Normally I get a hotel in Palm Springs the night before Skyline or C2C. However...I am so over uncomfortable hotel beds. That said, my friend and I decided to get to sleep at our own houses around 7PM on Friday after work. We then woke up at Midnight (here in San Diego) and made the drive up to Palm Springs. I actually got a surprisingly good 5 hours of sleep and felt great throughout the course of the day.
We arrived at the Museum around 2:45 and hit the trail 'round 3. In my humble opinion, yesterdays conditions were absolutely perfect for a C2C -- it wasn't all that hot starting out, there was little wind en-route to the summit, trails from the tram up were not too terribly crowded, the sky was bright blue, and I was not cold at any time above 9,000 feet.
3 weeks ago when I did just the Skyline portion, I went up the really steep chute to the left instead of heading up the chute further to the right (the one that's closer to Coffman's Crag. I knew it wasn't like that from years past, so this time I actually took some time to analyze my surroundings and easily found the nicely maintained switchbacks, which made for a much more pleasant ascent to Grubb's Notch.
En route up Skyline we only saw a few people. There was a group of 3 folks at the picnic tables...one of them had this odd red-glowing "orb" hanging from their neck, which we saw from the parking lot wondering what the hell that was. We then saw Robin (or is it Robyn) flying solo near Flat Rock and then saw a gentleman named Doug as we arrived at Coffman's. He was absolutely flying. I clocked in at 7 hours this go around while my counterpart John, made it in 7.5.
I was honored to meet Ellen and Steve 'bluerail' last time up Skyline, and this trip did not disappoint either! I'm amazed at the minds ability to remember things. So I've only seen zippetydude one time, back in 2007, and only for maybe 30 minutes. But when we crossed paths yesterday I knew it was him without a doubt. We exchanged hellos and also had the pleasure of meeting fern, whom he was hiking with and another gentleman I'm forgetting the name of.
If I'm doing the math correctly our total C2C time clocked in at about 14 hours. Major props to my friend and coworker John on his first C2C...he's a beast, and once again it was great to meet even more of the forum regulars!
On the way home we treated ourselves to some delicious sandwiches at Portillo's in Moreno Valley. For those who don't know, get the Italian Beef sandwich. It's amazing.
My day ended almost 23 hours later at 11PM when I actually fell asleep!
Here's a pano I snapped while at the top:
