Closest City: San Gorgonio
State: California
Country: United States
This is a story of how a buddy (Joe), a gnome (Magnus), and I hiked up the tallest peak in Southern California, San Gorgonio (11,499 feet). The story starts at about 6:30 am when we arrived at the San Gorgonio Ranger Station to find out the trail we wanted to take, Vivian Creek, was already full and no more trail passes would be issued for that trail head for that day. Well, we were not ready to call it a day and we wanted to hike. Hell, we hadn't woken up early for nothing. We quickly looked over the map at the station and found another trailhead to begin from that went to the summit (Momyer). We could not make out how much distance we had to cover, but it did look much more than Vivian. So we thought, let’s do it, how hard could it be? We got to the trail head at about 7:00 am and ran into two Rangers about to leave from the same trail head. They checked our trail passes and asked how far we were going and I won’t forget their looks when we said we were going to the summit. They let us know it was a hard hike and would take a long time, but both of us were in good shape and had done some long hike before, so we thought, let’s do it, how hard could it be?
The Momyer trailhead lies at 5440 feet and so we started up the trail to the first destination, Alger Creek, at 3.8 miles away and an elevation climb to 7040 feet. The trail was hard and steep, but we made good time and saw great scenery, including two deer that scared the crap out of us jetting for the woods right in front of us. From Alger Creek the next destination was Dobbs Cabin, 2.1 miles away and an elevation climb to 7280 feet. This part of the trail was very flat for Gorgonio and a welcome change from the pervious leg of the hike. We made Dobbs cabin at about 10:00 am and were still making great time. From Dobbs Cabin our next destination was Saxton, 2 miles away and an elevation gain of 1400 feet. Between the elevation and the steepness, we started to slow down. The trail was broken up by small streams from the melting snow, which provided nice relief from the afternoon sun when we dumped our head into the water. We made Saxton at about 11:30 am and pushed toward Dollar Lake Saddle which was about 2.3 miles away and about a 1500 feet elevation gain. Wow, this was hard! Our pace slowed to a crawl and we had to stop a few times to rest. We hadn’t yet stopped to eat because we wanted to have lunch on the summit, so we snacked on some trail mix and pressed on toward the top.
At 1:30 pm we hit Dollar Lake Saddle at 10,000 feet. At this elevation the weather started to get cold, so we put on our layers and made a deal that we would turn around at 3:00 pm if we hadn’t made the summit. At this point we did know just how far the summit was from where we were, but we were at 10,000 feet and knew only 1,500 feet and 4 miles separated us from our goal of summiting. Only 4 miles doesn’t seem like a lot, but it took forever. We were going slow, but were couldn’t of known just how slow we were going. The first part of the day we were going 2.5 to 3 miles an hour, now it was about 1-1.5 miles an hour, but we did not know that.
At about 2:30 the phone rang. Somehow we hit cell service, so we took this opportunity to call some of our friends from 11,000 feet. We thought we had only about a half hour to the top and were talking trash to a friend who did not go. Our sprits were high and at every turn we expected to see the summit. 3:00 pm and the great decision, should we go on or turn around? The summit looked so close and we had gone so far already, how could anybody turn around now considering it was only around the next bend, or so we thought. Summit finally at 4:30 and 11,500 feet. The weather had turned and a cold wind was blowing, chilling us to the bone. We had packed some beer up and so we toasted our victory and signed the summit log located in a small steal box. We opened the box to find a Staple’s “EASY BUTTON” which when pressed says, “WOW, THAT WAS EASY.” We only spent about five minutes on the summit before we started down because it was so cold.
We decided to take Vivian Creek down because it was the quickest way off the mountain. Only 8.6 miles down and we knew we only had about one and a half hours of sun light left. We ran down the mountain doing incredible time, but night time came fast and it was dark at about 6:00 o’clock. I was lucky enough to pack a headlamp for the hike, but my buddy hadn’t. We used my light to make our way down the last 4 miles and made it to the Vivian Creek parking lot at 7:30 pm. Thank God! The trail head for Momyer was still about 5 miles from where we were. At this point we could barely walk any further, were very cold, hungry, and felt like we were going to die. We walked about two miles before we found a group of hikers who gave us a ride to our car. (We didn’t get their names, but if you guys happen read this, thank you, we couldn’t have made it without you, it really help.) The greatest moment of the day was getting into Joe’s truck and experiencing his heated seats. I tell you my next car will have heated seats. The hike tested our physical and mental endurance, but I would do it again in a heart beat.
Summary
We hiked about 27 miles in 12 hours
Gained 6,050 feet and lost 5,400
Hiked the tallest peak in Southern California
Got three of the biggest blisters I have ever seen
And finally gained a story I can write on M.O.A
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