San Gorgonio Winter attempt

We all agreed to start later, and ended up starting at 5:45 AM. Most of the snow had melted below about 7,500', and there was running water in all of the perennial streams, so we moved at a reasonable pace up to Dollar Lake Saddle in 6 hours. However the soft snow, getting disoriented and, equipment delays resulted in our very slow progress on the summit ridge, and the decision to abort at 3 PM. We exited via the ridge that is west of High Creek, and then dropped into the Vivian Creek drainage intersecting the Vivian Creek trail just below Halfway Camp. We took a total of 14:45 for the approximately 16 miles and 6,000' elevation gain, even though we failed to summit San Gorgonio Peak.

Click thumbnails to see larger image and more detailed explanation of what is shown on a given picture.

snow evrywhere you look	looking down from around 10500ft	panorama from 10800ft at the bottom of San Gorgonio summit ridge
large field of cooked by the sun snow	Tom with San Jacinto in the background	Mt San Jacinto from San Gorgonio 10800ft summit ridge
Tom with San Bernardino mountain range as the background	BJ and Larry with san Jacinto as the background	Hakno on the trail

Album created on 2008-01-23 and last updated on 2008-01-23