Zé wrote:Again, you've come in here to announce that you've successively hiked up the PCT to peak, and therefore Skyline would be okay too.
Where did I say that?
The Skyline trail isn't on any topo, Google, USFS, etc. map that I saw, so I didn't even realize that the route existed until a day before I did the PCT route. By then I had already planned for PCT so I decided not to change plans at the last minute. But after doing the PCT "slog", I thought of trying again via a more direct (i.e. steeper) route. I was surprised to see that Skyline was considered by some to be so dangerous in summer, so I was trying to find out why and how dangerous it is compared to PCT. Some people starting saying it was riskier because it's steeper, which didn't make sense to me since neither is a semi-technical cross-country route Snow Creek (talk about throwing out a red herring...) Some people said that it's riskier because it has less shade, which doesn't seem to be true either (either route, essentially no shade up to the tree line which seems to be at about the same elevation either way). The starting elevation on Skyline is about 1000' lower but my impression (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Skyline has less elevation loss on the way up than PCT. So I was trying to get clarification on why Skyline is considered by some to be a riskier hike.
The two factors which I could envision adding more risk to Skyline are
(1) Since the starting elevation is lower and the east side seems to be a little warmer than the west side in general, the average temperature will be a few degrees warmer on a Skyline hike.
(2) Skyline might be more difficult to follow since it's not as well established as PCT + Little Round Valley (though if you download and use the routes posted on the C2C website with your GPS, that wouldn't seem to be much of a factor.)
So again the question (to anyone) is, in your opinion which route is potentially more dangerous and why?
Thanks in advance for the opinions. I'll just read this blog from now on... the last word is yours (if you want it.)
That's why me so good at spelling. Poor USC grads. 
