Summer ‘09 in Pics vol. 15
San Gorgonio Mountain
My last day of work this summer was August 14th, and I planned to drive home the following day. Unfortunately, I still hadn’t hiked the last Saint, San Gorgonio Mountain. This is the highest mountain in Southern California and I certainly couldn’t leave without bagging it. So, I packed everything from my summer accommodations the night of the 14th and woke up at 3am on the 15th to do my hike. I had been unable to get a permit for my desired trail, Vivian Creek, so I instead had one for the longer South Fork trail. This trail is about 11 miles long (each way) but has the nice feature that the top section can be done as a loop so I didn’t have to retrace my steps the whole way. I got on the trail at about 6:00 and, hiking quickly, gained the summit at about by 11:00 traveling up the Dollar Lake fork of the trail.
Shortly into my trip I discovered that both the batteries in my camera and the spare set I brought were almost dead, so I didn’t take any pictures until the top. I snapped a few there and a few more on the way down. The hike was fairly uninteresting. At the start I could smell wildfire smoke and it made it a bit difficult to breathe. Higher up, everything below was obscured by smoke and smog except for the surrounding mountains. I did the downhill trip very quickly in running shoes via the Dry Lake side. This gave me a chance to see the aircraft wreckage from the 50s that is still on the mountain (see pictures below). There were a lot of tourists from Dry Lake to the trailhead, and I actually had my permit checked by a ranger (which I hadn’t expected). I made it down in a little over 8 hours from the start, including a half-hour break at the top.
Me at the summit.
The Inland Empire underneath the smog.
The summit flag with San Jacinto Peak in the background. The whitish smog is partly from wildfire smoke.
Aircraft wreckage between Dry Lake and the summit. Notice the prop just to the right of center.
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