I have a very small list of hikes that have beaten me. They stay in my head, and I don't forget them. On this day, that list dropped by 1.

I had been watching the weather closely realizing it was quickly shifting to late fall and I was rolling the dice on the first potential rain or snow storm of the season. As the snow was my failure point last year, I didn't want to repeat myself. Looking at the weather, I noticed I had one last weekend of potential “warm” summit weather, so like Mount Baldy, I cleared my Monday work schedule a took off in the early morning. Little changes to my rest, food, drink routine after a successful jaunt up San Jacinto and San Bernardino. All that was left to really chew on was what caused me to turn around 7 years ago. In 2016, I hit a wall of nausea nearing the 11,000ft after an over night back packing trip. This was very similar to what happened to me when my wife and I did Whitney a couple years prior, but knowing the ease of day hiking Gorgonio I decided to turn around instead of slogging to the top. That decision never stopped haunting me, so I was eager summit that morning so many years later.

Starting that morning, I knew there would be not many people on the trail, so I surprised to see I was only the 2 car in the parking lot that morning. Even though I ended up meeting a fellow hiker at the trail head and covered the first miles with him before separating as he had a tight time window to hike. As the miles went on, I was re-tracing my steps through the hike in 2016. Remembering where we set up trail camp, where we got water from for the night, and how far along we got before I started to feel sick that second day. On this trip, none of those ill feelings crept in as I started the big push to the summit and passed where in my memory I turned around before. I'm convinced my issues with high elevation are now completed related to hydration now altitude. Committed to the top, I kept my pace quick and reduced my focus to hike to the top. The winds were not letting up that morning and I quickly needed to adjust my gear set up to handle cooling breeze. Moving along, I passed the last visual marker before the summit and headed up the small rock formation to officially complete the SoCal Six Pack in 2023. Relieved at the relative ease at which I completed this hike, I stopped to eat some food and have a fellow hiked take my picture. The winds sucked most of my heat away so I had to start my decent fairly soon after. Wanting to get back in time to not completely play hooky from work, I trail ran segments back aware though that my feet were tired and I didn't want to risk rolling my ankle.

I true sense of accomplishment settled on me that afternoon and I was happy with my entire pace this year in completing the Six Pack.