by patbrennan » Tue Dec 13, 2011 12:34 pm
I am totally new to this board. I bought a condo in Palm Springs last December and the hiking bug hit me hard with the help of my friend Dave who previously bought a condo in the same development. We visit from Minneapolis. After doing many hikes in the area and working on my conditioning, I did the hike with Dave to the tram on Friday 10-18. Dave had done it by himself in May in about 5.5 hours then again with 2 others in early September in 6.5 hours. We left at about 4:30 a.m. and made it to the top in 7 hours. There were many times in the hike where we would be ascending a steep trail only to run into the right one and find that we should have kept going on the trail we were on then switched back. The stone signs I see below can only help. At 4500 feet we stopped for a drink. This was after a section where we lost elevation for a 5 minute or so period. While resting we were passed by a young woman who was moving fast. She stopped briefly and we asked her if she saw the group behind us that we had passed earlier. She said no to which I replied how could you miss them? She said she was "taking a lot of shortcuts". Sounds like this is what you all are talking about. We plan to climb to just below the snow line in early January then come back. We are not into the ice/snow climbing thing... at least not yet plus our wives are not real keen on us doing that. Being new to the trail, we expect we will continue making the same shortcut mistakes we did last time but will try our best to stay on the trail. Also, we have made that same mistake mentioned below on the museum trail several times.