So this trip was pretty cool. This was probably the hardest bit of hiking I’ve done to date, and I would have been way more proud of the fact if people weren’t doing it as a dayhike and kicking our asses both up *and* down the mountain. Well, my ass. Joe could have done it.
Anyway! We did an overnight backpack on April 28-29, 2007 of Mt San Gorgonio, the tallest mountain in Southern California, with the summit at 11,502′. The trip was a one nighter. The first day was just short of 6 miles, and about 3k’ of gain. The next day was 11-12 miles, with 2k’ gain, and all 5.4k’ of loss. Ouch. This is hike #54 in San Bernardino Mountain Trails, the current edition by David Money Harris (I kid you not. real name. hotshot engineering faculty at Harvey Mudd, too).
I always see a gnarly face in there
Anyway!
This trip was…fascinating. Joe and I arrived at the parking lot early afternoon, and it was *packed*. We laboriously found a space, ate some lunch, limbered up, and then walked for a bit to find the trailhead, and then began on our way.
We started by walking along a fire road, going along the side of the dry river. After not too long a distance, we turned left and crossed the dry river, and began heading up some amazingly torturous switchbacks. Hate. Steep, rocky, very hot, generally an *enormous* amount of fun. Yes, yes. We did get a good view of the parking lot we had left , and a nice view of our car.
hard to see in the small, but that sign wasn’t very “wild” looking
After what seemed just a little too long (I think 1.5 miles) we turned a corner and got to a shady glen area, along a stream. This is the Vivian Creek campsite, and we had a sit down for a minute, and then a nice respite of walking along the creek. Eventually we crossed the creek, and the trail started heading up again, though less steeply. (That first set of switchbacks is for sheer steepness and gravelly-ness the single worst part of the hike, though elevation comes more into play towards the top).
From here on, it was all pretty reasonable slow switchbacks, and we passed Halfway Camp. I did start having some altitude issues around 8000′, which is kind of sad, but on the other hand, we started out the day more or less at sea level. Joe got stuck talking to some random guy for a while, which gave me a bit of a chance to pull ahead. We finally made it to our campsite of High Creek at some 5 miles and 3200′ feet of climbing. We set up, and managed to make dinner, and then hung out for a bit, and then all crashed. I sat around and was irritated that we had passed at least a dozen people that day doing the route as a day hike.
birdy! flora getting pretty sparse, too.
The next day we woke up, and got a bit of a slow start, but still got reasonably on our way. We left a good deal of our gear at the campsite, and headed on up the reasonable switchbacks. The first mile and a bit was very reasonable, and then it started to steepen up a bit, though never to the initial steepness of that first uphill mile. The tree cover started to thin out (and a few more people passed us – I suck), and we could start seeing where we were going. I did also see a really neat bird just chilling on one of those trees that looks as if it has no right to be alive. At around 10000′ or 10500′, I started feeling the elevation again, but there was no way I was going to turn around, so just kept trudging on. Harder and harder to get lost at that kind of point, and Joe mostly left me behind. You walk across a
ridgeline, and see this slope you need to walk up, and then you go around the hill it is situated on, and after picking your way through a rockfield, find yourself at a new ridgeline, and the junction of a couple of trails.
in case you got there by accident, I guess?
This part is pure alpine, with some very low bushes and trees and mostly large rocks. You wend your way just a litte more uphill, and then come over a ridge, and all of a sudden see the lump of the summit in front of you. A nice short walk, and a tiny bit of climbing, and you are there. There is a metal marker with the elevation and location, and I more or less “verified” it with my GPS, although it varied within a 40 foot range. The views were pretty good, though would have been more stupendous were it less hazy. Also, the sky that is so so blue when you are looking up at the mountain cannot be seen from the top –
really only the surrounding circle of haze. And you can barely enjoy breathing it, as the air is that much thinner (despite having slept at 9000+’.)
yup yup
After eating a bit of lunch, we turned around. We made it back without incident most of the way to the campsite, then shortly before we got there, on the easy switchbacks, I did a delightful job of rolling my ankle. For a moment or two I was terrified that I had actually sprained it (I almost stepped off the side of the trail and hyperflexed my ankle in regaining my footing). However, the pain receded to aching rather than continuing to not want to bear weight, and I made it back down to the campsite, where I bandaged my ankle and also added a bit of moleskin to a blister or two that I had developed (I blame the shittier socks of that day). We then just kept on going down, with less and less conversation as
time went on. By the time we got to the final downslope before the dry creek crossing, my feet were getting pretty sore, and the steep rocky downslope was about the least fun thing ever. But we made it through, and the last bit of walk along the fire road, all the way back to the car. Where we proceeded to decompress, and stop and get some frappuccinos and powerade at the one little store around there, which were then the BEST THING EVAR. Amen, Hallelujah.
it’s oddly gorgeous up there
