| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2007-07-20 23:24:35 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Eric Gilbertson
July 14 2007 Biking miles: 75 Hiking miles: 17 Elevation gain: 11,500 ft My bike had just gotten hit by a car on two days earlier (while I was on it), but woody was nice enough to let me borrow his while he was gone for the weekend. So I was set for another bike- mountaineering adventure. Grogonio is the highest mountain in southern CA, so I naturally had to find some way to get to the top. I kind of chickened out of the 150-mile round trip bike ride to the trailhead and instead biked to the train station and took that as close as I could get. I figured with my cheapo used mountain bike there was a good chance of me getting stuck in the dark if I tried too many miles. I got off the train in San Bernardino at 8:30am and then biked up about 30 miles and 7000 vertical feet to the town of Forest Falls, where the trail starts. I didn't get there til noon, the road was so steep. Luckily I brought some iodine, because there were no were no water spigots anywhere, just a little trickle in a nearby stream. It probably seems late for a 17-mile hike, but I actually started hiking at 1:30pm, when many people had already finished. The trail was pretty neat because it goes through a wilderness area where there are huge old-growth trees - not too common in souther california. I passed some guys coming down that were incredulous that I would reach the summit. That basically settled the matter that I wasn't allowed to turn around early - I had to make it all the way. After passing treeline at about 10,000ft I finally reached the summit at 4:30. Unfortunately there was too much smog/haze to see to the west, but I got an awesome view of the san gabriel mountains and san jacinto to the south. My camera had died at the beginning of the day, but I did get a summit photo from another nice hiker at the summit. I only stayed until 4:45, because I still had to hike 8.5 miles and bike 30 miles to catch the last train that left in about 4.5 hours. That might not sound feasible, but remember it was almost all downhill. I ran the whole 8.5 miles down the trail and reached the trailhead in about an hour and a half. After a quick ice cream stop at the grocery store in forest falls I started my long and awesome 30 mile descent into San Bernardino. Well, the last 10 miles were actually flat, not down, so I just managed to get to the train station at 8:30, with almost 45 minutes to spare before the last departure. In future trips I'll have more pictures because I bought a new camera the next day (the most durable shockproof, waterproof, crushproof, and freezeproof one I could find). |