San Jacinto Peak - Climbing the 2nd Highest Peak in Southern, California | Desert to Alpine in a Day

I wasn't originally planning on making any sort of edit of our ascent up San Jacinto Peak, but after I was poking through the footage I realized I had about eight minutes of video I'd shot in ‪@Apple‬ 4K ProRes...so here it is! Forgive me for the mixed aspect ratios as I was thinking I'd only be sharing this on ‪@instagram‬!
After spending a day hiking Eureka Peak and exploring more of Joshua Tree National Park, Ash and I drove about 45 minutes to Palm Springs to take a crack at our first “big” west coast mountain.
We flew out with our hiking packs, spikes, and some extra layers in anticipation of hiking San Jacinto Peak from the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. The tram ascends from a parking area at about 3500’ to the Long Valley at 8500’ in about 10 minutes and 2.5 miles which is impressive in itself. Even though the tram took us a good bit of the way up, it was still about 12.6 miles and 2300’ to nab San Jacinto Peak.
Ascending from basically the floor of the desert to the base of Long Valley was wild. Unbeknownst to us, there is a grove of naturally producing giant sequoias planted in the 1974 by the US Forest Service after a fire scorched the area. We didn’t realize this until after we were hiking thru the Jurassic Park style forests!
It wasn’t long before we put our spikes on…the trail wasn’t bad until we hit Wellman Divide. We could feel the elevation a bit, but the roughest part was on mushy afternoon snow about 2 miles out from the summit on a side hill section as we climbed above Round Valley. We crossed one other group of 3 hikers who we leap-frogged with all the way to the summit, and we took pictures and chatted once we reached the peak.
The views from the 10,834’ summit were nothing short of impressive…desert to the east, mountains, including San Gorgonio to the north and south, and the marine layer of clouds beneath to the west.
It was nippy up top but nothing we weren’t prepared for from hiking in our “home” White Mountains. Luckily the trail began to freeze up on the way down making for smoother travel and fast conditions once we got back to Wellman Divide. Blessed and fortunate to get this time up there with my best hiking buddy. Til next time San Jacinto, and we will for sure be back when we can to bag some more “big” mountains out West!
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Camera: ‪@Apple‬ iPhone 14 Pro
Sound: ‪@rodemic‬ VIDEOMIC ME-L
Film Format: ‪@Apple‬ 4K 24FPS ProRes
Music: ‪@xboygeniusx‬