This blog is for the amusement, amazement, and education of members of the Coachella Valley Hiking Club or anyone else who might be interested in hiking and the outdoors. Anyone can submit text and pictures of anything having to do with hiking, nature, activities of members, links to websites, and links to news having to do with hiking, nature, and activities of members. Contact Eric to find out how to do this.
Remember, It didn't happen if there are no pictures in the blog.
Another enegmatic article from the Desert Sun. We know how old he was and that he was from Canada and that it was about 3 miles from the Trading Post, but that's about it. Was he in poor health? Did he have any water? how hot was it? Did he fall? Most of this could be found out by a phone call to two.
I don't usually recomend music on this site but this must be the best trail music I have every heard!
For some reason it sounds hauntingly familiar. It takes a few seconds to download.
On Monday, we went with Paulette to John's Meadow up in the San Bernardino Mountains. It is a five miles hike with an elevation gain of about 800 ft. It does undulate somewhat so the gross elevation is somewhat more. It was a beautiful day and most of us had a good time. Even though it was dry, there were flowers blooming along the trail. Amoung them are: Ceonothis, Sierra Current, gooseberry, prickly phlox, snow plants, Pink Alum root, and woodland star. The usual Ranger's buttons and fireweed were not out yet. The picture of the Iris was taken by Pat.
The Friends of the Desert Mountains has an excellent website. It also is a source for the Santa Rosa & San Jacinto Mountains National Monument Trails Map that they publish. You can order it online or buy it from the Santa Rosa Visitor Center at their Bobcat Bookstore. Here are links to their home page and to the page where you can order the map.
Here is a link to the Desert Sun article about the state park closings. The Governor is trying to close the budget gap by closing down much of the state. It seems however, that closing down the state parks should cost more through loss of tourist revenue and degradation of facilities than it would save.
Here is a copy of an E-mail from Elize that gives a place to send a message to the governor about the State Park closings.
Subject: Don't Close Our State Parks!
I thought you might be interested in this California State Parks Foundation e-activism campaign. If you go to the URL below you can check out what is at stake and send your own message directly to the relevant decision makers.
http://ga3.org/campaign/budget_may09?rk=upbYXL1aAv85WThis story was originally published in January. I bumped it to the top because a club member brought it to my attention again.
The Desert Sun has added a great hiking section. They list both our hiking schedule and the Desert Trails schedule. They also have an interactive list of trails. The easiest was to find the right pages is by using their search function. Type in the word hiking or trails and the information will come up. The other way is to click on the "calendar" link at the top of the page. Our hikes are on the calendar and if you click on enough links you will eventually find their lists of hikes.
Here is a picture of a random group of hikers who have nothing to do with the Desert Sun.
Here is a link to the calendar page thanks again to Ron's Log
Link to Desert Sun hiking page
The Desert Sun has an article about an Orange County man who died on the Skyline Trail. It is a typical Desert Sunarticle with few details. He left at 6:00 AM. and was found about 1:30 PM. 100 feet up the trail. Did he only get 100 feet or did he go up the trail and come back down? Was he 100 feet from where the Skyline trail leaves the Lykken or 100 feet from the bottom. Was he trying to go to the Tram? The Fire Department said he had a body temperature of 108, a sure sign of heat stroke.
Cy Kaicener has sent some additional information from the "Mt. San Jacinto Outdoor Recreation forum". Link to forum The hiker was named Alex Major, 28 years old from Orange County. He was hiking with his girl friend or fiance and they both turned back after the half way point. He made it to near the picnic tables where he couldn't go any farther. His girlfriend made it down. The temperature was well over 100.
The Desert Sun has an article about how snakes are more common in the spring with some good quotations from Jim Corbit. The article has a section from the Center of Diseases Control Snake Page
What To DO if You or Someone Else is Bitten by a
Snake
What NOT To Do if You or Someone Else is Bitten by a
Snake
Center for Disease Control
Here are some pictures of some local snakes. Three are harmless: a racer, a rosy boa, and a gopher snake. The other two are a western and a speckled rattlesnake.
These remarkable pictures were sent in by Howard, a new hiker with our club. He took them off of Highway 74 while returning from a hike.
I googled a number of websites and their estimates of how many calories we burn while we are on our hikes. A site named "Prohealth" has a calculator and gives the following numbers:
100 lbs - 272 calories per hour
150 lbs - 408 calories per hour
210 lbs - 571 calories per hour
This is in line with the numbers I've been using, 400 calories an hour. 3600 calories represent a pound so to lose 1 pound, if you weigh 150 lbs, hike about 9 hours. For me (I'm the one that weighs 210 pounds) I would have to hike about 6.5 hours.
I checked 5 of the other hits and each of the other calculators gave a similar value. I haven't yet found the figures that these calculators use to figure this out but they have to be rough estimates.
The hiking club rule of thumb for hiking speed is an average of 2 miles an hour. So, to lose a pound we have to hike about 12 miles. If you need to lose 10 pounds, hike for 120 miles. There too many variables to get an absolutely accurate number. Just some of the variables are: fat to muscle ratio, overall conditioning, weight of pack, steepness of trail, and walking speed.
Here is another good link from Robin to a Skyline Trail website maintained by Perry Scanlon. It has useful information about the hike and a good map.
Here is a link I received from Robin about a Rainier Mountaineering expedition to Everest. By following the link you can keep track of their progress.
The Canyon is called Indian Canyon because it is owned and maintained by the Agua Calilente band of Cahuilla Indians. There is a fee to enter the canyon and the hiking club leads many hikes in the area. The creek that runs through it is named Palm Canyon Creek after the more than 3,000 Washingtonia filifera or native fan palms that grow there. The Cahuilla used to live in the canyon and there are several villiage sites. It used to be a route to Anza, Temecula, and San Diego but the road has been closed for some time. Here are some of the place names:
Andreas Canyon: Named after Captain Andreas, chief of a small nearby Indian band. He grew grapes and peach trees in the canyon.
Indian Portreo: Portreo mean pasture in Spanish. This area was the site of an Indian Village and it looks like it would be a good place to keep live stock. The geographical features would make it hard for any animals to wander away.
Murray Creek: named after Welwood Murray, a native of Edinburgh, Scotland. He ran a small health resort in Palm Spring and had water rights to the canyon that he had to relinquish by order of the Commission of Mission Indian Affairs.
Hermits Bench: The parking for the canyon and the trading post/gift shop are on the bench. An eccentric man named Billy Pester had a palm shack on the bench around 1918. He would wander around wearing a robe and sandals and was willing to pose for pictures.
Little Paradise: A year round Spring about seven miles from the trading post. Travelers could always count on water at the spring.
Mad Women Spring: There is a cabin at the spring that was apparently built by Frank Wellman a local cattleman. Supposedly Frank Wellman and another man left their wives there for a few days while they went hunting. The wives were mad. The cabin was renovated by our own Jeff Morgan. Some of the material was carried up to the site by helicopter.
This Saturday Elize led her annual Cedar Springs hike. The hike is about 7 miles with a 1700 foot elevation gain. The high point of the trail is the ridge above Garner valley. It crosses over the Pacific Crest Trail. It has always been a good place to talk to through hikers, people who are doing the whole PCT from the Mexican Boarder to Canada. There is a picture of two interesting people, Molly and Pauli from Georga. We admired their interesting umbrellas.
Even though it has been dry, there was still some good flowers.
This is the first of a new feature on this blog. Place names of Riverside County. Most of the information is going to be from Jane Davies Gunther's Riverside County, California, Place Names: Their Origins and Their Stories and out of print book that I got from a used book store in Riverside.
The first three place names are San Jacinto Mountain (10,804'), Jean Peak, and Marion Mountain (10,332'). Jacinto means Hyacinth in English. It was recorded as a name in general use by 1853. It was shown on the 1901 U.S. Geological Survey's San Jacinto Quadrangle. Edmund Taylor, a typographer with the U.S. Geological Survey, named Jean Peak in 1897 after Miss Jean Waters, a women he met in Norther California. He named Marion Mountain after A young school teacher named Marion Kelly of White Clound Michigan, who was camped with friends near Pine Cove. He fell in love with Marion but ended up married to Jean.
Click on the map for a full sized image.
Last weekend, a group of club members went to Centenial Canyon on the north side of The China Lake Naval Weapons Station. We park our cars at the Astro Artz cabin and hiked about two miles up to the petroglyph site. These petroglyphs are very typical of the petroglyphs that are found in the Coso Range.
Pictures by Pat Sutter
