About

The purpose of the San Jacinto Trail Report is to enhance hiker and mountaineer safety by providing accurate and detailed trail condition information for the San Jacinto mountains. The original focus was on those hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) – which forms the backbone of the trail system in these mountains – but it has expanded to year-round coverage of as much of the whole trail system as is practical.

As the first significant mountain range encountered in spring by the annual flow of several thousand northbound PCT hikers, just 150 miles into their hike, in most years the San Jacintos present a considerable, and sadly often overlooked, hazard. It is therefore no coincidence that this section has had the highest fatality rate – and among the highest rescue rates – of any section of the PCT. Now, with this Trail Report, the San Jacinto mountains is the only subsection of the 2650-mile Pacific Crest Trail that has its own dedicated report on trail conditions for hikers.

As someone involved in local search-and-rescue, Jon felt it would be better to be proactive with informing hikers, rather than reactive with time-consuming, costly, and potentially dangerous search-and-rescue missions. Feedback from local, state, and federal agencies, and from personal users of the site, suggests that the Report has been successful in this objective.

Jon started to pass trail condition information to local agencies in 2015, with the Report later formalized as a hard copy handout for agencies, stores, and hotels in Idyllwild, before evolving into this website. The Report is now heavily utilized and recommended by Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, San Bernardino National Forest, Mt. San Jacinto State Park, Pacific Crest Trail Association, among other agencies, and throughout the internet.

The focus of the San Jacinto Trail Report shifts depending on season. February to June the emphasis is on providing snow and weather information during the extremely busy northbound PCT season. In summer I am very active with trail maintenance on both State Park and Forest Service lands. Depending on the snowpack and rainfall in any given year, summer and autumn reports are usually mainly concerned with the status of springs and other water sources, which affects water availability for campers and hikers (and their dogs). Then in the winter the focus is back to snow and weather conditions and related dangers. Other factors that may affect hiker or camper safety, such as forest fires, area closures, the presence of interesting wildlife, or the forecast of changeable weather, are also discussed throughout the year.

Jon is the most active mountaineer and hiker in the San Jacinto mountains, hiking, climbing, or running every single day irrespective of the season or weather, averaging over 4000 miles and one million feet of elevation gain annually. He holds many arcane records for ascents throughout the San Jacinto mountains, including the all-time records for San Jacinto Peak (>1100 ascents as of November 2025) and Tahquitz Peak (>600 ascents). Jon has hiked and camped in many of the remotest areas of the world for about 40 years, often in his professional capacity as an endangered species wildlife biologist, and in the San Jacinto mountains since 1997. He has volunteered for Mt. San Jacinto State Park, U.S. Forest Service, Fowler-O’Sullivan Foundation, PCTA, CalFire, and multiple local search-and-rescue teams. Jon’s Peak, a 10,230 ft promontory immediately south of Marion Mountain, was named for him during SAR training in August 2015. Jon’s work for the Trail Report was featured in Backpacker magazine in 2025 (linked here). In 2022 Jon was the recipient of the Ernie Maxwell Community Spirit Award, the most prestigious award given for volunteer work in the Idyllwild-Pine Cove area.

Accuracy and reliability are critical to the value of the Trail Report. Almost all information on this website has been personally observed or verified by Jon, and the remainder by one of a handful of trusted sources.

The San Jacinto Trail Report is a 100% volunteer project, and the product of about two thousand hours (and at least as many miles) of volunteer work annually. If you have found its content to be useful to you, and you would like to make a small financial contribution to our very modest operating costs, please visit the Donate page linked here. Thank you very much.

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