Peak Bagging July 20-21

My original plans for the weekend fell through but luckily Uwe suggested we go up Deer Springs trail on Sunday. I was game! I also wanted to push myself hard so I decided to head up to the San Gorgonio area Saturday morning.

Saturday I woke up around 5AM and left shortly after. Why can’t I get myself out of bed earlier? I made it to the Momyer Trail and started hiking just after 8AM. My intention was to head up to San Bernardino East and then bag all the summits across the ridge finishing on San Gorgonio. Starting out I saw a lot of other hikers and made quick work of passing them all. Most were going up to San Bernardino East and some were camping somewhere else in the wilderness. I wasn’t interested enough to find out where they were all going. I made it to the Momyer / Alger Creek intersection in an hour and turned left and went uphill. The flowers were amazing! The wet winter made the best display of mountain flowers I have ever seen. In areas I couldn’t even find the trail and was just wading through flowers. In this steep section I was forcing myself to take breaks and I would hike for 25 minutes and break for 5 minutes. At my peak, I was gaining 700ft of vertical every 25 minutes.

By around 11:30AM I made it to the summit of San Bernardino East. I talked with some folks on the summit for a few minutes and then started the traverse across the peaks. I only found two others on Anderson and had the rest of the summits to myself. The hiking went quickly and was quite enjoyable. By the time I made it to Dollar Lake Saddle I was feeling a bit tired and took a break to consider my options. I decided I wanted to bag as many summits as I could and still be fresh enough to do Deer Springs the next day. After consulting the map I made the difficult decision to skip Dobbs Peak and descend via the Vivian Creek trail. My idea was it is a heavier traveled trail and if something happened to me someone might find me…

Leaving Dollar Lake Saddle, I ascended to Charlton and made my way over to the Vivian Creek Trail bagging another three summits along the way. I hid my pack behind some rocks and ran to the top of Gorgonio to tag the summit. I met some people on top and they thought I was a crazy person when I told them where I started. I spent no more than a minute on the summit and descended to my pack. I grabbed the pack and started working my way downhill. I was shocked to still see day hikers coming up! I knew I was late on the summit but knew I would basically run the trail down. These people were in no shape to run down. A few hours later, I made it to the parking lot at 8:30 very much looking forward to obtaining a burrito and a long nap before Deer Springs. Luckily for me, some nice folks drove me from the Vivian trailhead to the Momyer trailhead so I didn’t have to walk the road!

Saturday Stats:

~8AM Momyer trailhead
9AM Momyer & Alger Creek Trail intersection
11:25AM San Bernardino East Peak
12:00PM Anderson Peak
12:25PM Shields Peak
1:08PM Alto Diablo Peak
1:35PM Dollar Lake Saddle (30 min break here)
2:30PM Charlton Peak
2:55PM Little Charlton Peak
3:45PM Jepson Peak (15 min break here)
4:20PM Vivian Turnoff
4:35PM San Gorgonio Summit
4:50PM Vivian Turnoff
6:05PM High Camp (30 min nap here)
7:30PM Halfway Camp
8:00PM Vivian Camp
8:30PM Vivian Parking Lot

Including the peaks from Sunday going up Deer Springs with Uwe and John, I hiked almost 50 miles and bagged 12 peaks over 10K.

Addendum by Uwe

John and I met Kevin at the Deer Springs Trail parking area and started hiking around 8:20. It was already warm so I decided to drink as much water as I could on the way up to Bed Springs Crossing and top off there. I managed to almost finish the 3 liter bladder. In total I ended up drinking 7 liters on this hike.

To mix things up from normal San Jacinto hiking we decided to hit some peaks that Kevin and John had not been to yet: Folly, Jean, and Marion. This meant a fair amount of cross country travel without trail, ie, slower progress. Route finding was fun and we kind of followed what I had done in the past.

On the final descent from Marion we got into some brush and John lost a segment of one of his hiking poles. Shortly after I slit on a bed of pine needles, one of my poles got stuck and then bent before I could let it go. The bent was so severe that it actually ended up breaking. Costly hike right there for two of us.

Sunday stats: