Devil's Slide 3-22-09

[Norris]

I left Humber park around 6:20 am. The trail was dry until about 7200' where there is that long traverse toward the first gully that has water in the spring/summer. This traverse is actually a little dangerous without crampons and/or axe early in the a.m. when the snow is really hard and icy. This is the drainage that comes down from Saddle junction. Higher up, at about 7700' where the trail again crosses this drainage going the other direction, it got steep and icy enough to prompt me to finally put on my crampons. The snow at Saddle Junction and the rest of the way up was very hard. There were sections of dirt on the trail, but it wasn't rocky enough to harm my crampons, so it made sense just to leave them on. At around 9000' where the trail traverses a heavily wooded NE facing slope as it approaches the junction with the Deer Springs trail, I made the poor decision to make my own trail through the wood, using my GPS, instead of following a old boot track that looked like it was going too high, and in the wrong direction. All this did was slow me down, since after postholing a couple of times I decided to switch to snow shoes. Shortly afterward, I emerged on the sunny slope approaching Willow Creek and switched back to crampons. The other track descended to meet the trail about here. I got to Wellman Divide at 11:20, not such good time. I needed to be back in San Diego by 6:00, and I realized I would probably have to forgo the summit to accomplish that. I set a turnaround time of 12:20. I continued on crampons to about 10,000' just short of where the old Tamarack trail comes in to meet the main trail, then turned around. The snow was firm all the way down. Beautiful day, perfect conditions. Unless today's storm drops an appreciable amount of snow, I would not bother with snowshoes doing any sort of climb of Jacinto right now.

[tkvance]

Thanks for the detail in your TR.

Sounds like you had a great time.

[Norris]

Thanks, I thought it might be of interest to anyone contemplating a climb from the Idyllwild side and wondering about conditions. Speaking of conditions, I'm curious to know how much snow we got in the last storm.

[EnFuego]

Thanks for the 411.