My buddy & I left Mission Viejo at 2:15 am, and arrived at the museum parking lot trail head at 3:40 am. Shorts, a thin long sleeve and t-shirt did the job from the get go. It was 52 degrees on the car thermometer. This was my first time to see deer on this trail, and I was treated to a group of 4 grazing on some bushes at around 3,800 feet. It got a little warm by the time we hit "Rescue 2", so I ditched the t-shirt. Kind of funny to see a few lizards around this elevation in January! We took a nice 20 minute break at Flat Rock, and this is where we saw the first person, a trail runner who passed on by. 15 minutes later, we were passed by 2 more trail runners on the steep climb above Flat Rock. We never saw a sole again, until we crested over Grubb's Notch to Long Valley at 12:08 pm. We both felt great, and I even did a few celebratory push-ups here! We knew we had the energy to do the full deal at this point, so we made a pit stop at the mountain station to re-fuel.
We started for the summit a little after 1:30 pm, and noted that the winds were picking up and it definitely felt cooler, back on with the t-shirt. After filling out the permit at the Long Valley Ranger Station, we beat feet for the peak. It didn't take long, and we started encountering large patches of snow and ice. It was a little annoying at times between Round Valley and Wellman's Divide, but still doable without the extra gear. I added another layer, and a beanie hat at Wellman's Divide. We arrived at the peak just before 5 pm, and had it all to ourselves. The wind was so strong, it was difficult to stand up there, and it only took a couple minutes to realize my my hands were frozen! After catching the sunset, we warmed up briefly in the shelter house just below the summit, gloved up, and put our headlights back on for the rapidly approaching darkness. The most stressful part of the hike for me was the descent in darkness from Wellman's Divide to Round Valley, due to having to really watch the footing in the icy sections. I am glad I donned my trekking poles on this trip. It was relieving to see the light of the ranger station, knowing we had accomplished this "task". We dropped the permit off and made the "looong" walk up the sidewalk to the mountain station. As I entered the building at 7:30 pm, the message blurred over the loudspeaker announcing the next tram down at 7:40 pm. I had the security guard call us a cab and we headed down a nearly empty tram to the valley station. At 7:50 pm, we hopped off and our cab was just pulling up at the curb. By 8:15 pm, we were ordering fajitas at the Blue Coyote Grill in town (my favorite, Las Casuelas, still had a long wait).
Here is a link to my photo album from this trip:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/1116 ... 6405440801
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