After having to abort in June due to GI issues and canceling due to flash flood and thunderstorm warnings a couple of weeks ago, I finally got my 2nd summit of San Gorgonio!

I started my hike with a new friend I made that morning. She was meant to do a hike from a different trail head in town but ended up in the Big Falls parking lot. I showed her my map to help her find it. She came back after realizing her group had left without her, so she joined me on my hike until High Creek camp (I had extra permit space since my other friend couldn't come with.)

It was nice chatting with her about hiking and it took my mind off worrying if I'm even going to be able to get to the part where I had to turn around last time. She also had a lot of cool hiking stories. My favorite was her hiking Mt. Wilson in snow! Having only hiked that in the summer and getting fried, I'm thinking I should take a page in her book and go in winter with some crampons.

This hike today was notable for number of friendly people I got a chance to talk to. There was the hiker YOLOing up a switchback with the confident footing of a mountain goat between Halfway Camp High Creek, the group of backpackers aiming to stay at High Creek that I passed on the way up (since they were schlepping up much heavier packs) that I saw again on my way down the summit, the 2 late summiters who also made it up around 5pm, the trail runner with the adorable husky, the backpacker at the summit who talked about hiking another summit in the thunderstorm a couple weeks ago, and two duos of summit backpackers who had a very VERY long day trying to make the summit camp by sunset.

Trail wise, it was in rough starting with the second half of the switchbacks after High Creek. The trails were covered with rocks that I didn't remember from last year, and some parts that are usually surrounded by rocks just looked like one giant continuous rockfield. I had a garmin watch I could reference roughly where the trail was supposed to be, but footing felt akin to some parts of San Jacinto's peak trail.

I had a late summit since my mapping app mislead me about how many miles were left, and the afternoon heat and altitude made it an even tougher hike. It was very nice and easy getting to High Creek, but eveything after felt 2x harder. I didn't start my descent until 5:30.

My Garmin watch was of great help with navigating in the dark on my way down. I could quickly glance at it to see where I was instead of having to whip my phone out and fire up GAIA GPS. I had passed the more sketchy parts before the sunset, so it was just a matter to getting it done.

I'm not scared by night hiking in a relatively maintained trail with a headlamp and sturdy hiking poles, but I don't like it. There's almost nothing to look at aside from the sparkley bits in the rocks on the ground. I can't enjoy the stars since my eyes are adjusted to the headlamp strapped to my head. Even the city lights were not visible once I got far down enough to around Halfway Camp. So I just kept putting one foot ahead of the other, periodically encouraged myself out loud, and hoped I didn't get a ticket for overstaying the day use parking time limit of 10pm.

On the one hand I should probably have turned around at 3:30, but on the other hand I was happy I made the summit. I think next time I'll start earlier so the headlamp hiking happens at the beginning and I'm not stuck driving home that late. (To add insult upon injury, they shut down 3 lanes on the 91on my way home so I didn't get home until 1am)