We started at the Deer Springs trailhead near Idyllwild. It was warm and sunny for the beginning of this trail, but once we got past Strawberry Junction, we started seeing patches of snow. The higher we climber, the thicker the snow became, and we had to eventually put on our microspikes. The trail was hard to find due to up to 3′ of snow cover and little travel in the area leaving little to no footprints. we had to rely on All Trails GPS for most of the snowy section past Strawberry Junction. There were also a lot of tiny drainages running underneath the snow, so we had to be careful whenever crossing these drainages. we eventually made it to our camp at Little Round Valley and set up camp for the night.

The next morning we packed up camp and made our way up to the San Jacinto summit. Similarly, we relied mostly on All Trails GPS due to now visible trail in the snow. The trek up was slow and exhausting due to the 3′ pack of snow as well as the steepness of the area, but we eventually climber up to the summit for sick views of Palm Springs and Snowy San Gorgonio in the distance. We then made it down the summit towards Round Valley. This was especially tricky and dangerous because the sun was starting to make the snow melt and finding our footing was very difficult even with microspikes. We eventually made it to our camp at Round Valley and set up camp. We left our packs at camp and made a shorter excursion to check out the Hidden Divide Preserve. We then made our way back to Round Valley and called it a day.

The last day we took the PCT on the way down and got some awesome views of some granite mountains. We eventually met up with the Deer Springs trail at Strawberry Junction and made our way back to the trailhead to finish the backpacking trip.