Rabbit Peak via Villager Peak has been on my list since I heard it called the toughest day hike in San Diego County. When my partner in adventures such as the John Muir Trail in five days, Kevin Goldberg, said he was coming to San Diego, we quickly hatched plans to tackle it. Gabe Rubenstein and Peters Noyse quickly threw their hats in too.
This route definitely lived up to its reputation. I can see why most do it as an overnight trip.
We met at the “trailhead,” a pullout on the side of the road between Borrego Springs and Salton City, around 6:45AM. The route up to Villager looks obvious from there, cross the flattish desert for about a mile and then climb a long ramp up. There was a faint trail to the base of the ramp, and we got off track a time or two following washes that looked like trails. Then we started the step assent up to Villager, which was about 4700ft over the next 6 miles. We were loaded up with water, and I carried 5 liters, which I ended up drinking. There was a trail of sorts, although it was littered with loose rocks and occasionally disappeared. About halfway the trail runs right along a cliff edge with a precipitous drop. Something to watch out for if attempting in the dark.
We made it to Villager Peak in about 3 hours. There is a false summit right before Villager. We signed the logbook, the first to the peak in a couple days.
The route to Rabbit Peak was following a ridge with limited trail. I kept the map view with the route on my watch so we could stay on course. I definitely recommend a GPS navigation device. It rolled up and down before finally Rabbit appeared shooting up into the sky before us. It was slow going with route finding and navigating all the rocks and thorny plants. It was like climbing a wall the approximately 1000ft up to the peak. Again I followed the route on my watch as it was hard to see the peak while climbing the wall. We made it to the peak just under 5 hours.
After some searching, we found the logbook on a large rock. I signed it and added the note “for Steve” for my friend who recently left the world too soon.
We enjoyed the amazing view of the Anza-Borrego Desert and took pictures for probably too long. Then we flipped the route. It was not as apparent how technical the route was when we were mostly climbing. There were few runnable sections.
We made a stop for trail surgery when a thorn went all the way through Gabe Rubenstein’s shoe and embedded itself in his foot. Luckily, I had a pair of tweezers and we were able to eventually get it out.
The 4700ft descent from Villager on the loose rocks was a quad masher. Somehow the cars never seemed to get closer. We finally jogged that last mile across the desert to our cars, and finished in 9:13:58. All the accounts I could find doing this unsupported in a day were in the 12+ hour range.
We did the route onsight, having never scouted it. This is the kind of route that would reward scouting to avoid lost time on route finding and enable more running across the technical terrain. I’ve heard only about 20 people per year visit Rabbit Peak. That seemed confirmed by a quick scan of the logbook. I hope more ultrarunners will take on this breathtaking route and improve on our time.