Cactus to Clouds: The Ridge Above the Pool
If you've ever floated on your back in the Old Ranch Inn pool and let your eyes drift west, you've been looking at one of the most punishing day hikes in the country.
That wall of granite and scrub above the Historic Tennis Club is Skyline Ridge, the start of the Cactus to Clouds trail. The trailhead starts just behind the Palm Springs Art Museum at around 500 feet above sea level and climbs to the 10,834-foot summit of San Jacinto Peak. That’s a net gain of roughly 10,300 feet. Backpacker Magazine has ranked it one of the toughest day hikes in the country. Several times a year it tries to kill someone.
Most of our guests never notice. The ridge is just part of the view, the thing that turns pink at sunrise. But the gap between "lovely backdrop" and "serious mountain" is worth knowing about partly because the story is a good one, partly because hikers have died within a mile of a trailhead you can walk to from our front gate.
The Cactus to Clouds or C2C to the diehards has the greatest elevation gain of any day hike in America. The first eleven miles are the Skyline Trail, which climbs nearly 8,000 feet before linking up with the state park system at Long Valley. From there it's another 2,400 feet to the summit. Most hikers start between 2 and 4 a.m., crest the desert section before the sun hits the east-facing ridge, and ride the tram back down from Mountain Station at the end.
The trail is not officially maintained because it’s not a state or federal park trail. Volunteers keep it walkable. The lower portion crosses Agua Caliente tribal land. There are two rescue boxes on the way up, spaced for the moments when things go wrong which they do, regularly, mostly from heat. People have collapsed within sight of Palm Canyon Drive.
Two of the landmarks hikers use to measure their suffering are named for locals. Coffman's Crag, at about 8,000 feet, is named for Owen Earl Coffman, an early Palm Springs resident, tram co-founder, and former manager of the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite. The other, Grubbs Notch, is a few hundred feet higher and honors V.W. Grubbs.
The lower sections of the trail were cut by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression as a working route from the desert to the high country. The name Cactus to Clouds was coined in the early 1990s by Coachella Valley Hiking Club leader Roger Keezer. Three decades later, it's a pilgrimage route but only for a short time each year. November to early December and mid-March to mid-May are the windows when the desert floor is cool enough and the summit is clear of snow and ice.
For anyone but the most experienced hikers, we recommend riding the tram up, hiking the state park trails around Long Valley, the Round Valley loop, the Wellman Divide spur, or the summit itself. Same ridge. Same views. No 2 a.m. headlamps required, no rescue boxes, no obituary.
