Sally, Marilyn and I started a bit before 7 AM on Wednesday. Marilyn was kind enough to drive as both Sally and I only have front wheel drive cars. Parts of Jenks Lake road, Hwy 38 and the trailhead were icy.
Although not as cold as last weekend, we still were cold enough to start with down sweaters. Wore microspikes due to icy sections of the trail to Southfork meadows. The first creek after the Dollar Lake junction sign was frozen but we could hear water running underneath.
We followed the beaten down track up to the beginning of the winter route for Dry Lake, then donned snowshoes and started to make our own track. We traversed uphill towards the right hand side of Christmas tree hill. Even in snowshoes, we occaisonally dropped into snow past our knees in the soft powder, so it was slow going.
We finally popped up on a little plateau at the top of the XC ski area and gained the ridge that I call the left hand shoulder of Charleton. The snow on the ridge improved (became firmer) as we ascended towards the San Gorgonio backbone. Thanks to the better snow, we were finally able to pretty much go straight up the backbone of the ridge and started making better time.
Once we attained the San Gorgonio backbone, we continued to traverse up to the right past the false summit and reached the summit of Charleton. It was too cold and windy to have lunch there, so we dropped over to the south side of the ridge and found a nice spot out of the wind. Thanks to the wind, the sky was incredibly blue and we had great views of San Gorgonio while we ate lunch.
Started down and mostly stayed in our track. The snow was soft enough to do a sliding step on the descent. When we reached the XC ski area, the snow softened up more and we sank in even following our footsteps. This was work and made the descent less enjoyable. As we got nearer to the use trail, the snow turned into cement -- we had to kick it off our snowshoes and shake it off our poles.
It was great to reach the use trail and take off the snowshoes. We left the micros off. The section of Southfork to the wilderness sign at Poop Out Hill always seems to take forever and Wed was no exception. Finally reached the sign -- ah -- the home stretch. Had to watch our footing due to icy sections but arrived back at the TH without incident at 4 PM.
The north chutes of San Gorgonio looked very similar to conditions last year -- the snow didn't go all the way to the top of the ridge. I suspect the chutes are doable but, like last year, will require some scree scrambling towards the top. I'm also not whether sure there's adequate snow over the morraine field on the other side of Christmas tree hill. I didn't get a good look at the condition of the Big Draw.
Now I'm pumped up to go up Forsee and San Bernardino peak via the XC routes
Miles of smiles,
Ellen
