Old Greyback

For Memorial Day weekend, we decided to take the family backpacking. We packed up our supplies and headed out early Saturday morning. Our destination, the top of San Gorgonio, the highest mountain in Southern California at 11,502 feet. We stopped by the ranger station to get a wilderness permit. Even though it was pretty early still, the place was packed and we managed to get the last camping permit for the area.

Although it was Memorial Day weekend, we were hoping that it would not be so crowded because of the recent rains and continued overcast skies threatening us with more rain (and possibly snow up in the higher elevations). We were sadly disappointed. We even chose one of the more difficult and supposedly underused trails. Our route would take us up 13.2 miles with 6,062 feet of elevation gain to the summit on the Momyer Creek Trail.

The start of the hike would have been ideal...had it not been for all the people parked in the parking lot. The weather was perfect. It was overcast, but not too cold. There were wildflowers all along the trail.

We did not make very good time at first because we kept stopping to take pictures. I only took pictures of a fraction of the flowers that I saw. The terrain varied quite a bit during our hike. We started off in what felt like coastal scrub (probably because of the fog), coniferous forests, oak woodlands, chaparral and then ended in sub-alpine conditions above the tree line.

It was pretty hard hiking from the start. Emily lagged behind most of the day and we were afraid that we would not make it to our destination at the rate that we were going.

After hiking nearly 4 miles, we stopped for lunch some where above the Alger Creek campground (7,040 feet). We did not linger too long as we still had quite a way to go. Christian hiked ahead of us as we cannot keep up with him most of the time. By late afternoon, he stopped to take a nap while we caught up to him and we were getting so tired, we passed right by him like zombies and didn't even notice until we stopped to rest and looked back to see him get up from his nap!

We finally had to stop at the Saxton camp (8,056 feet) because the girls and I were exhausted. We hiked a total of 7.3 miles. We had dinner early to try to revive ourselves. We actually camped right outside of the actual campground because there were some really loud and obnoxious campers in the campground. After we set up camp, the worst of the offending groups was a group of young guys that started playing frisbee, yelling and crashing and stomping through the brush, destroying everything in their wake and then ended up right next to us. We didn't know if we were going to survive the night but I could not go on. Christian ended up taking a walk to get away from the raucous group before he started on a killing spree.

They finally moved away back to their own campsite and settled down after a bit. Christian returned as it was getting dark and we turned in early for the night. I was pretty tired and ended up sleeping pretty well.

In the morning, we took down our campsite and continued on our way after breakfast. Surprisingly, I was still a little tired but fortunately, not really sore, so I was pretty thankful for that. Emily seemed to wake up more refreshed and tried to make up for her lackadaisical performance the previous day. She hiked up ahead with dad almost the entire day. I have no idea what her problem was the first day. It was very frustrating.

Emily and Christian hiked together up front while Caitlyn and I brought up the rear. They would stop to wait up for us occasionally and we would take a break together for lunch or a snack. The hike was pretty brutal, especially since we were all carrying large packs. The trail was also not very well maintained as we had to climb over many fallen logs along the way. Some parts of the trail was very narrow with a steep drop off on the other side. Other times, low hanging trees would snag our packs. We also saw a lot of trash and some graffiti on the first day but there was a lot less of that above Alger Creek.

The trail got a little more crowded after we passed the Dollar Lake Saddle at 10,000 feet as other hiking trails merged onto our own. We only hiked 2.3 miles from our first camp but it felt like a great deal more as the second part of our trail seemed a lot more steep. Along the way, even more trails merged onto our own and we got even more traffic.

We finally made summit in the late afternoon. Christian and Emily was up there for quite a while before we finally arrived. It was cold, windy and crowded!

It was pretty miserable up there actually. The kids signed the summit registry. We took a couple of pictures and looked around at the campsites. All of the bigger campsites were already claimed. Only a few small spaces were available and we would not fit in one of those. Plus, the idiots that were bothering us from our first camp site was set up there, so we decided that we had no choice but to go back down. We were not sure where we would be able to find a spot and we did not have a whole lot of daylight remaining.

We put our heavy packs back on and headed back down, grabbing a quick snack on the way but not stopping as we had quite a journey still ahead of us. The girls loved that we were hiking above the clouds. They have never been on an airplane so the view was quite new to them. Just a sea of clouds as far as the eye could see below us. The clouds looked so fluffy, you wanted to jump in and frolic in them.

We stopped on the side of the trail at some point and worked on getting a hot dinner in us. Our first and only hot meal of the trip actually, and it never felt so good. Afterwards, we continued on our way as the sun started to set. We finally got back down to the Dollar Saddle and found the only campsite there still open. We counted ourselves lucky to get it and set up camp in the last rays of light. We were pretty tired and turned in early again but had a rough time sleeping. We were at 10,000 feet and you can really feel it. My head hurt and I could not sleep. Around 11:pm, a couple of other hikers made it down from the peak and had also hoped to camp at the saddle. They were a bit dismayed to find the spot already taken and had to go on to look for another place farther down the mountain.

In the morning, after a restless night of tossing and turning, we got up and had a light breakfast. We actually had one of our snacks for breakfast because Emily, who was supposedly carrying the breakfast, claimed that it was not in her pack. It was not very filling and we were hungry again shortly after.

Christian wore his alpine mountaineering boots expecting a lot more snow on top but we did not run into very much and his stiff boots had given him a bad blister the day before. By late morning, it was bleeding through his moleskin bandages. We stopped and had an early lunch near the Dobbs Campground (7,280 feet). We still had 5.6 miles to go back down. By the time we finally made it down, Christian was in some serious pain. Whoever said that it was easier to hike down than up? Caitlyn's ankle hurt as well, and she was shuffling slowly down the last couple of miles.

When we made it back down, it was a veritable zoo with tourists and people out picnicking at the bottom of the mountain. It was pretty awful to come back to. We got out of there as quickly as we could and headed to the A&W in Mentone for some well deserved burgers.

26 and a half miles later, up and down over 6,000 feet of elevation gain (and then loss), I was sore for 3 or 4 days afterwards. I had to drive Christian to and from work because he could not walk very much with shoes on since it rubbed at the hole in his foot. And guess what I found in Emily's backpack as we cleaned up our gear? Our missing breakfast, exactly where it was supposed to be.