Snow on Skyline?

[zippetydude]

Sorry, I didn't get it with the arrows. What did that mean?

z

[Cy Kaicener]

Zip - The trail is 90% snowfree from where the snow patches begin. You can avoid most of them. All I needed on Wednesday were hiking poles. We have a whole bunch of people going up on Saturday.

[Perry]

Cy, did you just wake up? I'm going to sleep... Crazy, huh?

[FIGHT ON]

z, Those were supposed to be my footprints going up to the tram. For me and anyone else that does not get how to handle walking in snow or ice, IT'S TIME!!!!!!! FIGHT ON .. .. .. ..
.................................... .. .. .. ..

[Torben Thomsen]

Spent last Sunday afternoon [4/20] cleaning up the portion of the trail from the traverse to the crest. With only a hand saw, I did not cut the three biggest logs. You can easily crawl under them. Just below Coffman's Crag I met two gals, Vickie and Kelly, who successfully made the hike for the first time. They were tired but well prepared. Congratulations!!

Here are some numbers to see how you are doing on the trail. The average slope on the trail is about 15%. But the first section to the Picnic Tables and the last section from the traverse to the Crest are both 24% [that means for every 100 feet forward the trail climbs 24 ft]

The trip from Museum to the crest of the trail as you enter Long Valley is about 9.8 miles which we will count as 100%.

The distances to various landmarks are roughly:
8% Picnic tables
49% Cairn at 4,300 ft
80% Flat Rock
92% Gateway to traverse [long burned log hangs over the trail]

If you memorize those numbers, you will have a good idea of how far you have come and how far to go.

Your time to the Cairn should be about SIX times your time to the picnic tables. So if you are at the picnic tables in 40 minutes, you should be at the Cairn in 6*40=240 minutes or 4 hours

Your time to Flat Rock should be about TEN times your time to the picnic tables. So if you took 50 minutes to get to the Picnic Tables you should be at Flat Rock in 10*50=500 minutes or 8 hours and 20 minutes.

The time from Flat Rock to the Crest is ONE QUARTER of your total time to Flat Rock. So if you were at Flat Rock in say 8 hours you have an additional 2 hours to go.

[Cy Kaicener]

Torben - You will soon be ready to write a guide book Did you use geometry, algebra, logerithms, a calculator or arithmetic.
My time is as follows -
Picnic Tables - 800 ft gain in one mile - 35 minutes
Cairn at 4300 ft - 3800 gain in 5 miles - 3 hours 30 minutes
Flatrock at 5900 ft - 5500 ft gain in 9 miles - 6 hours
Long Valley - 8200 ft gain in 11 miles - 8 hours.

[billc]

L&G, I wasn't going to foul up this forum with another post, but I have to chime in on the 2 emails below with all the math!

For the record, we two inexperienced Skyline hikers who climbed from the museum to Flat rocks on April 6, posted the following stats:

Left museum parking lot 800
Arrived picnic tables 845 - 45 min
Arrived at cairn 1130 - 3h 30 min
Arrived at flat rocks 1330 - 5 h 30 min (& took 30 min lunch break until 1400)
Arrived back at the museum 1830 - 10 h 30 min (Note 4 hrs of descent for ye who choose to turn around and we were booking! Far fewer breaks on the way down but still took us 75% of the total clock time for the ascent!)

This matches Cy's stats below almost exactly except for the elevations. My friend's altimeter watch clocked 600' at the museum parking lot and 5800' at flat rocks, for a total of 5200' of climbing, unless there is a second dry streambed that we didn't quite get to.