San Gorgonio Peak

...almost.

...and now the litany of excuses.  My trail permit just happened to be on the tail end of the first winter storm of the season.  We didn't expect to make it to the top, let alone more than a few miles down the trial.  The weather forecast called for windchill of -20 F.  That's cold.

 The crew for this hike (Ben, Ben, Scott, Patrick) was most of the guys from our Growth Group at North Coast Church.  It wasn't a church trip, per se, it's just that these are the only guys I know crazy enough to hike an 11,000' mountain in a storm!

 The previous night, snow had just reached down to the Vivian Creek trailhead, so as we hiked up, we slowly saw more and more snow.  In fact, it was still falling from the sky!

The first part of the hike was below the clouds, and as we went up, we found the trail and trees shrouded in fog or clouds, who knows which? Several hikers before us hit weather so severe they had to turn back.  But as we moved on, the weather got brighter and better.

The first snow of the season!  Beautiful.

Here's the crew on a snack break.  Stopping meant getting cold, so we tried to keep moving as much as we could.  Our hike turned into a balance of layering on and layering off to stay warm without overheating.  At one point, I had my hood on, but no beanie, so my hair froze in place.  First time that's happened in a while! 

 We eventually split the party in two as our turn-around time approached.  Scott and I made it to about 10,800'. 

That's the peak off in the distance, about 700' higher.  Maybe next time--but somehow, I doubt next time will be quite the same...  

Here are the details of the day.  I think I had a few GPS issues, so the bottom row (gain/loss and gradient numbers) are incorrect.  We're not that awesome.  By my count the gain/loss for the day was more like 5,000'...still pretty respectable, given the weather.