[pct-l] Idylwild-related stuff

[Brian Lewis]

I and some others did the walk-around from the Paradise Café into
Idylwild using Halfmile's maps, and it worked great.  The first couple
of miles are indeed the toughest, some steep uphill bits, but overall
it's a great (dirt) roadwalk.

A hybrid approach to consider is to roadwalk on highway 74 from
Paradise to the campground turnoff (about 1/2 mile maybe past the
Hemet store).  The worst bits of highway are past that, and the first
bit of the bypass sucks up more time and energy relative to the amount
of progress towards Idylwild that's actually achieved.

Someone was asking about Fuller ridge which I'm about to do today
(leaving Idylwild in about half an hour).  I had dinner with some
thru's last night who SoBo'd this --- the fire complicated things for
lots of people --- and they assured me that my intuition was right, it
shouldn't be bad.  They passed lots of people as they came in.   As I
understand it, people asking the Forest Service are hearing that
there's about 5 miles of knife-edge ice to traverse (this is second
hand, I didn't ask), but these guys suggested that a person who is
physically fit and has common sense can do it fine, without ice axe or
crampons or huskies pulling a sled (though a St. Bernard with a little
keg might be nice).

I want to stress that this latter is all second hand, and different
people can have very different perceptions of how dangerous something
is.  I only have first-hand knowledge of Halfmile's (great) walk
around route.  For any thru's in Idylwild that have trouble getting
maps, we found the people at Nomad Outfitters to be great; I returned
the map set I had to them so they could give it to others that might
want to use it.   I don't know if the library would be a good
alternate option, but it might.


    Gadget