San Gorgonio Mountain aka Old Greyback #17/18

cheriej2042

I have to admit I’ve wanted to hike Gorgonio for some time after hearing about it from so many locals. This is the tallest mountain in Southern California and the stats speak for themselves:
R/T : 18.55 miles from Vivian Creek trailhead
Elevation Gain: 5,492
Summit: 11,530 ft
Time: 6 hours up/4hours down.

The mountain is near Redlands, Ca within the San Gorgonio Wilderness and only recently reopened after the fall fires last year. You need to get an online permit to hike it and rangers are sometimes on trail checking for them. I hiked this on a Wednesday when temps were going to be low 70s.

They call this mountain “old greyback” because of the lack of trees around the summit but I thought it was because it looks like a gray whale.



The trail starts out following Vivian Creek and steeply switches back to then balcony trail around the mountain. It was a beautiful forest to hike through and had some open manzanita areas.






After clearing some switchbacks through a campground ( I only saw two campers leaving as I was about 3 miles in) you come to the area affected by the fire. I’ve never seen trees that looked almost melted and this part was really windy.



Up to this point the steepest part was the first 1.5 miles. But the last 2 miles to the summit were a rocky and steep winding trail.






I had a little visitor at the summit who obviously knows hikers have food!


It was a nice descent. This is by far my favorite hike so far. Lots of variety and good hiking. They say if you can hike Gorgonio you can hike Whitney. I’m not sure about that claim but it is a great hike that I would definitely do again.

L1zardQueen

Thanks for sharing❤️

NorthCascades

Beautiful, as always, and impressively demanding. 🙂 I love your trip reports, I'm getting anxious thinking that you're going to hit your goal so quickly and deprive the rest of us the joy of seeing your adventures.