Idyllwild — the mile-high pine-forest village beneath the granite walls of Tahquitz Rock and Suicide Rock: an arts town, a climbers' town, and for the Cahuilla a summer refuge from the desert heat.
Now you're in tall timber — big Jeffrey and ponderosa pines, cedars, the air cool and sharp and smelling of pine bark — and you're rolling into Idyllwild, the mountain town at the heart of this whole range. It sits right around a mile high, and after the desert you started in, it feels like another planet: log-cabin shops, art galleries, coffee houses, folks in flannel walking dogs under the pines. Slow down and enjoy the main street; it's worth a stop and a stroll if you've got the time.
Look up above the town and you'll see what really rules this place: two great domes and walls of pale granite. The big one is Tahquitz Rock — climbers call it Lily Rock — and near it stands Suicide Rock, and those cliffs are famous the world over. This is one of the birthplaces of American rock climbing; back in the nineteen-thirties climbers came here and worked out the techniques and safety systems that mountaineers still use everywhere today. Idyllwild's also long been an arts town, with a well-known arts academy tucked in the woods, so on any given weekend you might catch music or sculpture or a jazz festival up here in the pines. And long before any of that, the Cahuilla came up to these cool forests every summer to escape the desert heat and gather acorns and pine nuts. Both of those big rocks carry Cahuilla stories — and Boone's about to tell you the greatest of them all. Take in the town; then we'll head up and over and start down the far side.
Photo: APK · CC BY-SA 4.0
