Snow Creek - San Jacinto 5/20/06 Rick Graham Rick Kent Rick Graham's report (posted on www.mt-whitney.info) follows: http://www.mt-whitney.info/viewtopic.php?t=1286&highlight=52006 Remember how your parents or grandparents would tell you about how tough they had it back in the good’ol days? “When I was your age, I had to walk to school thru the snow up to my hips in the blazing hot sun”, or something like that. Remember how funny it all sounded. Well Snow Creek showed Rick Kent (RK) and me that there’s a lot more fun out there to be had on a day hike. Today’s objective was to day hike Snow Creek up the north face of Mt San Jacinto. This is one tough hike that meanders thru desert flora, across manzanita and scrub oak slopes, boulder hopping and climbing the cliffs along the creek, and finishes with several thousand feet of snow slopes; starting at 1200’ and tops out with Mt San Jac at 10,800’ and then finishes back at the tram station. The beta on this route is sketchy and with no real trail, route finding can consume a lot of time and energy. The plan was to meet Rick Kent at the tram station parking lot at 4am, then car shuttle over to Snow Creek village. But, the tram road was gated shut which cause us some concern about whether the tram was shut down for maintenance. RK did his hi-tech thing and found that it would be open, but due to a private party the last tram down would be at 9pm. Bah! 9pm, there’s no way we’d have to worry about that, right We started (4:30a) at the power/pump station about ½ mile down from Snow Creek village and then quietly walked up and around the village. Although the bright quarter moon allowed us to avoid using headlamps, we did miss the fork where the paved road goes up to the aqueduct/guard house and had to go x-country until we found it, then immediately ditched the road when a car approach and took off x-country again. Going x-country in this terrain you get sliced by cat claw bushes and your socks filled with foxtail barbs; the fun is just getting started. Passed the top of the aqueduct system and started up x-country on the big ridge that separates Snow creek from Falls creek. Gaining the top of this ridge was harder that I though it was going to be and from the car it took us 3 hours of bushwhacking, boulder hopping and route finding to get to the isthmus between Snow creek and Falls creek ~8am (~3300’). From the isthmus, we started traversing west through very thick brush where the vague use-trail and trail ducks are hard to keep track of. We spent a lot of time back tracking and route finding; more fun. Eventually we entered Snow creek (10am) and started up the water polished rock along the stream bed before getting to the 1st major obstacle (11am); the 60’waterfall and the rock face to the west of the waterfall (~5500’). After a snack, we played around with climbing the class 5.4-5.5 rock face near the waterfall before deciding to move down the creek a bit and climb the easier class 3/4 option to get around the waterfall. This took over an hour (12:30) and just added to the fun. Once above the waterfall (~5700’), in normal Mar-Apr conditions there’s a snow tongue that goes all the way to the summit ridge. But on May 20, the snow tongues starts >7000’ and all the snow that has melted is seeping out of some additional rocky obstacles. One of these wet rocky cliffs required a rope & belay and an extra hour to negotiate. By now it’s around 1:30 and still have >4000’ to climb, the fun just keeps coming. We finally get to the main snow tongue that consists of consolidated snow with a soft 4-8” layer on top and find that it’s easier to kick steps with crampons on. We head straight up as best as our tired bodies will allow and finally get to the summit ridge at 6:40. We now start worrying about making that last tram at 9pm, funny huh! Hiking next to the summit cabin (7pm) I decide to head down (couple hundred feet short of the summit). I know that with about an hour of headlamp time in front of me, I’m going to need every minute to get down before the last tram. RK decided to makes a mad dash to the summit. We regroup (7:15) at the trail junction below the cabin and start motoring down the trail. We quickly reach Wellman Junction at 7:40 and Round Valley with 2 miles to go at 8:00, but then have to slow down with headlamps in the dark. Trying to avoid tripping or a twisting an ankle we move as quickly as possible and finally get back to the ramp up to the tram station at 8:40pm. As we’re struggling up the ramp, we hear over the intercom “Last call for the last tram down in 5 minutes”. Now that’s funny Another great, long (~16 hrs), and fun day in the mountains. Here are some photos; http://grahamcracker.myphotoalbum.com/view_album.php?set_albumName=album38&page=1 p.s. as I’m writing the trip report and looking at the photos, I can feel every cut, scratch, bruise, ache and pain; the fun never stops. Cheers, RG --- My comments (RK): It was quite a day! Certainly not a trivial dayhike. And plenty of ways to get into trouble. I managed to climb myself into a trap where huge hunks of granite beneath me collapsed away and went crashing down. I was stuck for awhile perched up on a small shelf with no safe option of escape. Rick came to my rescue. Thankfully we brought a rope. The route seems virtually endless. Every time I checked the GPS (a mistake) we were far lower than we thought. Every thousand feet is hard earned. Route-finding through the endless rock and boulders was more complex than I imagined. Once we reached the snow tongue we still had a long way to go. The route is a bit committing as well. Once you're above the chockstone your easiest option of escape is unfortunately up and not down. And it's a long way up! To exhaust every ounce of energy just getting to the top only to have to race down to the tram station to catch the last tram down only added to the challenge. A day to remember for sure. --- More (RK): It took us such a long time to reach the snow tongue that we felt like there couldn't possibly be much snow to ascend. A quick look up and a check of the GPS revealed we had a long way to go. We took every advantage of the tongue. The lower portion had at least 2 fragments seperated by some short scrambing. I can't recall for sure what elevation we reached the first fragment but I don't think it was too far above the chockstone. Thus it might have started around 6500 or 7000 feet. I wish I had made a note of it. Perhaps RG remembers. I do recall at one point remembering that going up the Baldy bowl is about 1500 feet and we had more than twice that to do. I was constantly amazed at how much further we had to go. Much of the tongue was quite narrow which was interesting. The creek runs under the tongue and there were definitely some BIG holes underneath. There were times I felt my ice axe punch through into empty space below and stepped very carefully. Most of the snow was excellent but the closer we got to the top the softer it got. Toward the end we were doing a fair amount of postholing.