Trip Report - Skyline 4/25/15

[mattytreks]

As usual, left San Diego early (around 1:45) and arrived at the Desert Museum trailhead at 4. From the moment I stepped out of the car, I knew this would be the most exceptional weather I've ever experienced on Skyline. I imagine the temps were around 65, maybe 70 at the start of the hike. My girlfriend and I encountered a good number of groups during the hike.

Almost immediately after the sun popped out from behind the mountains of Joshua Tree, clouds started rolling in all around the area. As the morning wore on, the clouds grew darker and a short time after passing Flat Rock we received a nice little drizzle for about 10-15 minutes. We had aspirations of heading to the summit, however that changed the instant we crested at Grubb's Notch. The cold, blasting wind hit us like a ton of bricks. And with those fast-moving clouds growing ever darker I didn't want to chance summiting in the middle of a snow/rain storm.

Overall it was a great day and we met some very nice folks along the way.

Before leaving the area we stopped by Cheesecake Factory for some yep, cheesecake! We decided to take the "back way" home via 74/371/79, and almost as soon as we headed up the 74 grade from Palm Desert, the sky opened up with a windy, blowing rain that didn't stop all the way back to San Diego. This was even more evidence I made the right choice in deciding not to summit on Saturday.

[sdpacatc]

I think we saw you and your girlfriend on the trail. We started around 3am and got to the Tram after 7 hours. We decided to keep going to the top, but that weather really got nasty. I thought I was adequately equipped, but by the time I made it back down my pants where soaked and my gloves frozen ( crappy gloves), when I pulled them off at the tram I was starting to show signs of frostbite on my fingers. A few minutes under the hand dryers in the bathroom helped take care of that. All in all I'm glad we did the whole thing this time, last year we tried this ( same exact weekend) and made it to the tram but were not equipped for the 4-5 inches of snow that would have been ice on the way back down, not to mention that we were exhausted.