through the roof...

Penny here - I wanted to try out hiking at altitude so last weekend I headed over to Idyllwild took a hike into the San Jacinto wilderness. Starting out at the Humber Park trail head around 6000 ft above sea level I headed up Devil’s Slide Trail, climbing fairly steadily for about 2.5 miles until I reached Saddle Junction. There was snow right from the start, but it was a beautiful day with clear skies and no wind whatsoever.

The view from halfway up Devil’s Slide Trail looking back towards Idyllwild. (Ignore the time and date stamp on the photo - I forgot to reset them when the battery ran down!)

From Saddle Junction, I was aiming to follow the Pacific Crest Trail and then head towards Round Valley. However, it was pretty hard to see where the official trail went - mostly because it was under a couple of feet of snow. So I followed the tracks left by some snowshoers which were heading the the right direction. It also made the going a little easier as they had compacted the snow down for me! Here’s what most of the trail looked like.

After about a two and a quarter hours, I was at around 8800 ft and stopped for a bite to eat. In case you’re wondering how I knew my altitude, I was using one of our altimeter watches provided by our sponsor Suunto - pretty cool to see how high I had climbed! As soon as I stopped moving, it got cold fast, so I piled on the layers, ate quickly and headed on for a short time more. Here’s me in the snow close by one of the Pacific Crest Trail markers.

I turned for home soon after as the clouds started to build up, and as the weather can change quite quickly in the mountains, I did not want to get caught out. Although I prefer to hike loop trails if I can, I went back down the same way I had come up, and was rewarded with a beautiful orange-streaked sky as the sun heading down towards the horizon.

There is definitely a difference hiking at close to 9000 ft compared to sea-level at home in San Diego and 19,000 ft is going to be another order of magnitude altogether! But at least we won’t be in the snow the whole time going up Kilimanjaro. I certainly did not experience the loss of appetite that everyone tells me will happen at high altitude; the first thing I did once off the mountain was to head to Nature’s Wisdom in Idyllwild and eat large amounts of Hunter’s Stew!