365 Days with the Carlsons: 7/1/15

Sunday, July 26, 2015

7-19-15

Today was a much better day, weather-wise. The rain wasn't supposed to come until noon.

Yesterday we started at Humber Park and headed up Devil's Slide.

Today we are going up Marion Mountain Trail instead, which is steeer (over 6mi up, instead of 8mi)

Lots of rocky, technical trails

Sometimes the trail was hard to follow...

Pascale and Dawn (a newbie to trails, and hadn't run more than 10mi before today)

Absolutely gorgeous!

Looking...just looking :)

This picture doesn't do this justice. Those purple flowers in the background were soooo pretty!

Clouds coming in..

a whole bunch of campsites here

Our only group shot for the 5 of us (we were the slower group; the others were about an hour ahead, by the time they reached the top)

About a mile from the summit, we saw Keira and Sarah descending. They encouraged us to keep on going! The weather was going to turn soon, but they didn't want to deny us the opportunity to summit!

Sarah gave me an extra 10oz of water...

A Hiker's Cabin!

Annie was the first one up; she led us the whole way.

We finally made it!!!

I was the second one up :)

Followed by Heather!

And then Pascale!

(I didn't take any pics of Dawn...hmmm...but I know others did)

NO visibility up there.

I have a video but can't post it through the app on my phone...later :)

After we descended the summit, things went sour. Pascale didn't look to see where she was going and ended up circling around the summit and got lost.

At this point in time I don't want to relocate the whole story anymore...

Search and rescuer found her before nightfall and she was going to be safe.

7-18-15

All of us together, sans our coaches Keira and Sarah.

We were supposed to start at 7, but the Rangers needed a permit with today's date (new summer weekend rules?)

So our coaches had to go to the station to wait and get one, which didn't open until 8. :(

While we waited, we watched the weather turn...we could hear thunder and lightning in the distance.

So it didn't appear likely that we would be able to summit Mt San Jacinto today. We were going to just see how far we could safely go...

It's starting to come down hard!

Half of the ladies opted to descend immediately and ran with Sarah through the Ernie Maxwell trail.

A few of us forged on ahead to see how far we could get (it was supposed to be 8mi to the summit)

Heather, Keira, me and Dawn

Keira and me!

Almost to Saddle Junction, which was going to be where we had to turn around. We were advised by the Rangers to not go beyond this point because of the weather.