Susanne's Adventure Journal

I took the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway up to Mt. San Jacinto today to practice my mountaineering/snow travel skills. Not only is it a fun novelty to take the rotating tram car, but it gets you up in elevation (and snow) quickly and easily. I brought my ice axe and hiking crampons with me. I already owned microspikes, but, additionally, I bought the Kahtoola K10 hiking crampons because I don't want to mess around with this year's snowpack in the Sierra-Nevada mountains. I can always replace the crampons with my microspikes along the way if I find that they are overkill. I also recently acquired snowshoes at an REI garage sale that I wanted to test out. I am excited to do some snowshoeing in future winters, and, in addition, they are a very unlikely backup in case I need them in the Sierra as well. When I got to the mountain station of the tramway, I could see the snow melt in full effect. There was patches of dirt exposed and the trail to the ranger station was fully expose...

The goal of today was to get used to using the navigation tools that have been made specifically for the PCT. I had the Halfmile paper maps/app combo, plus the Guthook app. I had been studying them but thought it might be a good idea to take them for a test run on the PCT itself. I had hiked a very small section of the PCT here previously while hiking to Bertha Peak. That hike involves coming up the Cougar Crest Trail, joining the PCT for a couple more minutes, then splitting off to the peak itself. I've even taken pictures next to the PCT symbol at the Cougar Crest Trail junction, back when hiking the trail had just been an idea. I decided to start hiking at the highway 18 crossing, since it is labeled on the Halfmile map as the best place to hitchhike into town, and come down Cougar Crest, since I am familiar with the trail. It would be 11.1 miles on the trail, plus two or so miles down Cougar Crest. No problem, right? I should be doing those types of miles and more with...

This is another one of my favorite LA-area hikes. It is an approximately 10 mile round trip hike following the San Gabriel River to a beautiful 1930s bridge in the middle of the Angeles National Forest (or “Nowhere” I guess).  I think at one point there was supposed to be a road that was planned to go through the area but it never panned out. The fun thing about this hike, besides coming upon this structure deep in the wilderness is that it requires several river/creek crossings, which is why I chose to use this for training. The recent rains, combined with the snow melt, make for much higher crossings than I have ever done on this hike. I wanted to practice my water crossing skills and test out using my camp shoes (Crocs swiftwater waves) as water crossing shoes. I also got new, breathable hiking shoes for cheap at the REI garage sale that I wanted to test out on a hike, and also use on a couple water crossings to see how fast they dry out. Now, I'm not sure how many wate...

Warning: This post contains gross feet pictures I'm not going to lie, last night was pretty rough. Despite using a large juniper tree as a wind break, the wind was whipping my tent back and forth pretty vigorously most of the night. It was staked into sand so I was afraid if I got out of it, the stakes would rip the tent out of the ground and it would go sailing away. I had to time my bathroom trips to when there was a lull in the wind gusts. It was cold too. There ended up being only one sleeping position that I could get myself into in order to stay warm. It wasn't necessarily the most comfortable position either, so I'm not sure how much sleep I got. By the amount of fluid I could feel around my eyes, I'm guessing it wasn't much. When I woke up around dawn, the wind had completely stopped. My rain fly wasn't even fluttering. Birds were singing beautiful morning songs. Even so, I was pretty annoyed when I packed up my tent to leave. The outside of...

Warning: This post has "boo boo" pictures Well, today was interesting.  Between getting up later than I intended and a freeway accident that caused a traffic standstill for 30 min, I ended up with another late start this morning. I came to Joshua Tree to do longer (>=20 miles) hikes with the full backpack, but after caching my water for further down the trail, I didn't get to the trailhead until 8:40 am. I had planned to start sometime in the 7:00 hour. I hope these late starts don't become a trend. I also have a homemade GPS data logger I have been using to map my hikes. Somewhere in between the house this morning and the trailhead it went missing. My DIY GPS data logger. MIA. The hike itself started out very pleasantly.  I started the CRHT from the backcountry registration board near the North Entrance Station. It led me up a wash where some plants where starting to bloom yellow flowers. The temperature was very nice too. It was overcast and cool, an...