San Gorgonio -- the Agony and Ecstacy

[Ellen]

Howdy All

We had the urge to summit San Gorgonio before the next system this weekend, so I met sister Sallly at the Mill Creek ranger station at 5:00. We got started about 5:45 and took the main trail to the Dollar Lake/Dry Lake junction. Crossed the streams, then went cross country up and the ridge and rejoined the trail before it goes by Christmas tree hill.

We put micros on to deal with the ice on the trail up to Dry Lake, which could be called Frozen Lake. Shortly past Dry Lake, we started sinking in and donned snowshoes. We followed a snowshoe route that went up a gully to the east of the "trail" towards Mineshaft saddle.

Once we got to about 9.5 K, we could see that the eastern-most north chute had the most snow. We hopped on the ridge to the right of the chute at 10 K and took this up to 10.5 K. Then we switched to crampons and moved into the chute. Followed the snow tongue up until it ran out at about 11.2 K, took off the crampons, and took the use trail through the scree up to the ridge. This dumped us out near the junction of the Sky high and Vivian trails. Then it was just a matter of walking around the "fake outs" to get to San Gorgonio. It took us about 6 hours to summit.

We ate lunch on the summit -- the temperature was very nice and it wasn't too windy. Then, we traced our path and headed down the scree. We didn't hop in the snow tongue right away as someone was coming up and we didn't want to drop rocks on him or glissade into him. We met Kingston when he left the chute for the scree and chatted a bit before entering the chute. Poor fellow did not have snowshoes and was post holing like mad. However, the relatively soft snow made glissading fun, since I don't like to go very fast. We had a row a bit and reposition. We put the snowshoes back on at 10 K.

Then I made a mistake. We tried to take the ridge to Christmas tree hill and bypass droppping into Dry Lake. We wound up mired in snow up to our waists. Put the snowshoes back on and fought our way out of moraine hell to get back to Dry Lake. The second mistake -- we missed the trail accidentally took the winter route down next to Christmas tree hill. We should have completely retraced our steps past Dry Lake, hopped back on the trail, and gone cross country down the ridge. We left at 5:45 and got back to the car at 5:45 -- 12 hours. Fortunately, we reached the Oaks at 6:15 and had ample time to wolf down San Gorgonio cheese burgers.

Thanks to the Cal Tech Alpine club for breaking in the route to chute

These conditions will not be accurate past Friday March 16 due to the system that is moving in on the eve of St. Patricks day.

Miles of smiles,
Ellen

[Sally]

Hi all,

I had more fun than one gal should be allowed to have. The ecstacy far outweighed the agony. It's great to try out a new route and nail it without getting lost or worse! I'll think of the return trip as an opportunity to practice putting the snowshoes on and off multiple times.

By the way, as we made our way between the first "peak" at the top of the scree and the second "peak" to the east (and west of the actual San Gorgonio Peak) we came upon a smallish flat spot with what seemed to be the remnants of a foundation to some sort of building (concrete blocks with rebar set in them.) Does anyone know anything about a structure ever being up there?

Thank you Ellen m'dear for a great day and TR! I'll get the pics up eventually.

[lilbitmo]

Sally,

Giga Mike took pictures of that structure about two years ago and I asked him the same thing. It's late and maybe tomorrow I can find the post where he responded to that.

By the way Sam P and I repeated that Agony and Ecstacy today - I'm beat that snow was a PITA all the way back to Southfork Meadows.

I throw up pictures tomorrow.

Nice report ladies, glad you had fun.

[KathyW]

Darn, I would have liked to run into you two yesterday. Maybe if I could have gotten out of bed a bit earlier I would have - I had hopes of getting to Jepson Peak, but I only got as far as Charlton Peak.

Maybe it was the remnants from these cabins:

In October 1945, the Raytheon Manufacturing Company of Waltham, Massachusetts received a permit from the Forest Service to use the summit Mount San Gorgonio to test high-frequency radio transmissions. The company built “two firmly anchored cabins, with walls of asbestos fiber board and thick insulation” 250 yards west of the summit monument (Robinson, 1991, p. 90). Pack trains from Barton Flat were used to bring up the supplies for the construction of the cabins, and twelve Raytheon technicians moved in. Raytheon had hoped to utilize the summit of Mount San Gorgonio as the main television transmission station for southern California. Pack trains continued to provide food and supplies until they were halted by the first major winter storm. An airdrop was accomplished by a crew in a Douglas C-47 in February 1946. Raytheon then proposed a tramway from Mill Creek to the summit, and a consulting firm, Southwest Engineering, estimated the cost to be $118,000. The tramway was never built, and the crew left the summit in early fall of of 1946 when their experiments were completed (Robinson, 1991).

Source: http://cyndisthesis.blogspot.com/


There were a number of ski huts out there at one time, but I believe most of them were down lower.

[arocknoid]

These foundation blocks, yes (my photo here is from 2001):

Mitch (simonov) also posted additional info on historical structure remnants on the SGWA board a few years back. Also, there are archived images available through one of the Pomona libraries/historical society. I'll see if i can dredge some up from archived HDDs, or via google-fu.

Glad y'all had a safe though strenuous jaunt. and Yay! for snoowww!

[lilbitmo]

Darn, I would have liked to run into you two yesterday. Maybe if I could have gotten out of bed a bit earlier I would have - I had hopes of getting to Jepson Peak, but I only got as far as Charlton Peak.

Would have been nice to see you Kathy, sorry we didn't cross paths. What time did you get back to the parking lot, there was still one vehicle in the lot so I was guessing someone was out there on another route?

That snow sure softened up in the afternoon, postholing was a pain.

[KathyW]

I think I got back to the trailhead about 6:30 pm. I went up to Dollar Lake Saddle and then on up from the saddle to the summit of Charlton. It was really easy going on the patchy snow in just boots until I hit steady snow just before Dollar Lake Saddle . I started to post hole just before Dollar Lake Saddle; so I put on snowshoes. It wasn't that the snow was very deep - it was that I would post hole down into empty space in the rocks under the snow. I ran into a guy while out there and he called it "post holing into the void." The snowshoes didn't work for long. Then after the saddle it was a matter of switching back and forth from crampons to snowshoes and digging myself out from the rocks. It took me hours to get through the snow from near Dollar Lake Saddle to the summit of Charlton.

There was one car in the parking lot when I got back - I believe it belong to the guy who I ran into near Dollar Lake Saddle. He had planned on spending the night, but was thinking of coming out to avoid being snowed in during the night.

If you saw a white truck in the first parking lot - that was mine.

[lilbitmo]

Sounds like you suffered from the same stuff we were dealing with on the way back. We hit the one ridgeline that allowed us to stay out of the lower drainage and we were bouncing in and out of snow as well. Once we did get into it you had no idea of what was underneath half the time.

I'm hoping this storm and the trailer behind it fill things in nicely.

Yes that White Truck was the one I was thinking of, we were in the nice new red mini-van two spots over from your truck.

We left for home at 5:20ish and amazinly enough (for a Friday) made Yorba Linda by 6:50 - I was very pleased with our luck to get back so quickly as the family had planned something without letting me know until I was on my way home, so I had to leave 5 minutes after I got home - worlds fastest shower and then out the door again.

Glad you made the summit of Charlton, that's a fun route on that south side - did you feel that the crampons were helping or just wore them to be safe - the snow on the chute we were in just didn't have much ice to it and since we were sinking in a few inches it never felt slick or unsafe so I left mine in the pack - but had it been any earlier I would have worn them as the ice on the surface would have made it much more slick.

Nice work Kathy

[Sally]

Thank you Kathy for the info on the structure. Very interesting!

Congrats to Patrick and to Kathy for bagging your respective peaks. It's nice we all got out there before this weekend's snow dump.

Didn't take very many, but here's some of my pics:
https://picasaweb.google.com/sallymorle ... directlink

[KathyW]

I felt I needed the crampons in a few places between Dollar Lake Saddle and the summit because the crust was too icy to kick steps, but I'd have them on for a short section and hit soft snow where I'd keep post holing down into the void; so I'd switch to the snowshoes and then I'd post hole less often. On the way back down I tried just using the snowshoes all the way to the saddle, but it was icy enough in one steep section that I started sliding with the snowshoes on; so I switched to the crampons and just tried to stay on the harder snow away from the rocks as much as I could. The crampons came off at the saddle and it was just boots the rest of the way out like it had been on the way up.

Over the years, I've taken a couple of falls that could have been bad because I didn't put the crampons on for short icy sections where the terrain was steep. I was lucky both times and did not get hurt; but I am more careful these days and tend to take the time to put the crampons on when it's icy and a fall would be dangerous even if it's just for a short section.

For me, it's either icy and steep enough for crampons or I'm okay with just my boots where it's gentle or the snow is soft enough to kick in steps. I still haven't been in a situation where I wished I had microspikes to put on, but maybe I'll find a need for them eventually.

I'm hoping this storm and the next one that's supposed to be coming in will drop enough snow that once it consolidates in early April, conditions will be great for some nice spring snow climbs in the San Gorgonio Wilderness. I looked down at my favorite route from South Fork Meadows to Christmas Tree Hill along the old ski route that skirts by the east side of Charlton on Friday, and the conditions looked terrible down there. Not that conditions were any good where I was either.