[pct-l] Desert Night hiking

[Nathaniel Morse]

hey, thanks. you have great answers! :) (Not that the others don't. Yours
are just super informative.)

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 6:37 AM, Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes <
diane at santabarbarahikes.com> wrote:

> On Sep 7, 2011, at 9:57 PM, Nathaniel Morse wrote:
>
>>
>>  Isn't about 700 miles, desert?  And I guess weather and temp depends on
>> the
>> year...
>>
>
> A trip to San Jacinto last spring during thru-hiker season (May):
> http://tinyurl.com/4y548ky
>
> I took pictures around Big Bear a few weeks later (also in May) but I guess
> I never posted them online. It was snowing. There were big pine trees. It
> was delightful around Deep Creek.
>
> Hiking the trail near Wrightwood in 2008 during thru-hiker season I was
> stuck in Wrightwood for 3 days waiting for the blizzard to stop:
> http://tinyurl.com/44hn5wm
>
> Here we are at the Cottonwood bridge in the middle of the Antelope
> Valley/Mojave desert section resting in the freezing hot sun:
> http://tinyurl.com/3og7s8l
>
> It's only desert some of the time. I always get a laugh when I remember
> this one lady from 2010 telling me how much she loved the desert while she
> was standing in the pine trees on Mt. Laguna. Looked just like the pine
> trees around Old Station. Which reminds me, I was dying of heat prostration
> around Northern California and Oregon. You want hot? Try Northern
> California!
>
> You'll have some hot days in So Cal and there won't be a lot of water along
> the trail. Prepare for single-digit humidity and a wide range of
> temperatures, sometimes hot, sometimes cold, sometimes snowing or freezing
> rain, but mostly perfect but windy. It cools off every night instantly as
> soon as the sun goes behind a mountain. Then it stays cool for most of the
> morning. Get up early to take advantage of the cool morning hours. Take a
> break in the middle of the day if it's too hot for you. It'll probably be in
> the 80s to mid-90s. Then hike on into the evening when it's comfortable
> again. Some people hike into the night but very few people find it necessary
> to hike in the middle of the night. Besides, you need to sleep and nothing
> could be more awful than trying to sleep when it's hot and sunny and there's
> nowhere to lay yourself but under a chamise bush where ants and flies will
> have their way with you.
>
> And to answer your first question, sure it's safe to hike at night but it's
> not necessary. I'd save it for a full moon.
>
>
>
>
>


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