Water Hike

Uwe and Kevin have planned a hike for record speed up San Jacinto via the Skyline Trail. (9 miles 8,400 ft vertical gain). Kevin’s trying to break 4 hours and Uwe 5 hours. Obviously, they want to carry as little weight as possible in their packs. So as good friends will do, Kevin, John and I hiked the route ahead of time to stashed 2 liters of water at 2-mile intervals along the trail. Kevin carried 9.5 (~21 lbs.) liters of water for the hike. I was along to take the GPS way points and mileage, so the water stashes could be found easily. John was along for moral support, which was needed.
We started ~530a with headlights. Very few hikers were on the mountain, but 2 passed us early on. Later one came back down to find his girlfriend/wife. She had just passed us but taken a wrong trail in the dark and they had gotten separated. We could tell from what little we overheard of their conversation that neither were happy hikers. They never came back up the mountain, so you can imagine the “discussion” they had on the way back down. Later we caught up with all the others hikes who started before us.
With Kevin weighed down, it was a good pace for me. However, at each stash, he got rid of 2 liters or 4.5 pounds. As we went on Kevin got faster and I got slower. As we neared mile 8, I began to cramp and slowed considerably, plus I just wasn’t in as good of hiking shape as I was when we hiked this route in May. At mile 8 was when I needed John’s moral support and extra electrolyte solutions he was carrying. Now with an empty pack, Kevin decided to run the last mile. John maintained a good pace to finish, and I just finished.
Mission accomplished for the hike next weekend, we had a beer and rode the tram back down to the car. We’ll see Uwe and Kevin’s results next week (see update below)

(Click on picture to start slide show)

John at breakfast

Kevin

Palm Springs dawn

Windmill farm

Monument sign

Jack at snack time

Kevin at top

Update after the speed hike by Uwe:

Kevin and I had a great hike and learned a few things for the future.

We arrived at Pinyon Flat camp ground along Hwy 74 a little before 9pm on Friday night. From here it is just under 45min to the Museum in Palm Springs early in the morning without traffic. During the day it’s more like an hour. Kevin set up his tent, I prepared the back of my truck and we had a beer while mentally preparing for the task ahead. Then we set our alarms to 3:30 and went to bed. In the morning we broke up camp and drove to the museum where all the road side parking was blocked off. We ended up parking 0.4 miles from the trail head on N Belardo Rd. Other hikers were unloading and arriving. We also saw several groups of lights dancing up the trail.

At 5:06 we stepped through the gap in the wall and the clocks started. We each went our own pace with Kevin quickly above me. It feels like the trail up to the picnic tables gets more confusing every time. I think there were more dots and arrows than before, bottom line: we both lost minutes down there sorting things out. Lesson 1: Starting in day light might help here since one would get a more complete picture of the trail.

We had agreed that Kevin would pull out the bottles from their hiding places and place them so that they would be easier to find for me since I only had waypoints and pictures to go by. He would let people he passed know and tell them to leave the water in place. When I reached rescue box 1 I realized that I had not seen a bottle by the trail as I should have. Hmm, I asked a group of hikers just behind me if they noticed anything. They hadn’t. Well, we started with 1.5 liters and that should get me to the 4 mile cache, if that was also not there I might have to use a rescue box? [Later Kevin told me that he spent a few minutes trying to find the cache, it was simply gone. He texted me, but I always turn my phone off on the trail. He also told me that he passed a guy after the cache who suspiciously had 2 liter bottles of the kind we were using in the outside pockets of his backpack. Could be a coincidence, but we were using not the most common brand/size of bottles. Not to wrongly accuse anybody he just continued. Lesson 2: Keep phone one at least in the lower section since coverage has improved over the years. Lesson 3: Water caches have to be well hidden next time.] After that I monitored the GPS to see when I’m close to a cache waypoint. I reached the 2nd one and here the bottle was right on the trail. What a relieve, I had cut my hydration way down not knowing how far I had to make my water last. So I really could use some water. The 3rd and 4th bottles were also there. They were not totally obvious for a passer by, but Kevin had placed them so that when I was at the waypoint I only had to turn around to find them in the open. Overall we both ended up with more water than we really needed. I would not reduce the amount of the caches though, it’s good to have a margin of error.

My fueling plan was to eat one home made musubi (~280 cal) every hour. These things and the 1h schedule work amazingly well for me for sustained hard efforts like this. I didn’t take anything else to eat and strictly stuck to that schedule. I felt great all the way, even at the traverse where I normally tend to start feeling the thinner air. Some of it likely was the adrenaline and rush from knowing that I was making great time.

4h 37m after starting I stepped through the rock gap at Grub’s notch, Kevin was resting in the sun chatting with other hikers and curious Tram riders. He had arrived exactly 30min before me with a time of 4h 7m. We hung out a little chatting with other hikers arriving. Talking about other hikers, it was another busy day on the trail. We lost count, but I estimate we passed 40-50 people. Eventually we headed over to the tram, got our tickets and walked straight onto the tram. No lines this early in the morning 🙂 Kevin had planned to call an Uber to take us back to town, but missed his opportunity to call from the top where we briefly had signal. No signal at the bottom. So we decided to just walk down the road until we got signal, kind of like a cool down walk. But in the parking lot we saw this huge Sprinter van about to leave and Kevin recognized the guys in there, he had talked to them while waiting for me and now decided to ask if they could give us a ride at least down to the main road. We approached the van, they opened the window and just asked “You guys need a ride?” Turns out they were headed for town for lunch. Perfect. We arrived back at my house at 2pm where a little family get-together with plenty of food was going on. We took our time refueling and resting. What a great day. Lesson 4: A quick Skyline can be done as a morning hike 😉

Some thoughts for future attempts to shave off minutes:
– Pick a cool time of year so a start in daylight is possible to avoid night hike slow down and get a better view of confusing sections of the trail
– Take more advantage of the flatter sections to run a little.
– Try to go faster at the bottom. It’s harder to go fast above flat rock.
– Hide caches better to avoid having them stolen and then lose time looking for non-existing bottles
– Do the trail more often to be even more familiar with it to pick sections to go fast.
– Come up with time split goals to hit along the way.