San J

I made it guys and had a great, great time backpacking! ..and even without using a compass (one of the 10 backpacking essentials). It was a lot of fun...and being just a 2 day, 1 night trip was perfect...I wouldn't be surprised if I went again for a little longer trip..but I'm not going to get too crazy here. Alright! Here's a recap of the trip pic by pic.


We took the Palm Springs arial tram up the mountain from 2,oooish to 8,000ish feet. Went from a hot 106 degrees to the high 70s... so crazy being transported into the pine mountains so quickly. The tram floor rotated as we moved up which made the ride pretty exciting


This is a very popular sign, especially according to the video in the visitor center about San J... it was a frequent highlight of the video



We hiked 2.5 miles to Round Valley...our home for the night


We claimed our camping spot on this map that we think is not drawn to scale... more to come on that


Finding the camping sites was tricky..the map was only semi-helpful... finally I found a brown post marking a camping site....but it wasn't our camping site.. shoot


Oh good. Here's ours.


Good old campingware!


My borrowed messkit was awesome- thanks. And that night we watched the deer in the meadow and saw a few great shooting stars, and played cards.


The next morning we filtered more water for our hike to the top of San J and spent some time with the numerous boy scout troops and listened to their banter.


The hike to the top was very beautiful. This was my favorite vista along the way. So many ranges in a row


At the top! Third highest point in CA I think. It's the highest I've been. After this, we went back down the mountain, grabbed our packs, hiked back to the tram center, meandered at the center, and then took the tram back down. Thanks friends for going!