This year, local mountain rescue team Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit took the unusual step in early March of telling Pacific Crest Trail hikers to skip the section San Jacintos entirely, representing a stretch of roughly 60 trail miles from Paradise Valley Cafe on Highway 74 in Mountain Center to Interstate 10 at Cabazon. And the day after Laher's death in 2020, two PCT hikers were rescued in the same location after one got stuck in an icy section and the other slipped off the side of the trail and fell about 60 feet. In April 2019, there were two rescues within the span of a week of hikers who slipped off the steep and icy trail near Apache Peak. The section of the PCT that runs through the area is notorious for snow and ice, and the San Jacintos are considered the first significant mountain range with such extreme conditions that northbound PCT hikers encounter on their 2,650-mile journey. Trevor notably didn’t have his ice axe and microspikes on the trail while traversing through that section of trail, which has also renewed calls for hikers to have the proper gear, like microspikes, crampons, and ice axes, while traveling through the San Jacintos. In the years since, Trevor’s father Doug Laher has embarked on a campaign for trail safety, calling on hikers to “embrace the alternate” when trail conditions seem unsafe and to consider the Spitler Peak Trail as a “bailout point” when the Apache Peak route looks icy or dangerous. The ice was hidden by the layer of fresh snow. PCT hiker Trevor Laher died in March 2020 after slipping on ice and sliding about 600 feet while hiking around the side of Apache Peak, where the PCT is narrowly cut into the side of the mountain with a steep drop-off. San Jacintos are the first serious snow along the trail It's just one example of how this year's experience on the Pacific Crest Trail is being shaped by decisions about when to leave the trail, as California's historic snowpack presents the latest challenge along the storied trail that's increasingly impacted by extreme weather, wildfires and climate change. The stretch of the PCT near Apache Peak where they turned around has proven treacherous and even deadly in past years. And while the group says their decision to turn around was driven more by feeling cold and wet than the trail conditions, there's a broader awareness this year of “knowing where the bailout options are and being willing to take them,” said Katharine Schumacher, another hiker in their group. Instead, with members of the group cold, wet, and reaching the point of “a little hypothermic,” they decided to turn around and also hike back to the Spitler Peak Trail, opting to “take the alternate trail so that we could just get off the the mountain and get down and get warm,” fellow PCT hiker Leonie Short said. They’d originally planned to wake up early Wednesday morning and hike about 10 miles further past Apache Peak to Saddle Junction, where they could descend the 2.5-mile Devils Slide Trail to reach Humber Park in the town of Idyllwild, where they planned to take a “zero day” Thursday, or a rest day without hiking. The next morning, waking up near Apache Peak to new snow on the ground and ice on the trees, the rest of the group decided to follow suit and leave the PCT. He descended from the PCT via Spitler Peak Trail, turned left onto the road, and hiked a few more miles to set up camp at the lower-elevation Hurkey Creek Campground, just off Highway 74, around 3 a.m. Slabaugh backtracked about a half-mile along the PCT to reach the Spitler Peak Trail, a roughly 5-mile trail that connects with the PCT and leads to starts at Apple Canyon Road, about 6 miles east from Mountain Center. “I was starting to not be able to feel certain parts of my body,” he said of the cold and wet weather. and midnight, it started raining, then later snowing.Ī little before midnight, Slabaugh decided to bail.
It was windy, but the sky was clear and precipitation wasn’t in the forecast ― so the group decided to cowboy camp, or sleep out on the ground without a tent or shelter, rather than deal with the struggle of setting up tents and keeping them up overnight during windy conditions. Tommy Slabaugh and a group of fellow northbound Pacific Crest Trail hikers set up camp for the night on May 9 near Apache Peak, located near mile 169 of the 2,650-mile trek in the San Jacinto Mountains.
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