Devil's Slide 1-30-10

Archived TRs for ranges in California.
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Dave G
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Post by Dave G »

Norris and I had thought to climb one of the north face routes on San Gorgonio, but when Saturday morning came and the South Fork parking area had yet to be plowed, we set our sights on San Jacinto from Humber Park, via the Devil's Slide route. We were able to boot it as far as Saddle Junction, eyeing the awesome views of Suicide and Tahquitz rocks along the way, before breaking out the snowshoes for the rest of the climb up. We were making fresh tracks for the most part from that point on. We made camp at ~8900 ft, enjoyed a cool sunset and an even cooler, but thankfully windless, night and the next morning we set out for Wellmans Divide, more or less following the PCT. From there we traversed a route above the trail, over to and up the SE face of the peak. We topped out at 1p, headed back down to break camp and were at Saddle Junction by dark. After a misguided two hour effort on my part to find my lost camera, we got out the crampons and carefully descended the now-icy trail back down to Humber Park. Norris took a few pictures; mine are in a snowbank somewhere :cry: .
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21042415@N ... 334972886/
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lilbitmo
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Post by lilbitmo »

Nice work Dave, sorry about the camera. Hopefully the camera God's will find a way to get it back to you in the spring. We will have to go do Suicide Rock area overnighter some time in the future :D

As far as Norris's car, a trick we did in Michigan was to keep a small bucket of sand in the truck to put under the tires so we could get on top of the snow/ice and or some small pieces of wood. We live we learn.
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Funyan005
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Post by Funyan005 »

Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to get to the peak from Wellmans divide? I camped out up there last tuesday and ran out of time(or so we thought to make the summit before we had to get to the tram).
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hamik
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Post by hamik »

Do you have any pictures of Tahquitz? I'd like to know if the Trough or north side are iced up. It's unlikely given recent warm temps, but here's to hoping...
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Dave G
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Post by Dave G »

lilbitmo wrote:Nice work Dave, sorry about the camera. Hopefully the camera God's will find a way to get it back to you in the spring. We will have to go do Suicide Rock area overnighter some time in the future :D

As far as Norris's car, a trick we did in Michigan was to keep a small bucket of sand in the truck to put under the tires so we could get on top of the snow/ice and or some small pieces of wood. We live we learn.
Thanks, Patrick! I didn't thnik about sand--he was in some pretty deep pockets. I told him we could put some branches in front of the tires but that it might mess up the bodywork :wink:
Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to get to the peak from Wellmans divide? I camped out up there last tuesday and ran out of time(or so we thought to make the summit before we had to get to the tram).
We hit Wellmans at about 10:15a and the summit at 1p. We started off following a track for a short distance, but then ended up breaking trail when it veered off to Jean, so it was slow going most of the way.
Do you have any pictures of Tahquitz? I'd like to know if the Trough or north side are iced up. It's unlikely given recent warm temps, but here's to hoping...
I have a bunch of really good shots of Tahquitz--the only problem is that they're in my camera which went MIA at ~8500' :( But the north side actually did look pretty iced up, if that helps.
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mve
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Post by mve »

Sorry about your camera Dave -- it's a nice trek you guys did!
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Funyan005
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Post by Funyan005 »

I'm 99% sure that track up to Jean was us making a mockery of route finding! Sorry!
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GigaMike
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Post by GigaMike »

Good thing Norris had a camera because I wouldn't of believed you :wink: The sunset pics are fantastic!
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