Tahquitz Peak

Devil’s Slide Trail up from Humber Park is a lot of up, but it is cool and mostly shaded in the early morning.

16 SEPTEMBER 2023 W6/CT-007

Elevation:	8,770′
Route:	Trail
Hike Distance:	9 miles round trip
Elevation Gain:	2,350′
Navigation:	Easy
Steepness:	Well graded trail
Vehicle:	Passenger car
Road:	Paved road
Cell Coverage:	In and out (Verizon) APRS Excellent

Hike basics

As I approached Mountain Goat status I started picking summits that are nostalgic for me – summits that I had done in my high school years. In the case of Tahquitz Lookout three of my friends had loaded up Gary Ottenger’s white ’55 Bel Aire with lo-tech, high weight backpacking gear and driven up to Idyllwild late one full moon night in August 1972.

We camped up in Taquitz Meadow and climbed both Tahquitz Peak and Red Tahquitz. The fire lookout on Tahquitz was manned by very cool ranger. We spent most of the day up there with the clouds dancing around the lookout tower. He served us wine and cheese and played classical music on a FM radio. Can you imagine that happening today? The poor guy would be in jail.

He issued us all “Squirrel Cards” – cards handed out proclaiming that we had successfully climbed an official forest service fire loookout.

On this trip I was delayed on the 90 at 4:30am by a police closure of the entire freeway for almost an hour. I still managed to get to the Idyllwild Ranger Station just off SR 243 at 54270 Pine Crest Road just before it opened. There I filled out my wilderness permit at the after-hours kiosk.

Important note: a wilderness permit is required for this hike and the quota is filled up fast on summer weekends. There were rangers checking for permits a mile or so up the trail.

The hike up Devil’s Slide Trail is a lovely walk that affords tremendous views of Lily (Tahquitz) Rock and Suicide Rock across Fern Valley. These are highly traveled rock climbing destinations. I’ve done dozens of routes on these excellent hunks of granite back in my rock climbing days. I could spot climbers on some of the more exposed routes on this trip.

Here is my track up

I played leap-frog with an energetic young couple all the way up and when I met them on the summit I asked them if they had gotten their Squirrel Cards. They hadn’t, so I escorted the pair up into the lookout tower and asked Ranger B. May if they still bestowed Squirrel Cards on fire lookout ascenders. He was somewhat bemused that anybody over the age of 12 would request them, but dutifully issued us entrance into “The Ancient and Honorable Order of the Squirrel. :-). The young couple were tickled by the experience.

50 one years later I am issued my second Squirrel Card from the Taquitz fire lookout.

Even with the permit requirement there was a steady stream of hikers visiting the lookout. I fielded a lot of questions and handed out a lot of my SOTA cards to interested hikers.

Conditions weren’t the best but I made 21 contacts with 8 summit-to-summit QSOs