Day 19- May 8th

Everybody, I have an announcement! On this Sunday, May 8th, 2016, I was the first person to summit Mt. Jacinto! At 10,834 feet!! :)

I woke up in the cabin like a little boy on Christmas Day. It must've still been in the 20's, so I stayed in my sleeping bag, hopped over to the window to see if it was clear outside, and it was!

Hurriedly I put on all the layers I had and ran out the door. I leaped over snow mounds and across boulders, making my way to the top. I ran so fast that I almost fainted when I finally got to the top! Partly because of the elevation and just waking up, but mainly because of the view! 

Not sure how the pic above will look in the computer, at its an almost 360 degree panorama taken on the iPhone! A shorter panorama below.. Hopefully they help do a liiiiitle justice to the view I had!

Looking down: (don't slip!)

The tippy top where I took all these from:

It was just before 8 when I got up there, then Orion joined about 30 minutes later:

Next was Claire about 15 after that. By the time they were both up there the clouds had rolled in, but I still say on the top of the world with a huge smile on my face! We got to summit Mt. Jacinto!!

After a little while at the top, we all headed back down to the stone shelter. Because we didn't have to take down our tents, "breaking camp" was fairly quick and painless.

However, one thing not too painless was Claire's knees.. :( We had been in Idyllwild with not much movement for our bodies, slept in our freezing soaking tent, then yesterday climbed straight up nonstop for over 10 miles. 

Today, the start of a 25 mile descent (over only 6 miles as the crow flies), was on our agenda. Poor Claire's knees had been frozen in Idyllwild, overworked up Jacinto, frozen atop Jacinto, and then tortured with the pack weight and continuos down steps for the entirety of today, (over 10 miles, all of it down). We took it as slow as we could, but we both knew we had to get out of the high mountains before nightfall.

Orion was awesome enough to let Claire use one of his trekking poles, to help with the descent. Soon, we returned it because I found a perfect walking stick for her! He went on ahead as we slowly but surely descended out of the clouds.

All morning on the way down we were victim to what I'm now calling "snow-bombs". This is when snow that had been sticking onto the leaves of the tree coming crashing down as the sun starts to melt it. You have a few seconds of warning, depending on the height of which the snow is falling, but you better move quick! Or else you get snow and ice dumped on your head from above. Claire got a pretty nice icy bomb that made direct contact with her hat! 

The terrain was so nice on the way down, here's a buuuunch of pics:

This natural rock bowl was so cool!!

Oh also, a side note; when we got to the area on Fuller Ridge that was supposed to have waist-high snow drifts, there was no snow at all! Nothing sketchy, icy, or dangerous! It's good to be prepared, but sometimes you have to take what you hear from certain people with a grain of salt!

Clouds continued to shroud the summit for most of the day, but just before finding a campsite, we were blessed with a clear shot of the top! Crazy to think that we woke up way up there this morning!!

We found a really nice campsite for the night, set up and ate some yummy warm food, (new stove is working great!)

Hopefully we can get some more rest that we did last night up near the summit, as the low will be near 40, (and not 17)! With the rest we hope Claire's knee makes a swift recovery! We're both sure it'll be better than today was on her poor knees.

-Thanks for reading!