With Whitney and Rim to Rim to Rim in the Grand Canyon completed this year, we decided to check another great one off the bucket list - Cactus to Clouds to Cactus. It's normally done as C2C with a return down via the tram/car shuttle, but we're a glutton for pain. There was a lot of last minute date shuffling to get three schedules lined up, but finally we settled on 11/13. That worked out perfectly as we had the super moon and t shirt weather the entire day.
We started at 0315 after parking across the street in the parking garage. DO NOT park at the museum or you might be ticketed and towed.
Route finding was much easier than we had read about. My brother and I had gone most of the way to the picnic tables the day before, we had several maps and gps tracks of the route. We never needed any help, because the white dots were there to guide us.
The Skyline portion ranges from steep to brutally steep. The trail is rough and not a super highway like Whitney or the Grand Canyon.
We saw two other teams getting ready behind us and a few headlamps up ahead. Just after we stashed our lamps we heard a young lady screaming for help. One of our party located her and it was a simple matter of her getting off trail. Once he got her on course she took off strong ahead of us and rejoined her own group. We traded places with them a few times.
No one that we talked to all day planned on hiking back down. Everyone was focused on the tram.
We filled up our water supplies at the ranger station, used the trash can, flush toilets and pulled our permit. I carried 4.6 liters up and used 3, the others brought 5 and 6 respectively. I filled back up to 3 for the trip to the summit and back. I have done this section dozens of times over the years and we made good time. I did feel a little sick, but a couple Tums helped out. We hit the top at 1245 and were headed down by 1300.
The trip back to the ranger station was uneventful and quick. A long break was taken to change socks, eat and top off water. I decided to carry a full 4.6 back down in case someone had a problem and we were stuck overnight. I ended up drinking 3 on the Skyline downhill, especially closer to Palm Springs were it was warmer.
With AT&T I had coverage about 90% of the time on Skyline. It was great getting text updates of the football game. Even better because I'm a Cowboys fan. Verizon seemed to do okay as well.
Skyline downhill is rough. Impossible to do quickly when you are focused on being safe. Thankfully we made it through the worst before we needed headlamps. Honestly, unless you are really challenging yourself, I suggest just taking the tram. It was completely unenjoyable. We finished up at 2030 and made fast time to IHOP.
I doubt I'll do this one again. I can't imagine how hard it would be if you hit the weather wrong.....................................DUG
