San Gorgonio

[mtbphoto]

Me and a few friends will be hiking San Gorgonio via Vivian Creek next friday through sunday. We will most likely be getting to the trailhead after dark, is it easy to get to the 1st camp (Vivian Creek) in the dark? any other tips or tricks would be great too!

Thanks -Wes

[Hikin_Jim]

I personally don't like to pitch camp in the dark, but I suppose it can be done. Make sure each individual has a good LED headlamp. Flashlights really don't cut it for pitching a tent; you need your hands free, and the old, incandescent bulbs use up the juice too fast to be reliable.

The trail up is a steep, rocky one. Don't take a night time ascent lightly or treat it as trivial. You might seriously consider just getting up really early in the morning on Saturday and arriving at the trail head at first light. It's not undoable to hike to Vivian Camp in the dark, but you are taking on some not insignificant risk in so doing.

[zippetydude]

If you haven't been on Vivian before, you might have trouble finding the way in the dark.

The trail goes up from the trailhead, then abruptly turns left, going across the wash, and there's no visible trail for that 100 yards or so of rocky, sandy area. If you can find the little sign on the other side of the wash, which is pretty easy to do in the daylight, then you'll be fine.

Also, once you're up into the wilderness, the trail turns left abruptly again, crossing Vivian Creek via an old fallen tree. Again, it would be easy to miss the turn in the dark.

I'm sure you'll be fine if you don't mind hunting around a bit, but if you have the chance to go up and scout it out one morning or evening in the daylight, you probably won't regret doing so. Either way, hope you have fun.

z

[mtbphoto]

thanks of the tips, Im not sure if we will get there in the dark, we will be coming from vegas, and dont know what time we will be out of there at.

-Wes

[Hikin_Jim]

Google estimates it at just over 4 hours: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=9515779288027999957,34.079367,-116.883014&saddr=Las+Vegas,+NV&daddr=34.079367,-116.883014&mrcr=0&mrsp=1&sz=18&mra=pe&sll=34.07934,-116.882912&sspn=0.003297,0.004946&ie=UTF8&ll=35.025498,-116.262817&spn=3.337524,5.064697&z=8&om=1.

You'd probably be going against traffic most of the time -- traffic goes from LA to Vegas on a Friday. Give it five hours to be sort of safe, although one never completely knows with traffic.

According to the US Naval Observatory:
Sunset 6:37 p.m.
End civil twilight 7:02 p.m.

So if you left Vegas at noon on Friday, you should have enough time to get up the trail and make camp before full dark.

--HJ

[Perry]

When crossing Mill Creek you can shine a flashlight all the way to the other side and easily see the signs because they are very reflective.

What do you guys think about a San Gorgonio section? Here is the official San G board:
http://members.boardhost.com/sgva/
I think the format sucks. People such as myself have suggested a phpBB board, but it sounds like that's not going to happen there.

[Hikin_Jim]

Just off the top of my head: There is certainly a lot of cross over, and on the current SG board, posts get "buried" and then gone for ever very quickly. If we had an SG section here, posts would stay up for far longer and be a much greater resource.

[AlanK]

When the subject of adding a Baldy section here came up a while back, I was lukewarm at best, mainly because there is such good coverage of Baldy on Richard Piotrowski's board: http://www.mt-whitney.info/

San Gorgonio is another matter. This board has become a great resource for the San Jacintos. Expanding to San Gorgonio is quite natural. The only place with a lot of San Gorgonio coverage is the SGWA Board. I like that board too but agree that this format is better. Posts here should last for years and the search function makes it likely that one can find what he's looking for. It's also easier to post pictures, use quotes, etc.

So, why not?

[Perry]

Speaking of posting pictures....check out this feature of phpBB3!
http://www.palmspringsarts.org/phpBB3/v ... p?f=3&t=30
Click on the beach image....anybody can upload their photos directly to my database, up to 10 MB in file size.

Imagine if the San Jacinto board had that capability.....hiking pictures would be at a whole new level. And my bandwidth can handle it! This isn't a world-wide board but a local one.

[mtbphoto]

again, thanks for the info, the reason I am posting here is because that SGWA board is horrible