One Hell of a Long Hike Up and a Short Ride Down – San Gorgonio 2006

By: Matt Talley
There is a mountain in Southern California that has been taunting me almost since I moved here three years ago: San Gorgonio. It looms over the San Gabriel Mountain chain and at 11,501.6 feet it is the highest point in Southern California. I have seen it time and again on trips to Joshua Tree National Park to climb and viewed it’s summit from the tops of other mountains that I have scaled in the area. Every time I plan to tackle it something happens: a torn muscle, travel for work, crappy weather, the flu, etc… My original plan was to do a early summer ascent while the temperatures were still cool, but my summer this year is swamped with work travel and I knew that there was no way that I would be able to find a spare weekend before the temperature skyrocketed. I decided instead to climb the peak in the early spring while there was still snow up high. The week before my planned ascent, the mountain and all the Californian high country got a huge dump of snow. The snow on the mountain was going to be soft and thick and I saw it as a perfect opportunity to combine a snowboard decent with a new peak.

I talked to my favorite climbing partner, Matt, about getting out to play and he was all for it. He could have really cared less about the peak; he wanted the backcountry ride and was almost giddy with anticipation every time I called him to discuss the plans or gear he would need to bring. If only he had known what he had signed up for…

I packed up the night before we left. My mountaineering bag was overflowing with gear. Thrown into or lashed onto my pack was a snowboard, board boots, snow shoes, crampons, ice axe, snow shovel, stove, mess kit, ½ gallon of water, extra socks, mittens, sleeping pads, 0*F sleeping bag, my Gortex parka, a down parka liner, and various other necessities. All told the pack weighed 65 pounds and I couldn’t think of anything I could get rid of to slim down the weight. I had packed bear-bones as it was. I usually try to keep my pack under 45 pounds, but my snowboard wasn’t really helping with that goal. While not jumping for joy, a accepted my fate and went to bed trying not to think too hard about all that gear or about how sore my feet and back were going to be from it. I got to Matt’s place the next morning and watched him pack. Matt will be the last one in line, with crap falling out of his pockets, on the day of The Rapture because he waited until that morning to get his affairs in order. As we geared up to leave, he had this notion about bringing a book and a bunch of extra clothes – that plan went out the window as soon as he started stuffing gear into his medium sized pack and feeling its heft grow. I had the stove and food, so he got the tent. His only other job for the whole weekend was to bring the cocoa mix. That was it. One would think that would be a simple task… Peak ascents and snow camping just isn’t civilized without cocoa. He assured me that it was taken care of.

After leaving at Matt’s house and making the hour drive to the parking area, we started up the mountain about 9:00. We passed a guy on a split board fairly early on who was struggling with a slope – he had a cool new board, but had forgotten to buy climbing skins and was paying for the mistake. We could see the he was utterly frustrated and almost completely defeated from thirty yards away. It was the way his shoulders slumped with the weight of coming failure and how he looked around every few seconds for help that would never come.

The hike up the first day wasn’t too bad. We took a number of breaks and our pace was moderate. About 5 miles in, somewhere near High Creek Camp, we took a wrong turn and followed a set of old snowshoe track that went strait up. We climbed that steep slope for almost two and a half hours. After coming over the top of the hill, we descended into a shallow saddle between it and a larger peak. Matt was done and wanted to set up camp. I figured that we had another hour of daylight and we could make it a mile or so further, but after a brief discussion concerning that idea, I could smell villainous mutiny in the air and agreed to pitch the tent in the saddle. We ascended about 4500’ that first day in nine hours of snow shoeing with our heavy packs. It was strenuous bit not crippling. I knew we were off route a bit, but the flanks of San Gorgonio could be seen from camp, so I wasn’t too worried about our location or progress.

Matt Brauning on trail the first day of the trip.

Our tent and campsite in the saddle. I should ask Burton Snowboards for a commission with all the free advertising I do for them.

 
At some point during the ascent of the final hill that day, Matt realized that he had completely and utterly failed at the one task that he had been given for our trek. Oh, he had remembered the hot cocoa mix. He had remembered to get it from home and put it in the car. But that was the point where his reasoning and notoriously absent short term memory failed him. Our warm and life affirming cocoa remained in the car for the entire weekend. I know, you think that I crippled him for such a heinous transgression. Maybe I ought to have and I’m not saying that I didn’t finger the shaft of my ice axe with intent for a few seconds. There was no assault, I didn’t get angry; I didn’t even say hurtful things about his linage. No, I was a semi-grown up about the whole affair. I left him on the trail and walked ahead a good ways to let him stew in his failure and in my feelings of disappointment. He apologized at least twenty times and I gave him enough grief that he will never forget the cocoa again on a peak ascent. I am even willing to bet that he will have a packet tucked away on his honeymoon – just in case.

Our tent was situated at about 9,000’ and sat on about six feet of fresh snow. We had to dig out a platform and pack the snow down so the tent would be level for sleeping, but that was accomplished fairly quickly and a little after 6:00 camp was fully set up. We were both starving from the trek and I made two of our packaged two-person backpacker meals for dinner. Most dehydrated meals like that only give a person something like two hundred and fifty calories per serving?! What backcountry nutritionist came up with that? We wolfed both meals down and I started boiling water for the next day. Matt had a 0*F bag, but was still a little cold. If he stayed cold all night, he wouldn’t sleep well and would hurt on the planned final ascent the next morning. There is no point to him suffering needlessly, even if he is forgetful... I filled a Nalgene bottle with boiling water for him to sleep with and one would have thought I was Mother Teresa from the look on his face when I handed it over and by the noises of glee that he uttered as he snuggled that plastic bottle like a security blanket, before slipping off to dreamland.

 

Mount San Jacinto as seen during the final push on the second day of our trek.
 
The sky that night was completely clear of clouds and the small finger nail slit of moon really lit up the snow. Orion came up around 7:40 just over the tent and we could see the lights of Orange and Riverside Counties in the distance below. Our little camp was sheltered from the wind in the saddle, so we weren’t disturbed by a flapping tent or howling gusts. It was such a perfect setting, with all the scenery, the night sky and the lights of civilization off in the distance. We both slept fairly well that night and awoke to sunshine and blue skies – perfect weather for a run on a new summit!

After hitting the trail Sunday morning around 9:00, we ditched the snowshoes fairly quickly, strapped on crampons, and pulled out the mountaineering axes for an assault on an icy slope that could have been a little more stable… The “trail” we decided on was very steep and it was pretty hard work. Toward the top of the first major hill, we were pausing after every ten steps or so to rest and catch our breath

 

The above is a telling shot of Brauning resting just below the final summit. He was so happy to stop walking for a while.

Taken of me during the peak traverse on day two. Something was wrong with the camera’s decision on available light and the image was over exposed. I liked the overall effect though.
 
We topped a total three other smaller peaks, making a sort of summit traverse from peak to peak, before topping out on the summit of San Gorgonio around noon. We were greeted with blue sky and very little wind. We had ascended another 1700’ that morning and were tired, but were so psyched to be getting to strap into our boards that we weren’t really present to the fatigue from the morning. After a few pictures to document the ascent and a note in the summit log, we scrambled down about 200’ from the summit pile of rocks, packed our crampons and axes up, and strapped on our snowboards for one hell of a ride down the mountain! After traversing through a high saddle on the sharp edges of our boards, we dropped into fresh, deep, white powder and buzzed through trees and over drifts – dodging the odd rock and stump for 45 minutes. The slopes were steep and in perfect conditions for boarding! The snow was completely trackless and it was an amazing ride down – well worth the exertion of getting to the top.
 

I snapped this one just as Matt was coming over the last pile of rocks near the summit register. The ridge we traversed can be seen in the background.

I love this shot of me with San Jacinto in the background. I am usually busy taking all the pictures during trips, so I was more than happy that one of me came out so well. If you click on it a larger image can be seen.
 

Matt Brauning and Matt Talley of the summit of San Gorgonio.
 
We boarded down to near our camp, packed up, and took off on the boards again for what we planned to be a great ride back down the rest of the mountain. We only got a third of the way down before I almost boarded off a rocky cliff into a boulder filled creek bed - it would have taken a bunch of folks and a lot of time to get what was left of me back down the mountain. Shortly after that near fatal mistake, trail conditions frustrated both of us to the point of screaming. As we were ascending the day before the trail looked boardable, but while trying to actually do it, the rolling terrain stopped us cold. Matt and I stowed our boards and snow shoed the rest of the way down, grumbling the entire time.

The trail out, with the constant downhill pounding, no food left, little water, and our heavy packs made the second two-thirds miserable. We told our ladies on Friday not to be worried unless they hadn’t heard from us by dark on Sunday, as the plan was for us to be home around 2:00. It took longer to get out than we expected and when we called around 8:00, Cory and Laurel were VERY worried and were trying to figure out how to call the ranger station. We may have gotten into a little trouble with them when we got home…

 

Brauning caught an action shot of me on the way down, just as I finished a turn above him.

We strapped into our boards about 200’ down from the summit and I took this shot just before I took off down hill.
 
The peak and the amazing ride down in fresh powder made the near epic hike out worth it as well. In addition to the ride, I got to top a mountain that had long been on my tick list. To do it in early spring was icing on the cake. As great as the experience was it has led us both to make some decisions about back country travel and boarding. Lesson #1: we need to buy and use AT skis and skins. With skis, we would have made faster progress in, bombed down and would have made a very quick trip back to the parking area. We would have also saved weight by ditching the board, board boots, and snowshoes. AT skis and bindings weigh a LOT less than my snowboard. Lesson #2: Apply more sunscreen. Lesson #3: Leave the girls detailed route instructions and Ranger Station contact information so that neither of us has to spend half a night apologizing for a lack of forethought in preparing them for a possible emergency ever again.