom, Tina’s family and cameraman were there to offer some food and a ride back to the museum parking lot. Their help was much appreciated and we couldn’t have done this trek without them.

We got back to the parking lot and everyone starting preparing for the 2nd trek – filling up on water, changing, eating, etc… Most people starting leaving at one point and I was still getting ready, so I started hurrying up and left just before 9 am.

Heading up the lower part, I felt really good actually. Although I knew it wasn’t going to last, I started to push myself pretty good. I wanted to see if I could get a 4 hr 2nd ascent. The 1st hour or so I was alone. A couple of times I got off trail and scrambled up some steep stuff which didn’t slow me down but definitely taxed the legs. After the 1st hr I had climbed 2400 ft!

I heard Steve whistling from behind and gratefully slowed down a bit while he caught up. At this point, my legs were jello. Just zapped. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go, but Steve and I kept pushing. Taking turns in front and just going hard, non-stop. We appreciated the flat parts a lot more than normally!

My legs were jello and killing me (and I’m sure Steve too) but I could push through it and keep going. Never having done this sort of ultraexertion, I didn’t know how my body would respond. Would I hit a bigger wall if I tried to push through the pain? I guess not. It seems I could keep going as long as I could tolerate the pain.

So we kept going through the undulating middle section of the hike, until we got to Flat Rock. I filled up on water, and looked at the time and thought I still had a chance to catch 4 hrs, but it would be close. So we stopped our short break, and on we went once again!

Again I was pushing hard – too hard. We gained the next 1000 ft in about 23 min. At that point I slowed down a bit as it was simply too much! We traversed across toward Coffman’s Crag and at this point my legs were toast and I was just going to be happy finishing!

Up the final 700 ft, I took a steady pace, not too hard. My legs felt like they could have the potential too cramp, or give out, but they didn’t. I kept looking up hoping I could see the top but then had to tell myself to stop doing that!

Finally, we reached the top, in just at 4hrs. It was quite simply the most painful 4 hrs of exercise I have ever experienced.

I laid around at Grubb’s Notch for an hour or so talking to people, then on inside for a beer.

For everyone who did one, two, or three, congratulations. What a great group of people. I met a lot of people yesterday and it was nice to meet everyone. Who would have thought hiking would have turned into this!!!

Until next year!

Final Stats:

8.3 miles, 8400 ft gain

Skyline – Palm Springs to Tram at EveryTrail

I was interested in doing Skyline once before the planned “back to back” attempt that’s going to happen in a month, so luckily I had some friends who were planning on doing the hike, as they usually do.

Tina and Mike were headed up pretty early with a possibility of doing the whole C2C, but I met up with Steve and we started hiking at a “reasonable” time of 7 am. There were already 15 or so cars in the museum parking lot!

I had done Skyline once before as part of a C2C hike, but that started in the dark so I was glad to be able to see more this time.

But this wasn’t a hike for too many pictures, as Steve set out a great pace. Mixed in with some chat, before we knew it we hit 4300 ft. We continued on, and when we hit Flat Rock, we took a nice 20 min break. We had caught up with a bunch of C2C attempters along the way, a few of which pointed out a big rattlesnake just 10 yds before Flat Rock. Somehow we didn’t see nor hear it.

At this point I was starting to feel it. Luckily Steve kept the pace and so we kept making good ground. Soon enough we were heading straight toward Coffman’s Crag, when we started hearing some chattering from above. Turned out to be Kathryn, Mike, Tina, and Mark above us on the switchbacks. Tina started talking trash not wanting us to pass her, and Mike had some nice defensive blocking methods with his poles. We all ended up getting done about the same time, meeting up with Ellen, Cy, and Scott.

It took 3:56, which seemed pretty good. Taking out the breaks, 3:30 seems like a nice goal. It only took us about 8 miles, down from 10 when I did it previously. Steve seems to know a whole bunch of shortcuts (although at least one seemed to add gain!), which really made a difference.

Plus, the weather was perfect. I imagine it stayed around 60 degrees for most of the hike. Even I only drank 3 or so liters.

This was a good warmup for the back to back. I think a 5 hr pace, along with actually resting the day before could work well.

Turn the audio down if you don’t like potty mouths!

blue jay from Zé Apelido on Vimeo.

With that said, let’s get to it.

It’s morning, you wake up and go through your mornings routine before you head out the door. The question is now, what do I eat? For me, it used to be McDonalds. An Egg McMuffin with hash browns and an orange juice. This was an especially good meal which brought back childhood memories. But as happened then, happens still, it leaves me feeling a bit sluggish. It was probably just too heavy and probably doesn’t have the essential nutritional requirements that I would need.

So eventually I moved on to what I eat now, a Clif Bar, or if that’s unavailable, a Powerbar. This seems to hold me over pretty well until lunch which is normally 3-4 hours into our hike and normally either at the summit or near our goal. So for the most part, all the leg work is already done.

But as of the last two weeks, I’ve come to start drinking Sugar Free Red Bulls along with my Clif Bar. Why? For the caffeine. A couple of hikes, I drank a cup of coffee, but that left me parched for a good hour or so on those hikes. So trying to rehydrate while on the trail at the beginning of a hike wasn’t my idea of fun.

Alright, below are the nutritional values of a Blueberry Crisp Clif Bar and a Sugar Free Red Bull.

The only real numbers that stand out to me are the calories and sugar. Fiber as well, but I’m thinking that isn’t as important starting out as it is during the hike. So Clif Bar has the calories to provide the fuel, and a good amount of sugar to provide the kick.

As far as the Red Bull is concerned, it’s most likely the caffeine that gives me a jolt. Here’s some facts about it:

it contains, per 250 mL (8.4 U.S. fl. oz.) serving, about 21.5 g sucrose, 5.25 g of glucose, 50 mg of inositol, 1000 mg of taurine, 600 mg of glucuronolactone, vitamin B — 20 mg of niacin, 5 mg of vitamin B6, 5 mg of pantothenic acid and 5 μg of vitamin B12 , 80 mg of caffeine.

So why the switch from a tasty Egg McMuffin meal to something that only astronauts stranded on Mars would eat? Here’s why:

I suppose these nutritional values would make some sense if you’re going on something extreme like Cactus to Clouds, but even for our day excursions, I think this is too much. Especially considering that I’m looking to lose body fat on these hikes. The fat count here along with the carbs is pretty extreme. Perhaps the carbs would help the night before. But even I know that there are better/healthier ways to carb up. Again though, for another post.

So that’s breakfast. Is it the breakfast of champions? Most likely not. But so far, it works pretty well for me. So until I find another alternative cocktail mix, this will be my morning nutrition for the foreseeable future.

Next up in the Layman’s Series, lunch.

Trip details are given here.
Meetup Link here
My photos here

GPS track here

KML Google Earth file

Cactus to Clouds – Palm Springs to San Jacinto at EveryTrail

It’s a great feeling to be at a point where you can take 9 people up on such a hike like this knowing they are all ready for it. Given the previous hard hikes we’ve done and the plethora of information on the internet, it’s not too hard to make sure everyone is prepared to know what to bring and what this hike would be like. Some may have questioned the early start, but as soon as the feet hit the trail at ~ 4:30 am and there was some sweating, those doubts were put to rest.

Actually the most important obstacle was on me – maintaining the right pace. On shorter hikes, I like to push the pace at least in sections to get a little interval training for everyone. However, this isn’t a training hike, but a performance one. Knowing some physiological background of burning energy while hiking, we needed to make sure to keep steady to not burn off all our glycogen too quickly! So I carried a 75 L backpack filled with stuff (including 8 L of liquids) that I’d guessed weighed about 30lbs to help me keep a good pace.

We started off from the museum parking lot, and as expected the trail started steeply. Although I knew this section was steep and not much of a trail, I supposed I didn’t expect so many rocks! While somewhat annoying, it was really cool dealing with this section so early. With a 3/4 moon, we didn’t need to use our lights as the eyes adjusted well. The darkness and our quietness pretty much persisted over the first hour up.

My goal for the group for this hike was to get to finish the Skyline portion of this hike in 7 hours. We finished a bit over 1000 ft in the first hour which wasn’t too bad given the terrain and some breaks for people to strip down b/c they were heating up!

I’ve started hiking this early maybe once or twice before, but never with such clear views of the sunrise. It was really satisfying to see the changes in terrain and changes in light at the same time. I would take a few switchbacks, and when making the next turn, feeling like a dimmer switch had turned up the lighting just a little bit from a few minutes before. Very cool.

Of course this hike has gotten more popular, so we weren’t suprised to see other groups on the way up, though ours was the largest we’d seen. The point below maybe 2,000 ft up was a nice break spot for multiple groups.

Finally the sun came out fully and we were up ~ 4000 – 4500 ft and got some new views, including San Gorgonio in the distance.

We took a bigger eating break at about 4500 ft up on the west side of a small bump to get some shade. We were making good time and the pace wasn’t too bad but surely a rest was warranted. I mean, we just climbed about 4000 ft which in itself is a hike!

Actually it’s kinda sick when you start breaking down this hike. At one point, it was ‘well finished Baldy from Manker Flats, now time to hike up Iron Mt.’ That’s always fun to think.

I almost step on this guy on the way up.

We knew this ‘peak’ in the background was not our final destination, but still ended up being a mental goal. Does it have a name?

As we went up, we realized that most of the trail was pretty darn steep! Makes sense of course, especially have traversing some bumps and flat trail around 5,000 ft for a while, meaning the gain/mile of the rest of the hike up to Long Valley is around 1000 ft/mile.

We finally got some views of the tram as well as that big rock you need to make sure you stay left of! But honestly, I don’t see at this point, with the usage of the ‘trail’, how one would continue past it instead of head up. But I guess it happens.

And then, it was up the that steep 700 ft or so to complete the first 8000 ft of gain. It was certainly steep, but nothing unfamiliar. Not as bad as some stuff up Iron or Twin Peaks.

We made it up to the Long Valley Ranger Station at about 11:15, under the 7 hr estimate I had started with. Great job! Just the Skyline portion of this hike was a great workout. I’d rate it a bit less challenging than Iron Mt., but a big challenge nonetheless. Luckily we did not have to go back down this!

We had lunch at Long Valley, got our permit, then headed out toward San Jacinto. There were some staff out on the trail checking permits, actually. I’d say they didn’t check enough given the number of people on that trail. Almost a circus. More on that later.

We went up with a brisk pace, chomping out the first 3 or so miles relatively quickly. However, at this point I everything started to slow down, as in, ‘really we only did 800 ft for that?’

It’s funny because I practially didn’t give much thought to the final 2500 ft ascent given I knew we would make all the way once we made Long Valley, but I certainly did not expect to get as much altitude effect as I (and others) did. With probably a 1000 ft left, we definitely slowed down. The trail was not steep, like Mt Whitney’s main trail, but I was starting to get dizzy. But we weren’t even at 10k ft yet! I felt like I was on the switchback at Whitney in terms of my dizziness.

Before the hike I had the itch to possibly go over to Cornell Peak on the way down from San Jacinto if time permited. Closer to the hike, I realized that wouldn’t be reasonable. At this point, it would have been downright stupid to deal with that bouldering!

Approaching the summit, we had this (damn lense cover). Gets the point across. There were a lot of freaking people.

I looked at the final scramble and just hoped it wouldn’t take too long because I was probably going to go too dizzy.

But actually it wasn’t bad at all, and really quick. And with that, we had made it from cactus to clouds!

When I proceeding to plop down to rest, a group of 15 teenagers asked people to move so they could take a picture around the summit. I obliged, but admittedly with some elitist hiking feelings. 15 people?!!! And the other 30-40 people at the summit? Of course they didn’t hike C2C (there’s the snobbery). But it went away quickly, any 12 mile rt hike isn’t easy.

We headed back down eventually. A few miles down, the feet started getting annoyed, as they normally do around 20 miles of walking. How great it felt to know we only had so little to hike down!

We were so happy to get back to the tram. I didn’t mind the little hike up at the end, though others were not as indifferent. But one person even decided to run up it, and it wasn’t me (Ofir)! Ate some grub inside and took the tram down. Best part of the tram ride was the feeling, we hiked up all that?

Can you say caloric deficit? Based on some previous experimentation, I can reasonably estimate that I burned 5000 calories from this exertion. Then include the normal metabolic needs of 2500 – 3000 kcal during the day! Similar for everyone else scaled to their weight. Obviously there was not way to recuperate most of this, you just have to try to make a good dent. I’m sure this had something to do with the lightheadedness and slowing down toward the top. At least I actually ate a little bit on this hike. I did have 2 Cliff bars during the first 8000 ft, then a big sandwich in Long Valley.

Overall, this was a biggie. Everyone did great at it. We all made it up in good time, and everyone seemed to enjoy it (sans food poisoning for Michael at the end). It was too bad some other of the regulars in our hiking group could not make it, but they’ll sure be a part of some future big ones.

What’s next? All sorts of ideas flying around. Gotta try some desert peaks during the winter. I’d say next year we’ll have to do Grand Canyon rim to rim. Back to the Sierras as well. There’s just too much to do round these parts.

Elevation Profile. Just about 11,000 ft gain!

Hike Details

Time: 4:00 AM at the Museum Trail in Palm Springs

Distance: ~ 22 miles (16 miles up, 6 miles down to tram)

Elevation Gain: ~ 11,000 ft

Gain / Mile: 680 ft / mile

Estimated Time: ~ 12-13 hrs

Terrain: Trail, Unmaintained Trail

Difficulty: 11/10

UPDATE!

Since will be starting so early, it is a good idea to spend the night out in Palm Springs. Rachelle and I – and probably others – will be staying at the Palm Springs Motel 6.

Here are some GPS coordinates for the hike.

We will definitely be starting out in the dark. While there should be moonlight (just past a full moon), you should have at least a flashlight or headlamp (even better).

Hike Description

Well it’s time. This is the culmination of the big peak hiking season. After the success of the Iron Mountain hike, I think a bunch of people are ready for this. What is C2C? Well, according to this magazine it is the 5th hardest dayhike in the U.S. We start in Palm Springs – at the bottom of the mountain – and hike all the way up!

Most people take the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway up and hike up 3 miles to the top. We will only be taking the tram down. The elevation gain is a killer, but as those who hiked Iron Mountain know, not having to do the downhill is a major benefit. And once we descend from the peak to the tram, there is a restaurant where we can feast immediately.

One of the main difficulties with this hike is dealing with the weather. It is so hot in Palm Springs during the summer months that people so easily get dehydrated as it stays hot even at higher altitudes. If we waited until the winter, then the top several thousand of feet would be covered in snow and ice making successful summiting difficult and dangerous. So, it is generally accepted that October is one of the best times to try this hike. It should cool off enough to make the heat reasonable without snow.

I have not done this hike, but it is well-documented, and we will be well-prepared. For those attending, I’ll expect a group effort in preparation for this including logistics of 1) how to get there, 2) where will we stay, 3) nagivation with GPS, 4) water supplies, etc…

In a section below I will be providing links to information about this hike. I expect all who are attending to read this information, as well as let me know if they find out any more info.

Who is Ready?

Well if you’ve been on my hikes before, I think you understand the need to be strict on the requirements of who can do these hikes, as people often overestimate themselves (and some underestimate). We cannot have this problem on this hike! And based on recent successful summits, I don’t think we will.

The pace of this hike has a goal to summit in 10 hrs. This is a little over a 1,000 ft per hour. Who can do this pace? Well my specific prediction will be based on time to ascend the Original Baldy Trail

From Mt Baldy Village to Mt Baldy:

One way distance: 6 miles

One way elevation gain: 5600 ft

Cutoff Time: 4 hrs!

If you want to do this hike, you must be able to ascend Baldy from Baldy Village in 4 hrs or less. Keep in mind this is using an ideal pace with minimal breaks. I am choosing this hike as an example because it is of sufficient elevation gain to be predictive of the longer C2C hike.

One week prior, I will organize a hike, most likely up to Baldy – though it may be another hike – that will contain 6,000 ft of elevation gain, and those who want to try C2C must attend. If you can’t, I think John Quan might organize a hike 2 weeks prior of similar magnitude.

Several of you don’t need to worry about this, you know who you are. Everyone will only be allowed to RSVP “No” but indicate interest, and I will sign those up immediately that I can vouch for.

Otherwise, it’s time to ramp up the training! If you want to improve your time, you should start doing moderate to intense cardiovascular training 3 times a week. In 3-4 weeks, this will make a marked difference in your performance.

Message Board

To discuss this stuff as group (and for future hikes), I’ve create a simple message board. Please use it!

Links

Read and Take the Quize

Sac Jacinto Hiking Forum

SummitPost Link

Hiking Member Tim’s Photos

The Skyline Trail

What to bring:

WATER! We will at least need water to carry up the first 8,500 ft. [4-6 L, depending on weight, is a good quantity for October]

The rest of the 10 essentials

A will of Iron!

Zé’s picture of San Jacinto from Gorgonio.

Getting There

We need to get to Palm Springs Friday night. More on logistics later.