More Hiking Trips - San Gorgonio over Labor Day Weekend
It's been several months since my last post here, the last one being about our week-long hike through a portion of the John Muir Trail (the North Lake/South Lake loop, specifically). Since then we've embarked on two more hiking trips, although neither of two as ambitious as the North Lake/South Lake jaunt.
Over Labor Day weekend, my wife and I and the dog (Sam) went back to San Gorgonio for a three-day, two-night trip. This time we up and along Grinnel Ridge (a new way for us), which proved to be very secluded - we saw only one other party the first 36 hours or so. Being a 13-pound little dog, we weren't sure what sort of mileage Sam could put down per day and decided to play it safe and camp about 5 or 6 miles from the trailhead. Our elevation gain for the day was about 2,000 feet.
This distance seemed to be about Sam's daily max, but resulted in us pitching camp at like 1:30 PM, which left a good six hours of daylight with little to do other than sit around, talk, and read a bit. The campsite was nice, though, up on a plateau with tree cover and a nice view over to a neighboring ridge. In the afternoon, a deer ended up coming about 30 yards from us, stopped, gave us a quizzical stare for maybe 15 seconds, then continued on its way.
The next day we did about another six miles, but this time went up about 3,000 feet over much more challenging terrain. Our campsite was at Dry Lake View, which, at over 10,000 ft., looked down to Dry Lake, the spot for our campsite on our Memorial Day trip a few months back. During that previous trip, Dry Lake was full and the weather was frigid - still a lot of snow on the mountains, as the following picture shows:
The far right ridge in the picture above is Dry Lake View, our campsite for the second night on this trip. By Labor Day Weekend, all the snow had melted and the lake had diminished in volume to a degree. Here's a picture looking down on Dry Lake from Dry Lake View look:
Probably hard to see, but that little blue spot in the lower left is Dry Lake.
The exciting part about the Day 2 hike was the weather. As we made our way up the mountain in the morning, clouds started coming in, and in the last mile or so to our campsite, it starting lightly hailing. Not torrential enough to stop us or to make us don our rain gear, but big enough hail to hurt when it hit exposed skin. We kept pushing on until it started coming down harder, and took refuge under a tree for 15 minutes or so. It then let up a bit, and we pushed on, reaching the campsite just a few seconds before it went from a light smattering of hail to a deluge. The floodgates above had opened with hail and freezing rain coming down in sheets.
We pitched the tent as quickly as we could and got in drenched. In our haste, we pitched it in a camping spot that was in a slight depression, meaning that we eventually were sitting on a waterbed of sorts. And then it started lightning and thundering very nearby, which made Sam - cold and wet Sam - start to freak out. We rode out the storm in our tent, cold and wet and with a very scared dog. After about 45 minutes, the storm passed, we got out, repitched our tent on some rocks and let things start to dry out.
The one thing about Dry Lake View is that, at night, it gets very windy and cold. As the sun started to set, we ate dinner, then headed into the tent to stay warm. By then, everything had dried, and it didn't rain over the night or at all the next day. But that day took a lot out of Sam, she was cold, tired, and probably a bit upset at us for dragging her out on this trip (although she plainly had a good time up until this point).
The last day was the longest day - a bit over ten miles - but was all downhill. The distance was a little too long for Sam and we had to carry her for some stretches later in the day. We left Dry Lake View around 6:00 am and got back to the car by 3:00 in the afternoon, or so, so we made pretty good time regardless of carrying the dog.
Overall, the trip to San Gorgonio was good, although a bit stressful and chilly during the hailstorm part - but was a good experience since it was the first overnight hiking my wife and I had done with just the two of us. So a good confidence builder, esepcially considering that we had to put up with bad weather for the first time ever and came through it with nothing more than being cold and having a pooped pooch. But after having hiked the High Sierras, hiking in San Gorgonio is a letdown. The scenery in San Gorgonio, while nice in places, really has nothing on the beauty and awe-inspiring peaks of the High Sierras.
Which brings me to our second hiking trip... in early October we headed back up to the High Sierras, to the same area we started our North Lake/South Lake hike, for a planned three-day, two-night trip... with the in-laws and with Sam. I'll write more about that sometime in the future...
UPDATE: Read about our October trip up to Lake Sabrina in the High Sierras...