Zahniser, Lake, Ten Thousand Foot Ridge, Grinnell

The first winter storm of the season dropped some snow in the SoCal mountains. So Kevin and I had to go check it out.

We headed for the South Fork trail head for some hiking in the San Gorgonio Wilderness. Our goal was to hike some 10K peaks that Kevin had not been on yet: Zahniser Peak, Lake Peak, Ten Thousand Foot Ridge, Grinnell Mountain. If we’d do really well we could try to even include Bighorn and Dragon.

It was cool, but not really cold at the trail head and we set out in a brisk pace. Up to Poopout Hill we encountered only little snow. We strolled over Poopout Hill before continuing up the mountain. Shortly after we crossed the South Fork Creek and headed up towards Dry Lake. Dry like had some water and it was partially covered with ice. Just below the lake, around 9000ft, we started to have continuous snow cover on the trail and it started to get windy. It was only a few inches of snow, just enough to make the trail a bit slippery and make walking slightly harder. Someone had been through here since the snow fell, so we did not have to hunt for the trail.

Dry Lake

The winds were picking up now and when we reached Mineshaft saddle it felt like we were hiking in a wind tunnel at full power. Some snow/ice particles were blown around and we had to be careful not to face into the wind since the impact of the ice really hurt. We headed straight up to Zahniser Peak. The wind was crazy and we only took a quick picture before heading down towards the Fish Creek trail. I had put my gloves on too late and the picture taking exposed my hands so that I had very cold hands. At the the saddle where the trail should be, which was not recognizable, we headed east towards the saddle south of Grinnell mountain.

We only lasted a few yards before the wind forced us to make a decision. The trail was overblown with snow, some of it deep enough to sink to our knees, and it was blowing so hard from the side that we had to keep our heads down. We stopped and re-accessed our plan. We decided that conditions made it impossible for us to include Bighorn and Dragon. We also realized that we had to get out of the direct wind. So we climbed straight up the slope to the ridge south of us. Once up there we paused behind some boulders completely out of the wind in the warming sun. We took a few minutes since I had to warm up my fingers, they started to feel numb.

We continued on the south side of the ridge, protected from the wind, east towards Lake Peak. Signing in on the rock pile on Lake Kevin almost got blown of the top of the rocks. Again, we did not stay long and continued on the ridge to the saddle below Ten Thousand Foot Ridge. Normally it’s a quick climb up to the top from there, but we were slowed down by extreme wind gusts that made walking impossible. We had to be very careful when making steps to not be blown over. After some quick pictures we returned on the ridge towards Lake Peak and just below it turned north and down to Fish Creek Trail. We hitthe saddle below Grinnell perfectly and went straight up.

Signing in on Lake Peak

We reached Grinnell Mountain top with less than half an hour before sunset. Another quick stop since we wanted to go down cross-country to Dry Lake and we both were getting a bit cold now with our feet constantly in snow, the wind blowing and the temperatures dropping. We made it to the lake and back to the trail just when it became hard to see without head lamps.

The 2h hike down to the truck was uneventfully, except for the discovery that we could have been in some really dangerous conditions if the winds had started earlier or stopped later. It was completely calm now, but in the area north of the South fork crossing we found many freshly downed trees. Some of them were really big, some required detours, none of this had been there in the morning. In hindsight we should have paid better attention to the weather forecast which promised breezy conditions with strong gusts. We should have put that info together with the fact that the South Fork trail goes through a burn area with hundreds of big, dead trees close enough to the trail to fall on it.

In total we hiked about 17.8 miles and climbed 4600 ft in 10 hours.

(Click on any image to enlarge/start slide show)

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