Lily Rock October 2020

On October 29, Jack, Uwe, and John set out to scale Lily Rock. This was the last peak in the San Jacinto Range of the Sierra Club Hundred Peaks Southern Section for Jack.

Lily Rock is a very popular rock climbers’ mountain, but we decided a hike up the backside was more our style. This was a short but very steep hike. We departed Humber Park and set our Ernie Maxwell Trail for about ½ mile. Then we just took a gully straight up. Hiking was difficult, very steep and either scree or slippery pine needles for footing. We finally reached the ridge overlook to the final ascent up the backside of Lily Rock.

It was the last 200 feet or so and looked to be a scramble. We agreed on the route up but were concerned with one exposed boulder area. The hike up was fine until we got to that boulder spot. There was one small craggy tree on an exposed ledge we had to use as a step. Once past that, there were two approaches, one John and I took along an exposed rock face, and the other, a wormhole up through the mountain boulders. Uwe took the wormhole, and someone of his height had a few contortions to go through before squirting out of the wormhole. From there, it was an easy scramble to the summit. From below, Lily Rock looks like a pointed summit, but once up there we found it was very flat and roomy. We had lunch and made the decent carefully over the exposed areas and basically land skied down the loose scree and pine needle back to the trail. Total hike was 3.6 miles but the gain was 1,850 feet over 1.6 miles.

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