I been training for 2 months. Escaping work every Saturday. Just to get some hike in and incline training. And save my last peak to finish off my six peaks challenge for 2018. My training includes the 7 peaks, Iron Mountain at San Gabriel Mountain and other mileage hikes. The hike I did for Iron Mountain helped me a lot and prepared me during the day, I hiked San Jacinto Peak via Skyline Trails: Cactus to Clouds. This was a 22 miles trekked.

The Hike:
▪Meet up with everyone at 0000 midnight, our starting point time as planned was 0100. But since everyone were early, we started our trek at 0030. The weather was okay but temperatures felt like 80 degree. Everyone turned on their headlamps and off we started our hike. As a person hosted the event, I was infront for a little while and let the rest go infront of me and kept myself in the middle of the group. It was a gradual inclined from the starting point. Never thought the trails would be like that. The inclined were so intense going up to a one mile hike. And continue the inclined throughout the hike. Some area were small slopes. I remembered one part, we were just kept going down and down and down and then going up and up and up. Yes, it was crazy. We kept moving under the dark until the sunrise at 0630. We were few miles away from the Long Valley Ranger. But the hiked up was totally in a whole new level of hiking. Comparing it to the Iron Mountain at San Gabriel I did last month. I would say the inclined trippled just going up and up and up. We regrouped before we started again. We were on our last pushed to the ranger station. We finally reached the Long Valley Ranger station at 0930.
▪We stayed for atleast 30-45 mins just to replenish ourselves with food and refill waters. I was glad. I had enough water with me. Until the very end.
▪I kind a lost tracked of what time we left the Long Valley Ranger station towards to San Jacinto Peak. We still had to do 5.5 miles to reach the top. We kept pushing ourselves slowly. Everyone were tired. Lack of sleeps. For myself, I was awake 0500 on a Friday morning. I had to work during the day got off at 1500. I tried to get some nap time for 2 hours. Got myself ready, at 2100 before heading to Palm Springs. I was just so sleepy. I couldn't stay rested for few minutes on the trails. Everytime, I took a 1-2 minutes break. My eyes were closing on me. My body was asking for sleep already. But I couldn't let the sleep get to me. I had to keep moving and summit San Jacinto Peak. I was thinking via Skyline Trails: Cactus to Clouds with all my hard work getting up to where I was standing. I will have to summit. I couldn't wasted all the hard trek I did. There was no point of not summiting. So, I pushed myself moving slowly. Until the very end. I summited San Jacinto Peak at 1400 with everyone. At the peak, right after I stood on a flat surface boulder. I took my 20 minutes nap yay????. Yes, I actually did took a snooze at the peak. Regained myself some energy to go down for another 5.5 miles back to the Long Valley Ranger station and to the Aerial Tramway.
▪We stayed for one hour at the peak. Regaining the energy. Took pictures and head back down by 1500. Going down was fairly easy. We were back at the ranger station and at the Aerial Tramway by 1700. Yes, we did it C2C and bagged my last peak for this year six peaks challenge 2018. I was thankful to everyone who joined this amazing hard trekked with me. Proud of you all.

Trail Conditions:
Even though it was dark, the trails were easy to follow and along with our GPS. Some rocks are marked with white spots to follow too. But do not rely to them though. Also, those white marked will show with lights. So, it reflects. We didn't side tracked at all. We stayed on the trails all the way up to the Long Ranger Station. From the ranger's station, going up to San Jacinto Peak trails are well maintained and marked. Definitely, not getting lost in the woods. If snows are presents that would be a different story.

Weather:
At first, we started with a hot weather and the higher we trekked the cooler it got. The weather at the summit was perfect.