This was my first time to hike from the South Fork Trail. The plan was to head to San Gorgonio via Dry Lake and then return to the South Fork Trailhead via the Dollar Lake route and make it a loop. We started early at around 5:10 am and we kept a steady pace. We then headed left at the trail split between Dry Lake and Dollar Lake and headed to Dry Lake. We got to Dry Lake at around 7:45 am and saw Gorgonio in the distance. We rested for 30 minutes then resumed the hike up. We passed by the plane crash site. Less than a mile from the summit but before we reached the San Bernardino Divide Trail that would take us to the summit we saw smoke in the distance. We knew it was a big fire given by the amount of smoke but at that time we didn't think it would affect the trails so we continued to the summit. We stayed there for an hour, we had lunch, I took a short power nap, and we had our pictures taken.  Our plan was to only stay at the summit for 1 hour then head down and we stuck to that plan.  We headed down. When we got to the junction of the Divide Trail and the turn off to Dry Lake, we saw that the smoke had grown bigger. We were glad that our original plan was to head down via Dollar Lake because it meant we were hiking away from the smoke. On the way down we met several hikers who were still headed up. By the time we were northward bound downhill on the Dollar Lake trail, the smoke could be seen even though we were already on the other side. We got back to our cars at around 5:00 pm.  Out in the nick of time.