This week, Bryan Sheasby and I did a day hike up the Vivian Creek Trail in hopes of reaching the top of San Gorgonio. We started out on the trail a few minutes after 7:00am. We got our permit ahead of time to get a jump start on the trail. The first mile was steep. We ascended 800′ in the first mile. We slowly but surely continued along the trail looking for out first creek, the Vivian Creek. The trail wound through the forest and gradually climbed up and up.
As we were climbing both Bryan and I could faintly smell smoke and every once in a while I felt a gust of warm dry air. I didn’t really think too much of it until we got to mile 3 and we could see West out towards the entrance of the canyon. We saw thick black and red smoke, sitting at the entrance to the canyon!!! The first thing I thought was we need to get the F@ck out of here! The last place we want to be in a forest fire… is in the forest. So I convinced Bryan that we should head back down to the car/civilization. Half way down we saw 2 hikers. We asked them if they had heard anything about a fire and they hadn’t… same with the next 2 people who passed. So we decided to head back up.
This added 3 miles and 1200′ of climbing to the hike. Not to mention that now, after hiking 4.5 miles, we had been hiking for over 3 hours. We reached our second checkpoint, Halfway Creek, in good spirits. We crossed the creek which was about 2 feet wide and continued onward. Out next checkpoint was High Creek, 2.4 miles up the hill. We were hiking at a pretty slow pace and by the time we got to High Creek, we had to decide whether or not to continue. We were moving at a 35-40min/mi pace and at that rate we would be pushing it to get back by dark. Not to mention the 3 miles to the summit from High Creek had an elevation gain of 2500′! We weren’t going to make it. So we turned around at High Creek and headed down.
The hike was incredibly beautiful! When finished the hike happy to see the car. We traveled 13.4 miles in 8.5 hours. Check out the pics below.
August 16th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Jay, I can’t thank you enough for making us double back and do that same 1200 feet of accent again!
August 17th, 2009 at 6:52 am
dude, great hike. I think I want to do that sometime. You should do san jacinto – you start in idyllwild @ 5500′, and get up to about 10,900′! Killer!