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Cactus to Clouds - The Day I Climbed From Desert to Sky · Off You Pop!

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is Off You Pop, the podcast for hikers and adventurers who want to be epic in just one day.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this is Story Pop, where the route isn't a checklist, it's a memory, where the numbers fade and the story takes over.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're stepping into one of the most dramatic vertical journeys in the United States, the Cactus to Clouds route on Mount San Jacinto.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: A climb that starts behind the Palm Springs Art Museum at 500 feet and ends up on a granite summit at 10,834 feet.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: 20 miles, 10,795 feet of gain.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Tier 4, brutal.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is a route of extremes.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Warm desert air at the start, cold alpine wind at the finish, cactus at your ankles, conifers above your head, city lights below, granite sky above.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a climb that doesn't ease, doesn't blink, doesn't give you anything for free.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: A climb where heat, pacing, hydration, and grit all matter.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: A climb where the moment you step onto the ridge, you understand why people call this one of the hardest single-day ascents in America.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: But this isn't a guide.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't a pop.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is a story.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: The day I went from the desert furnace to the alpine sky, and the moment the mountain taught me what it means to build a day that ep that's epic, but human scale.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to the skyline.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to the climb.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Off your pop.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get on the trail and talk about Cactus to Clouds.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you get there?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Cactus to Clouds is on the edge of Palm Springs, and so you fly into Palm Springs Airport.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a moderately sized city and there's lots of places to choose to stay.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now we stayed at the Mykonos Desert Suites.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason we chose the Mykonos Desert Suites is because it's halfway between the art museum where you start the trail and the tramway where you finish the trail.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it seemed like a great place to act as a base camp.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I say we, this was not a journey I did on my own.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: This was annual idiots weekend where we go and do an extremely challenging hike.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: So Jason, co-founder of Blister Pop, and other friend Leo are along for the ride and we'll talk a little bit about their experiences as well as mine as we went up the trail.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so we all arrived on the Friday before the hike.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Jason had drove down from Sacramento and Leo and I flew in, and I was the last to arrive.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: I got in early evening Friday, and we had decided to do this in March in the shoulder season, because Palm Springs is a place in the summer that is brutally hot.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And when you have that brutal heat, it makes the climb an entirely different experience.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so we chose the end of March with the hope that the snow was fading and the temperature had not gotten too hot.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: The unfortunate thing was there was a record-breaking heat wave in Southern California and much of the west coast.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the day that I arrived the needle on the thermometer had topped out 110 degrees in the Coachella Valley.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this was going to make things challenging.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we had to change our plan.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of turning at 2.30, we decided to bump the start time back to 1.30.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the rationale for that was that we understood from local intel that you needed to be above 6,000 feet before the sun came up and before it got brutally hot.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so we adjusted, went to bed a little bit earlier, set the alarm for 1 o'clock, and got some sleep.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we woke up at 1 a.m.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: next morning, got our gear, got out the door, got in the car, drove to the trailhead.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's about a 10-minute drive through the trailhead.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Really great place to stay, just beautifully located.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're driving through the city.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: People are still coming home from the night before.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: But there was plenty of parking around the museum on the street.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: It fills up quick normally, but we were lucky there are only a couple of other cars there.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think because of the heat, there were less people attempting the hike on this particular weekend.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I would recommend that you would probably reschedule if it's 110 degrees the day before.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: But we had booked our flights and we were committed.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we've done some hot stuff before, so we kind of knew what we were getting into.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: We kind of got the experience to know, you know, if it's going to be that hot, you start super, super, super early.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just so you can beat the heat and be up at elevation before it really comes in.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we did.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: We took a short walk to the museum, to the trailhead.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Jason and Leo had scoped out where the trailhead was the day before so we didn't have to mess around trying to figure out where it was.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, if you park on the street next to the parking garage, just in front of the art museum, parking's free, you can leave the car there all day, but you just walk down the street.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: The street bends at a 90-degree angle towards the art museum, but there's a big parking lot, so you just jump into the parking lot and you go kitty corner to the park across to the parking lot, and then you'll see the trailhead.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: There'll be a whole bunch of signs there at the trailhead, some warning signs, you know, about the heat and about the danger and about the elevation.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we took our obligatory, this is the start of the trail.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Look how happy and glad we are with our glowing headlights because we're all fresh and ready to go.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we got into it.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so the climb starts immediately.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: There is no letting up, it's immediately steep and immediately switchbacking, and it's dark.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so you start up this very steep grade, and there's private property either side, and there's warnings to stay on the trail.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it does get real confusing real early because there's lots of different side trails and places where people have built their own scrambles or taken shortcuts, so it gets real choppy, but there's a local group that is maintaining the route up to Cactus de Clouds, up to San Jacinto.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So what you want to look for are white blazes on the rocks.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you see the white blazes, they lead the way, that's the way to go.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: But even with the white blazes, it's dark, you're putting out effort, it's hot.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was 86 degrees at 1.30am, just to give you some perspective.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Even that early in the morning, it was super hot and it's super dry, it's desert dry, and you're sweating almost immediately.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where it's really important to not get over excited and over push yourself.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big day, conserve your energy, get your legs used to the climb, take your time, get your mountain lungs in.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: But because of the heat and because of the many, many different side trails, had to pay a lot of attention to where I was going and occasionally we'd get lost, have to double back, figure out where the blazes were.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: But we were soon finding ourselves slowly, slowly getting above the city.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I just had this naggling feeling in my mind that we had to get up to 6,000 feet.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And despite the fact that I didn't want to burn energy, I also didn't want to get caught out by the heat.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were just pressing onwards.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't really a time to be stopping and taking breaks.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: We could do breaks later once we were out of the oven.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And as we're climbing up, we come across rescue box one.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now rescue box one is a water station that's about two and a half, three miles in, and volunteers try and keep water and essential supplies in there in case you get unstuck.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now this is really early on in the trail, so you can only imagine that people are coming out here and they're doing the trail and they're getting in trouble super, super early.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: I can imagine people starting, you know, at dawn at six in the morning and really getting hit by that heat and this being a really critical point.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a notice on the box, you know, if you're in trouble here, turn back now.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is sort of the point of no return.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not quite the point of no return.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: There is rescue box two that we'll talk about a little bit later.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we just hung there for a few minutes, got some electrolytes in us.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Really important to replace electrolytes when you're in this dry environment and you're sweating heavy because that sort is leaching out of your body, and continually, continually be sucking on the water every every you know four or five minutes, make sure you're taking a little sip of water.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was carrying three liters of water in the bladder, and then I add a one-liter Nalgine in my pack that I put electrolytes in, and that's typically the way I'll manage my hydration during a hike.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, three, four litres is okay for this hike because once you get out of the desert and you pop up onto the plateau by the tramway at about 8,000 feet, uh, you're in a little touristy area and there's a ranger station and there's water and there's creek, so it's not dry the whole way.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's just this first segment, this first push, or the hardest part of the climb.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: You do have you do need to have enough water uh to get up there to get all the way up to you know 8,000 feet.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's I mean, it's a slog.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not let's not pretend it's about nine miles to get up this very, very steep incline.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's going to take you all of eight, nine hours just to get up to the plateau.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you need that much water.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: There isn't any water during this segment.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we didn't stop for long, and then we saw a young lady coming out of the dock back down the mountain, and uh which was a bit surprising this time of the night, and uh just spoke to her very briefly.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: She said she'd been with a hiking group, a larger hiking group that started at 10.30 in the evening.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Probably the very, very smart thing to do.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Start you know, sooner the better.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And she's been cramping, and so she didn't feel like she could go on.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I I totally respected her decision uh to get off the mountain because it only gets harder, it only gets more difficult, and you don't want to find yourself needing rescue, or even worse, getting yourself into a whole lot of trouble.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: So she was she was making a sensible decision.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: So as you're climbing up, the trail does become a little bit more defined and a little easier to follow.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that first segment where it's very choppy.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think lots of people go up there from the city and sort of carve up the trail a little bit.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we kept plugging on.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Leo started complaining that he wanted a break.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: We started to get into the blue zone, so we're about three, four hours in, you know, five o'clock in the morning, and the sunrise is starting to come up across the Coachella Valley, and I've only seen a sunrise like this a few other times, and it's always down here in the desert.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: That red hue, that pink red hue that you get of the sunrise on this morning was such a visceral, deep, volcanic red.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was sort of like the doors of hell coming up above the desert, and you just knew, you just knew it was gonna be a blisteringly hot day in the Coachella Valley, just because of that deep, dark, reddy, purpley sunrise that just looks vicious.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was pushing ahead.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: We were getting up to around 5,000 feet, and I'm starting to feel a little bit more confident.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: But when you get up to around 5,000 feet, the trail kind of flattens out a little bit, doesn't really go downhill, it's a little bit of a downhill, but you've got this little segment where you're not really gaining the elevation.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I had 6,000 feet in my head for some reason, but we got to about 5,400 feet, just the pre-dawn.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was feeling a lot cooler, and it's feeling much better that we'd made it, and so I thought it would be a good time to stop, have a bit of breakfast, take on a bit of nutrition.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we found a nice little spot where you could sort of watch the sunrise coming up of the valley.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: The city was far below us already.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: You could see the salt and sea in the in the distance, and so we stopped, took some snacks on, had a cold burrito.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I asked Jason to get me the day before because you know it's good to get on some real food when you're doing these hikes, not rely on just trail mix and energy gels.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the way to go.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: You do want real food, it does make you feel real good once you've taken on a bit of fuel, had an orange, got the electrolytes in, and everybody else stopped and refueled, and so it was a great little stopping point, enjoying the morning, and we got back on the trail.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hadn't made it to rescue box two, which was really what I was aiming for, and lo and behold, we started hiking again, just around the corner, rescue box two, so we almost made it to rescue box two, and we got to rescue box two.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is really, really the point of no return.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, if you've started too late and you're in trouble, rescue box two is the final point where you can turn back, and even at rescue box two, if it started to get super hot in the valley, it's gonna be miserable to get back down back down there.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's around five and a half, six miles into the hike, and that means you've got five and a half, six miles to get back down the mountain, and back down the mountain in the early morning in Palm Springs when you're going through a heat wave or it's the summer, is gonna be miserable.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: But what's gonna be more miserable is from this point the hike gets back into being some seriously steep elevation, and there's no return after this point.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's no water, you've got to make it up to the 8,000 foot mark, and absolutely you there's no return after you.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we opened the rescue box expecting there to be water, and it's empty.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's a couple of old granola bars in there, and so we had intended to bring a couple of bottles of water to put in the boxes, but Jason left them in the room, so we couldn't we we forgot and we didn't have any to put in there, but we we all had plenty of water at this point, so it wasn't that big of a concern for us.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we'd made it out of the heat, which was good.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: But you sort of it sort of flattens out again, but you're getting out of the desert, you've been surrounded by barrel cactus and this vicious holly, you know, occasionally brush against it and it scratches you up.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: But at this point onward, you sort of move into this manzanita, and you can see this manzanita thickly covering the the mountains either side of the trail, and it becomes a lot easier to navigate because there's clearly one way to go from this point.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're in the Lycan North Trail, moving into the Skyline Trail, and uh you can see up above you is the trailhead, and you can see the tram.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we sort of see the little light of the tram and been using that as a north star, if you like, and as it become lighter and lighter, you sort of lose where the tram is, but you know where it is, it's right there, staring above you, and this is the this is the crux of the hike.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is the really the meat and potatoes of the hike.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is the hard bit.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: You go from about 6,000 feet to about 8,000 feet in 1.8 miles, you know it's gonna be steep, and it doesn't disappoint.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so once you hit the beginning of the ridgeline that takes you up there, that's when the effort starts.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's when it gets real punishing.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: The trail is relatively easy to follow.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: You sort of go up a ridge that takes you up into the main mountain, and once you've traversed that little ridge, it's quite exposed, you start getting into alpine, the manzanita kind of fades away, and you start seeing the conifers, the Jeffrey Pines and the other trees.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: You start to get some cover and some shade, which is is nice, but you're very much moving into the alpine zone.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can feel you're moving into the alpine zone, but the trail just gets steeper and steeper and steeper.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll talk a little bit later on the way back.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, how did I climb that level of steepness as you go into the the forest and you start switchbacking a little bit, you start getting right into the mountain, and we got up to about 7,500 feet, and the snow started coming already at 7,500, and uh I'd taken some micro spikes, but I don't think Jason or Leo had micro spikes, and it was kind of patchy, but there was one area that was a particularly large patch of snow.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably about uh two foot deep, and there was some post holing in it, and uh I was leading the way and following other people's post hole footsteps through the snow, and I just misjudged a little bit how soft it was, and I was nearly across the snowbank, and the post hole I put my foot in sort of slushed away, and I found myself on my butt, and I was really concerned because it was a little bit of a shoot off the trail into a steep little gully.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: I just managed to catch myself on a bit of a route to stop myself sliding off the trail into the into the mountains and the rocks.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was really lucky to catch myself and Leo had seen what had happened and took a slightly more security route across the snowbank, sort of skirting around the edge of it, so he avoided the slushiness, but picked myself up and got back on the trail.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was getting really gnarly and rocky, and you knew you were in the trail, and lo and behold, we come across four other people, and it was the hiking group, the Vamos hiking group.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was a four of those folks who left at 10.30 in the morning, and they were moving slowly and definitely looked like they were being very tentative.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it was their first time on the mountain.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we, you know, passed them, said hello.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's this really interesting part really shortly after the snowbank where a tree has fallen on the trail, and so you sort of are squeezing between this big, huge fallen tree and a rock outcropping, sort of almost a little squeeze to get through the trail.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: But then this real it just gets steeper and steeper and steeper.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so as you come through here, now you're getting back into a switchback, and it's kind of getting a little confusing again because people have made their own switchbacks, some people have made little scrambles, and up behind us comes a trail runner.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: At this point he's he's hiking like the rest of us, but he's moving, and you can tell he's been up here quite a few times.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is like his regular morning hike, I imagine, and he sort of knew where he was going, but he was moving at a pace.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: We let him through and tried to follow him a little bit, but he was going real off trail, real direct.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that made it a little bit challenging because if you go directly up the hill, you're gonna burn a lot of energy.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're going up the scree, the scree might be loose.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: You have to navigate the rock.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's always best to try and follow the switchbacks, and you can follow the switchbacks, or you can shortcut it a little bit because other people have made little trails.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I sort of had this a little navigational decisions to make.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Do we follow the switchbacks?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do we shortcut it?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it really ended up being a mixture of both.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it gets real rocky, but you can see daylight, you're nearly there, you're nearly at 8,000 feet.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: The daylight is there, but boy, is it a blast up there?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's a real steep slog, and it's that feeling of I'm getting there, but not quickly enough, and um eventually you get to the top and you pop up out into this real flat plateau, and the environment changes immediately.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're on these very smooth dirt tracks, wide dirt tracks, big open spaces, Jeffrey Pine scattered around, and you start coming in to people, and these are the people that have taken the tramway up from the bottom, the sensible way, maybe.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're at around 8,000 feet, and uh the tramway takes you right up there, pops you up into this flat plateau, and there's lots of nature trails and picnic tables and things.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we walked across and navigated, followed the signposts, past the tramway and over to the ranger station.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: You have to do this, you have to you can't shortcut this bit because when you get to the ranger station, you need to fill out a day permit.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't cost anything, but they want to know who's going up the peak into the wilderness as they.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: call it I feel like we'd spend the last eight hours or so in the wilderness so this is a bit bit of a shock we're going into the wilderness now and the other shock was there were lots of people who just come up the tram they're in like their street clothes their flip-flops their gym shoes some of the people are up there and they're gonna go and try hike San Jacinto or do a little bit of hiking up on the plateau there you could tell those people there were there were but there were families and kids just strolling around after their general ascent on the tramway which is kind of jarring after you've just been you know hoofing it up from one in the morning and some one of the gnarliest hikes there is and so you got to the ranger station filled out the permit the ranger was giving us some information about the snow she was sort of recommending microscope microspikes but also telling us where not to go there is another way to get up to the peak that sort of goes a little bit off trail up a valley and she was saying you know don't don't go up that way I think there was still a fair amount of snow in there and it's I think a little bit more challenging to navigate and so she keeps the the regular hiking folks on the trail and we popped behind the ranger station there's a hose pipe you can fill up your water from and so we refreshed our water we were getting pretty low I certainly drank all the electrolytes and I had a little spit of water left in my hydration pack so it was great there to refill for the final climb.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: From this point it's about six miles to the top so you do still need a fair amount of water probably don't need four litres I think I filled up with two litres and then filled my electrolyte because you know the the trouble with water is water is weight and weight burns energy so you want to manage that water appropriately and up here it was clear there is water there's a creek there's snow you know there's lots of people you know you're out of the danger zone at this point and so it's not quite so critical that you carry huge amounts of water because you're in a much more manicured national parky type environment that's well well manicured well maintained lots of people around so we also stopped and refueled good time to take on some extra fuel before the final push to the climb probably hang around for about 20 minutes just recovering from the brutality of the of the desert and that real steep steep climb and then we're off back back to it back up San Jacinto back on the trail but it was a whole different experience at this point just because there's a lot of people and the trail at least started out it was good it was gradually climbing uphill and what you want to do is navigate your way up to Wellman's Divide.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And Wellman's Divide sits I think around 9,000 odd feet and so you're at eight so you've got a little bit of a way to go to get up to Wellman's Divide.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: On the early parts it's pretty flat you're just gradually going uphill uh you follow the creek along you cross over a bridge and start really it's and it it's really hard to get lost it's really easy to follow the trail and as you get further and further away from the ranger station you start running into a little bit of snow that's crossing the path and all those tourist folks and their flip-flops they start up the trail and they're sort of in the way and it's kind of annoying like the fitter ones pass you even though you know you've been you're an experienced hiker and you're you've you're already pretty fit but you've just been hiking for nine hours through the desert so it's starting to to take its toll and it's really annoying to be passed by young kids full of full of energy after the little tramway up there.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: But eventually they start thinning out because the snow is covering parts of the trail sort of patching in the trail and the flip-flops or their you know their sneakers their Jordans or whatever are not they're not ready for it and so they're they're turning back and all you're left with was a bunch of hikers who are definitely going up and doing San Jacinto and so it was getting back much more forested and you started climbing up and you come to a second ranger station when you get to that second ranger station that could be a bit confusing there's a creek definitely take a hard left at that point up towards Wellman's divide there is a signpost there so you can't you can't really get lost but this is really the hardest part of this segment of the hike it starts going up relatively steeply and there's enough switchbacks it's never as brutal as the lower part is much more gradual but the snowbanks start becoming a problem they start covering parts of the trail it's not continuous it's just in patches but the snow at this point you know as daylight's out it's old snow there's been plenty of people churning it up with their footprints so it's a little bit slippery which on tired legs makes it a little tricky to navigate I didn't feel like getting the micro spikes out because it didn't really feel like it was you know hard enough to wear on that I mean the snow wasn't hard enough and you could quite easily figure out how to navigate it and if you've been across the snow enough you sort of know where to step what the solid bits are and what the the parts are that are not solid.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: It always tests with your poles in front of you if you're a little bit concerned about whether something's soft or not.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's not dangerous you're just gonna find yourself sinking into the snow which is just a little bit jarring and taxing but you don't want to be doing that too often because that that becomes a bit of a a misery so I was able to navigate the snow banks and I'd opened up a little bit of a gap between Jason and Leo at that point.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they were a little bit more tentative getting across the snow but soon you're you're climbing up and you find yourself at Wellman's Divide and Wellman's Divide is sort of this saddle where you can see the mountain range out before you the San Jacinto mountains before you go up to the main climb to San Jacinto and it's a nice stop point so I built up a little sweat getting up the hard bit so dropped my pack off took in some electrolytes and then just took a few minutes to take in the view and it's really beautiful you get to see this big expansive mountain ranges and the mountain ranges at that point had snow on them so they were snow covered and I waited about 15 minutes before Jason and Leo finally popped up and they were not really in the mood to be stopping they wanted to continue on the slog so off we went again you sort of come to a point where there's a junction in the trail just be mindful that you want to go to San Jacino you can continue onwards into the mountains that's the wrong way well just watch out for the signposts make sure you're heading up there you go across sort of a flat plateau and then you get into the the final part of the climb it's a single track fairly easy to follow you do like one big switch back so you go deep into the mountain and then it switches back and comes back on itself back up the mountain but it's very easy to follow there's no way you can get lost on this bit there's no other way to go there are these although this at least at this point there were a little bit of snow patches left that you sort of have to navigate be a little bit careful on but it wasn't anything too strenuous and the grade wasn't that steep so it wasn't too bad.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: I shot up the hill leaving Jason Leo behind a little bit again and soon you're popping up into another plateau and this bit got a little bit confusing because there was a lot more snow up here the snow banks were much more expansive and there are other hikers up there but they were sort of dotted around in different places like people were not following the trail it was a little bit difficult to follow the trail because you couldn't necessarily see it but they were all over the place so that also added to the confusion but I could see the peak up in front of me and I sort of saw where most of the people were going so I I sort of headed in that direction.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was a little bit off trail I think encountered a few more snowbanks there's a like a a stone building that should get up there that's not the that's not the top it's pretty close to the top but that's not the top don't go there and go oh look I made it you didn't make it there's a little bit more to go so you go across up to the hut and then turn back on yourself and you can see it there's a scramble to the top and the scramble was these huge boulders and a whole bunch of snow so you sort of have to navigate the snow and the boulders as you climb up you get to the top and there it is you've done it San Jacinto 10874 feet 75 feet you're there at the top there's a these huge boulders with these big drop offs so be a little bit careful when you're navigating around up there you don't want to overstep or overshoot and get yourself injured because that that won't be good.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: You have to get rescued and nobody wants to do that but when you get up there boy spectacular views you are looking down at the Coachella Valley some 10,000 plus feet below you and it is tiny it's a speck in the distance and you get 365 degree views but it's really that look across the Coachella Valley with the Sort and Sea way out in the background and uh for those not familiar with the Sort and Sea it's actually this inland sea it's a little bit of unique part of the desert and I believe it is fed or it used to be fed by the Colorado River that you know makes its way down from Colorado and through Arizona through the Grand Canyon and then spilling out into this seaway I think some of the irrigation things may have changed the flow of the Colorado a little bit but it's still there and this great sight.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: You just can't believe that you've come this far and this high and we got there in 12 hours and this is a time to really sit and relax and enjoy it.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: We'd done it we had done it cactus to clouds now of course we had to go six miles back to the tram but at that point it was that point of elation you know take photos take videos enjoy the moment and I hadn't been up there very long when suddenly all these hikers came up the Vamos hikers and the this guy we'd seen very early on in the hike showed up he recognized me and they they were all celebrating they had made it it started at 1030 so it had taken them I guess 15 hours to get to the top but a good number of their group have made it and just listening to them chatting to them I think the guides have been up here a lot of times but a lot of them were fresh to it and one guy in their group this was his third time up and uh they're all very pleased and you should be if you do cactus to clouds boy what a day 12 hours to the top if you can get through the first 8000 you've got this get through that first 8000 the rest is just a regular old alpine hike but totally worth it Jason Leo finally made it up we celebrated Jason wasn't feeling too hot he wanted to you know get down and so we started back down there the first bit getting off the little summit block with the snow was a bit tricky and then I started feeling some pain I'd had a steroid shot on Thursday to get me up to the mountain dealing with some nerve issues and the only way I got to cactus the clouds was because I had a steroid shot but something about the movement of stepping back down started to send shooting pains down my down my arm and told the guys just to just to go ahead I'd make it but it was pretty painful and so I was really taking my time I didn't want to fall on my butt on the snow and was really being real gentle get you know doing the step offs but it's that huge post hike relief you can just enjoy it at that point you know you've done the you've done the hard bit and you knew what you knew what you were you were going back the way you came you knew where you were going wasn't very hard to navigate so it was all this sort of gentle downhill so you could really just enjoy your time take in the environment reflect on what you've done so it probably took us an hour and a half or so to get back down.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: I caught up with the guys that back at the ranger station you pop your little permit back in the box don't forget to pop your permit back in the box that's the way to make sure you're not still out there suffering or you reconnected and uh we made our way to the tramway and so it's flat when you're at the ranger station but when you get to the tramway it's a little concrete path or roadway to get to the ticket office.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that long but it's like three or four switchbacks that are punishingly steep for no ungodly reason and you know 20 hours into the day uh sorry for 14 hours into the day 20 miles into the hike it just felt crawl to have this little concrete runway that you had to slog back up.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we're putting our poles away at that point so it was just grinding it out to the ticket office.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: So then you get into all the people and all the tourists waiting for the tramway.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: So go into the tramway go up the stairs there's a little shop right there where you can buy tickets I think it's like 15 bucks to get the a ticket back down.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to stand in line for the tram and it was pretty busy because I guess it was a nice way to for folks to get out of the heat of the valley for the day and we had to wait uh 20 30 minutes to get on a tram which was great because we're all hot and sweaty and tired and all these fresh faced people are getting their tram back down.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: We did get on the tram and the tram ride down is pretty spectacular and pretty dramatic you are high up when you're going 8,000 feet down to maybe about 1500 feet but if you look out of the window you just look at the climb you've done and you're like how on earth did I climb that it's so steep and so dramatic.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're there you've done it you're you get off the tram and you're back at the bottom of the tramway.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now here's the tricky part there's not really an easy way to get back to town unless you call an Uber and none of us had a signal on our phone we were waiting out of the bottom of the tramway and luckily Jason noticed that an Uber had come up with people in it so they were getting an Uber to the tramway and so he grabbed the driver and uh we were able to jump into the Uber.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: He took us all the way back back to the car and so we got back to the car went back to the hotel freshened up a little bit and just went down in the evening down to Palm Springs to have a celebratory mill we went to a Mexican restaurant sort of in the main part of downtown and just enjoyed the moment and the day and I had an early morning flight I had to be up at 3am to catch my flight which was kind of annoying but that's the way the flights crumble and so actually there before the TSA opened but I then flew back to back to Palm Springs.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: But wow what a day definitely one of the tougher single day ascents you can do now a blister pot we got it ranked as fifth hardest at least in our series there may be some harder hikes but a lot of people say it's the hardest day hike in America but for us it's only fifth and the reason is pretty obvious when you're out there now that first 8000 feet that's pretty gruelling but it's there's a trail you can the trail is relatively easy to follow and when you get over 8000 feet if you were just starting at 8000 feet you took the tram up there that's not a difficult hike it's six miles out six miles back and it's not really that steep and the logistics of it are pretty easy you know you're not out there in the desert like trying to the getting there isn't hard it's on the edge of town on the edge of Palm Springs and when you get up to 8,000 feet there's a bunch of people you can refuel with water it's really that first eight nine hours getting up the steep bit where you need to take the water and get the tram back down.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't get the tram back down you're feeling a little bit more brave you can do the C to C to C so the cactus to clouds and back to cactus again and then you know it we were at the tram at about 20 21 miles and you know you got another nine miles that's a 30 mile day and you have to get back down into the heat and back down through the heat in the afternoon.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Whew now I would say just knowing my pacing a nine miles downhill it's probably gonna take another six hours so we were at the tram around three I think and so you'd be back at the bottom of the mountain around nine ten o'clock at night and getting back down below six thousand feet you're really gonna get into that late afternoon heat which would be miserable so I admire the folks that are doing C to C to C but you really really it wasn't the day for us to do that just because we had that brutally ex brutally hot extreme climb and the real you know the C to C to C is really what we were doing get on the tramway.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it was very difficult hike for sure in the brutal zone I wouldn't probably not ever do it in the summer just because of the the heat issues and I don't love the heat and when I'm hiking it makes for it can make for a really hard and miserable and frankly a really dangerous day.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: But we did it with Cactus the Clouds, US2, the San Jacinto pop now off your pot.