[pct-l] Two Hikers Rescued on San Jacinto

[CHUCK CHELIN]

Good afternoon, Piper,

There are some hikers who have scheduling problems that require an early
start, but I believe most early-starters are just highly motivated and
over-eager to hit the trail.  I could easily be.,

Steel-Eye

Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT – 1965

http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye

http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09


On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 3:13 PM, Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes <
diane at santabarbarahikes.com> wrote:

>  From all the conversations I have had with people (and you all know
> my post count here is pretty high, now add in off-list emails and
> whiteblaze and bp light -- sheesh get a life!), the number one reason
> people keep pushing the start date earlier isn't kickoff and it isn't
> Ned. It's an irrational fear of the desert.
>
> The vast majority of people I've talked to fear the desert heat and
> the long waterless sections more than anything. They fear it so much
> they are willing to risk their lives on San Jacinto. I'd say the vast
> majority of people who fear the desert live in places that get snow
> in winter. They know snow, even if they only know about shoveling and
> driving in it. They don't fear it. They don't know the desert so they
> fear it completely irrationally. They cannot even comprehend it when
> I tell them that mostly you are going to be cold in the desert.
>
> Most people, when you say the word "desert" have an image in their
> head of Wile-E Coyote and saguaro cactuses and people crawling under
> a sun with little wavy lines around it going "water water" with maybe
> a skeleton of a horse nearby and some mountains way out in the
> distance. The PCT is not like that!
>
> What the entire So Cal PCT is like is about 4 days of anything
> similar to a cactus walk with mountains in the distance and the rest
> of it is in the mountains climbing up into the pines or climbing down
> from the pines, hiking in the transitional zones where the manzanita
> and chamise, juniper and pinyon pines live.
>
> So my point is that people may want to blame kickoff or Ned's scary
> snow tales but the reality is that anybody here who has perpetuated
> the idea of So Cal as being one big long 6 weeks of desert hiking is
> far more responsible for scaring people into early start times.
>
> I suggest people replace the phrase "So Cal desert section" with "So
> Cal mountain section."
>
> On May 3, 2011, at 10:00 AM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:
>
> > Two Hikers Rescued on San Jacinto
>
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