North Skyline Trailhead (W Chino Dr)

[Al Bouche]

Just wondering what this approach is like, i.e. condition of the trail, best place to park, etc...

[Florian]

Unless you're going cross country up the ridge north of Tachevah Canyon that's not really a trail head for Skyline. It does get you to the north Lykken trail but the Skyline would be a 1.5 or 2 mile hike south.

-Florian

[Al Bouche]

Sorry, I don't think I described the starting point very well - it's actually at the point where N. Patencio Rd. becomes W. Chino Dr. here's the map:

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=33.830876,-116.552896&spn=0.002903,0.003342&t=h&z=19

It looks pretty straight forward after you climb over those two roofs

[halhiker]

That's pretty interesting. If you look at the map you can see the trail going up to the south of the houses and connecting to the Skyline near where the Lykken Trail heads north and Museum Trail meets it. Anyone done this?

Looking at the street view it looks like the access is closed off with a fence.

[Perry]

and you can swim in somebody's pool cuz the trail goes right through their house, according to google maps.

[Al Bouche]

Maybe it works like the museum trail cutting through private property - I'll take my pool cleaner disguise just in case. . .

[magikwalt]

I believe the area you are looking at has a chainlink gate. If you check the picture on your Google link there is a shadow band across the dirt road. If you move the map slightly and follow Patencia to Creasent make a left and park in the dirt you will find a trail head there that starts up very quickly and I believe connects to the "old Skyline Trail" as it ascends towards the picnic tables. This comes in between the picnic tables and painted rock on the north side.

I have a copy of a map from the 1930's that depicts the Skyline trail as what we now refer to as the Lykken Trail.

[Al Bouche]

That's what I was thinking - it has a nice little parking area to boot.
I'll take a look in the next couple of days and report back.

[Rumpled]

Scanning around a bit shows that Google has mapped the "Skyline Trail" over a bunch of places without trails. Sometimes pretty clos, sometimes not.
Soon, we'll see rescues with people carrying maps showing this.

Walt - do you mean the dirt road at the end of Chino heading up to the overlook? Yes, there is a very impressive gate there - regularly circumvented with a little scramble.

On this maphttp://mapper.acme.com/?ll=33.82879,-116.55293&z=17&t=H&marker0=33.83095%2C-116.55327%2C0.5%20mi%20W%20of%20Palm%20Springs%20CA&marker1=33.82777%2C-116.55100%2C0.4%20mi%20WxSW%20of%20Palm%20Springs%20CA
Just below the tip of the A is the impressive gate and B is my favorite spot in PS, the O'Donnell Overlook (my name)

[lightgy]

You can access the trail to the right of the house off W Cresent Drive, next to the fence of the adjacent property. The trail is not very visible at this point, but after about 10 yards of steep scrambling it becomes visible. It heads up towards the picnic tables behind the Museum. You will reach a fork.

The down hill fork heads down and across Tachevah Canyon. It ends up at a group of picnic tables on the north ridge of Tachevah Canyon and then drops down to West Cielo Drive off of Visto Chino.

The uphill fork will fork again further up. The left handed fork goes around the Palm Springs face of the hill to the Tables above the Museum. The right handed fork goes around the back side and and forks again in front of the "painted Rock". The right fork is skyline trail to the Tram, straight ahead to the Ramon Road access, and left to the picnic tables and the Museum access.