Off to your right and above you, as you come down the 243, lies some of the wildest country in Southern California — the San Jacinto Wilderness, a great roadless block of high granite peaks, hidden lakes, and old-growth forest that you can only get into on foot or, from the desert side, by a spectacular aerial tramway. San Jacinto Peak, the crown of it, is the second-highest mountain in Southern California, and the naturalist John Muir once stood on top of it and called the view "the most sublime spectacle to be found anywhere on this earth." High praise from the man who knew Yosemite by heart.
Threading right through these mountains is one of the great footpaths of the world — the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs all the way from Mexico to Canada along the spine of the western mountains. Hikers walking that whole twenty-six-hundred-mile trail come right through this range, climbing up out of the desert into these very pines, often in the brutal heat of spring, grateful for the shade and the water up here. So as you drive down in your comfortable seat, spare a thought for the folks out in that wilderness on either side of you — on the long trail, or camped by one of those hidden alpine lakes. It's a reminder that for all this road shows you, the real heart of the mountain is the part with no road at all. Roll on down.
Photo: Orfeo 07 · CC BY-SA 3.0
