San Bernardino Peak: November 2022
Heading South
The threat of rain, then snow, followed by below-freezing temperatures for 24 hours, spurred us to cut short our Grand Canyon stay by 2 days. Never eager to wimp-out, this decision however, was a no-brainer.
We both had videos lingering in our minds of driving on the freeway through Flagstaff, AZ some years ago, a freeway that was lined with jackknifed semi-trucks laying on their sides. The carnage was from the snowstorm a day or 2 before, and we vowed never to be a part of such a scene, especially when pulling a trailer. Any blissful ignorance we had about pressing-on in snowy conditions in that region completely evaporated that day-permanently.
Comfortable and committed to our driving prudence for not being in the snow, we made the 2-day trip from the Grand Canyon to Banning, CA, our version of a base camp for hiking to the peaks of San Gorgonio and San Bernardino (San B). Positioning in the RV park at the always-windy, low, San Gorgonio Pass between LA and Palm Springs, chops our drive-time to the trailheads to a more manageable 45 minutes compared with an hour and a quarter from our late-winter venue in Palm Springs.
The same snowstorm hitting the Grand Canyon was expected to drop 0.4 inches (1 cm) of snow on San Jacinto peak, but it was expected to melt quickly. Our pleasure with our successful drive south in high winds collapsed during our last driving hour when San Jacinto Peak came into view at the west end of Palm Springs, the skiff of snow on it looked like a hike-buster to us. We were already grieving the possible loss of our 3 weeks of peak-bagging when the San Bernardino Mountains on the north side of the freeway became visible; the snow level looked to be at 5,000-6,000’ (1500-1800 m) on the 11,500’ (3500 m) mountain. We were crestfallen.
Heading South
The threat of rain, then snow, followed by below-freezing temperatures for 24 hours, spurred us to cut short our Grand Canyon stay by 2 days. Never eager to wimp-out, this decision however, was a no-brainer.
We both had videos lingering in our minds of driving on the freeway through Flagstaff, AZ some years ago, a freeway that was lined with jackknifed semi-trucks laying on their sides. The carnage was from the snowstorm a day or 2 before, and we vowed never to be a part of such a scene, especially when pulling a trailer. Any blissful ignorance we had about pressing-on in snowy conditions in that region completely evaporated that day-permanently.
Comfortable and committed to our driving prudence for not being in the snow, we made the 2-day trip from the Grand Canyon to Banning, CA, our version of a base camp for hiking to the peaks of San Gorgonio and San Bernardino (San B). Positioning in the RV park at the always-windy, low, San Gorgonio Pass between LA and Palm Springs, chops our drive-time to the trailheads to a more manageable 45 minutes compared with an hour and a quarter from our late-winter venue in Palm Springs.
The same snowstorm hitting the Grand Canyon was expected to drop 0.4 inches (1 cm) of snow on San Jacinto peak, but it was expected to melt quickly. Our pleasure with our successful drive south in high winds collapsed during our last driving hour when San Jacinto Peak came into view at the west end of Palm Springs, the skiff of snow on it looked like a hike-buster to us. We were already grieving the possible loss of our 3 weeks of peak-bagging when the San Bernardino Mountains on the north side of the freeway became visible; the snow level looked to be at 5,000-6,000’ (1500-1800 m) on the 11,500’ (3500 m) mountain. We were crestfallen.
Snow was in our future.
The more I searched for weather and trail condition information, the more promising it seemed to hike on Saturday, which was our newest plan. Sunday wasn’t an option because we had to arrive early that day at our next RV park on the mountain near Idyllwild, and the snowfall predicted for the following Tuesday made being at the peak’s elevation on Monday risky. We’d head-out before sunrise on Saturday and would walk until we hit ice or the peak at 10,650’ (3200 m).
Tuesday would be the next sports challenge, another ugly snow day when we would be parked at Pine Cove near Idyllwild for 2 weeks. The predicted snow amounts and sub-freezing high temperatures looked like a hunker-down day for sure. We likely wouldn’t even step outside our trailer onto the hillside roadways for fear of slipping. We’d hoped for better weather in the mountains, we’d hoped for seasonal weather, but we’d make whatever came our way work for us. It was too soon to even guess if our scheduled big hikes to the peaks of San Jacinto and San Gorgonio the following 2 weeks would be possible.
San Bernardino Peak
The Alternate Plan
Summiting San Bernardino (San B) wasn’t planned but popped on to our calendar as a “Plan C” when the threat of icy roads drove us out of the Grand Canyon 2 days early and then our Palm Springs hiking buddy wasn’t able to make our Plan A hike on Monday. We put the San B hike on our calendar for the Saturday after the recent snowstorm and hoped for the best.
We were mesmerized by the ‘other world’ look of the burned landscape.
The Ambiance
Doing these all-day hikes can be tedious, they can be boring, and San B always rated as the least interesting to us of the 3, but that all changed this November. The most shocking realization was that the relatively flat, wooded area midway to the peak that had been scorched in a recent wildfire was visually captivating; in a strange way, it was a wonderland.
The absence of the forest and undergrowth revealed titillating vignettes of white shrub skeletons, rocks, and scraggly trees. We were mesmerized. We rarely stop on big hikes to snap more than a quick photo, but we stopped in our tracks: the scene before us was like walking through a curated exhibition. The strong sun at the low angle of winter made it challenging to capture the scene in the best lighting, but we were motivated to take the time to record our experience.
I was amazed by the excitement the unexpected scene generated after a couple of hours of walking and delighted in having been buoyed by it. While I pondered the spectacle and my reaction to it, the sad summary statement consolidated in my brain: “Admiring the accidental artistry of wildfire destruction is becoming the new normal for hiking in the West.” Just a few weeks earlier, for a 2nd season, we’d admired the ghostly impressions of a scorched but standing forest above Flagstaff, AZ. Of course, forest fires, especially those carelessly started by people like both of these, are a travesty, and yet they can be fascinating.
We first walked in a similar-looking burn area above Flagstaff in 2021.
We had yet to venture into the ruins of the Eagle Creek Fire in the popular Columbia River Gorge in the Pacific NW, but now I was curious to see it. Much of that area was closed to hikers for years because of the risk of landslides. It was however, comforting to feel my grief for the forest and my anger at the teenage boys who started the fire, soften by reframing witnessing devastation as yet another a new normal late in life.
I had only just shifted my mindset from contemplating the wildfire scenes to digging deep for a hard push up the next steep segment of the trail in the thinner air, when I stopped in my tracks before the old, rusted wheelbarrow. I knew that wheelbarrow, a cherished artifact on the route, that I recognized from previous hikes.
The wheelbarrow itself made me smile but simultaneously, I was gobsmacked that I didn’t recognize the setting. I conferred with the solo hiker enjoying a snack there and he confirmed that that was indeed where the wheelbarrow had always been. Unlike being fascinated by the denuded forest below, I was horrified that the entire backdrop for the wheelbarrow had been destroyed in the fire. The idyllic little flat spot overlooking the valley, the twisted tree, the logs hikers rested upon, had all been destroyed. The obliteration of that little respite registered as a significant loss to me. At least the wheelbarrow survived—a comforting remnant of my past.
Continuing towards the peak, we repeatedly commented upon how much more we were enjoying the trail because of the “clearing” caused by the fires. Too much of the San B trail was always deeply shaded and cold and we delighted in the new openness, sun exposure, and panoramas. I love the spaciousness of less dense forests and the new look of some parts of San B’s trails met my need for panoramas without seeming ravished by the fires.
Every hiker’s shared landmark on this trail.
This was apparently our day to be fascinated on the trail without working at it because, only minutes into the hike, we were obsessing about the snow on the route. We weren’t expecting snow, especially near the trailhead, because nearby San Jacinto peak with the same elevation, was only originally expected to receive a little bit of snow.
We didn’t pack mini-spikes for our shoes since we agreed: we would turn-around as soon as we encountered ice. I had taken 2 nasty and dangerous falls on the trail to San Bernardino Peak pre-covid and promised myself “Never again.” Like with risking driving the Arizona highways and freeways in the snow, hiking on ice isn’t worth the risk; sometimes it’s best to set a policy and be firm with oneself. But this was snow, not ice, and we were certain because we carefully examined and poked at it.
Of course, the higher we went, the more snow there was and the more often it was on the trail, not just next to the trail. The snow became noticeably thicker and the mother of the capable mother-daughter duo walking a tad faster than us stopped to put on crampons. I was sympathetic with her caution but, we both agreed, it was too soon. It looked icy, it looked like it should be slippery, but it was not. We carried on, expecting them to pass us, but instead, it became silent behind us. We stopped every few minutes to check on them and finally concluded that they had bailed—that they had turned around.
As one always fears will happen, shortly after they turned around, the orientation of the trail to the sun changed and the trail was completely snow-free for some time. The presence of the snow and the amount of it varied, with it generally getting thicker the higher we went. The open plateau, the burn area, was almost completely devoid of snow, which was a welcome break from obsessively watching for ice and its absence enhanced our enjoyment of the open space.
Curiously, the only surface ice we spotted the entire day, which formed both below the flat burn area and closer to the peak, was on footprints. Only on imprints in a shaded, thick layer of snow, and only on prints of descending hikers, did we see the glint of ice. We were baffled.
Our guess was that the prints were from hikers the day before and that it was the augmented pressure of their body weight in descent that compacted the top layer of partially melted snow, which then refroze. It was so counterintuitive: there should have been ice everywhere but there wasn’t, the overnight air temperature hadn’t dropped below freezing.
The respite on the little plateau with the wheelbarrow had lost its charm with the fire’s destruction.
The recent storm surely had been accompanied by freezing rain at some point because above the 9000’ (2700 m) level, we repeatedly encountered what I labeled “tube ice.” It was thick layers of ice that had formed around tree branches and had broken-off in thick chunks when the ice melted in the sun. Oddly, the only evidence of freezing rain was on the trees.
We observed some of these chunks loudly falling from the top of a limber pine tree while we ate lunch at the summit. And more bizarrely, and only on the ascent, we walked through a 10’-long (3 m) low spot on a curved bit of trail that was like a tub filled with these ice tubes. Our socks got wet through the mesh tops of our trail running shoes while we waded in this inches-deep, unexpected ice bath. Amazingly, it had drained and melted into unremarkable slush by the time of our descent, even though it was shaded.
Periodically on the trail, we encountered patches and small fields of these ice tubes. The air was warm enough that the chunks didn’t freeze together and create a hazard for us but, were instead, only another fascinating oddity of the day.
We learned several valuable lessons on this sometimes-snowy trail, with the first being not to count on one mountain’s forecast for another mountain’s conditions. We’ll never know how much snow San Jacinto received and how much had melted, but San B received close to 10 times more snow than forecast for San Jacinto. Thank goodness the starting number was small but, nonetheless, it was totally unexpected.
Another lesson heightened for me on this day was the extreme importance of freeze-thaw cycles. While monitoring the reported conditions on San Jacinto for another upcoming hike, I frequently noticed the mention of those cycles without giving them much thought, in my mind, they were a given. But our unusually warm current air temperatures on San B hadn’t permitted a cycle of freezing and thawing, and that absence is what made our hike safe because there was no sheet ice. The women who turned around were undoubtedly like me in not being able to imagine it being otherwise, but incredibly, it was otherwise.
A new, or previously unnoticed, welcome bench on the trail.
For the first time ever, “freeze-thaw” was my most important decision-making criterion for pressing-on or turning around. If we finished close to dark, our innocent, snowy trail could turn to ice. I could now see that unexpectedly hiking out in the dark might be a reason for carrying micro-spikes, even if one had no intention of hiking into icy conditions.
I’d studied the forecasts for 3 peaks over the course of a week, which shattered my confidence in remembering the overnight low on San B on this day. I thought it was 45° (7° C), but I didn’t want to stake my life on it. I began trying to get a connection to check the updated mountain forecast with my weak signal. I didn’t want to slow my tempo by stopping to check the internet, but finally did for safety’s sake. After a few minutes, I was able to confirm that this night was another odd night for which the low temperature at the peak was forecast to be 45°F. That single data point was so empowering, so confidence-inducing, that we decided to go on to the top. We both had headlamps and back-up batteries, so in the unlikely case that we’d be hiking out in the dark, we’d be fine.
Hiking in the snow without ice or the threat of ice was a huge paradigm-shifting experience for us. We will forever more be more attentive to the predicted overnight temperatures in the winter when hiking to high elevations and carefully factor that information into our scenario and gear planning. And unlike the women who missed-out on a gorgeous day on a beautiful trail, we will continue to emphasize making our safety decisions based on what the conditions are, not what we believe they must be.
The look towards LA and the Pacific Ocean from the peak.
Around the 9,000’ level, a little more than half-way to the peak, an athletic-looking young woman was sitting motionless on a rock in the sun looking downhill. She smiled and seemed like she was perpetually radiant and yet, there was something wrong. It was the 3rd time we spotted her sitting, which she was doing every few minutes. There was a dissonance between who she looked like she was and her performance. The way she held herself didn’t suggest that the problem was a deficiency in fitness.
I took a chance, like I am generally more willing to do with women than men and, after a brief greeting, intrusively asked “Could you be having trouble with the altitude?” Of course, she didn’t have a clue, and I short-circuited my long story by saying, “My husband has a lot of trouble when at this elevation; he takes ibuprofen for it and does much better; do you have any ibuprofen to try?” She was surprisingly receptive, and we quickly sorted out that neither she nor I had any of the drug. I quickly interrupted her companion’s and Bill’s conversation by asking Bill “Do you have ibuprofen to spare? She would like to try some.”
We learned that her companion had ibuprofen with him, that he had personal experience with altitude intolerance, had taken prescription medications for his intolerance, but that it hadn’t occurred to him that it could be the cause of her melt-down and serious struggle to carry-on. They were training to do the much higher Mt Whitney, which he had done, and she hadn’t, and she clearly would fail if she felt like she did in the moment on that hike. Contented that we’d done our best for our shared endeavor to help women succeed in their athletic pursuits, we went on our way, often wondering if they’d make it to the peak.
Few can resist having their photo taken with one of the signs at the peak.
Curiously, her companion was nowhere to be seen. He could have slipped past us while we ate, but she didn’t ask if we’d seen him, only if she was close to the top. We wondered and pondered and watched for him. Perhaps 10-15 minutes later we saw him crumpled and twisted while he clung to his trekking poles on the edge of the trail. He looked wretched. He repelled our few troubleshooting suggestions of what might help him and insisted he only needed to go slowly. From the little we knew of him, he probably needed several interventions to make him fit to be on that trail, but he wasn’t interested in exploring any of those possibilities. “One out of 2” isn’t bad for a “save” on the trail and we hoped that his companion would retain her ibuprofen lesson for her future hiking success.
My Melt Down
We wished the young woman well and happily sped down the snowy, but not icy, trail being thrilled to be freed of the heavy burden of hiking uphill in thin air and then my classic buttock ache kicked in. I had been feeling better each day of the last week and had been hopeful that I was leaving this unpredictable, painful, chronic structural problem behind me. My mobility, as monitored by my trail speed and fluidity on the trail, had skyrocketed and, along with it, my confidence. We were at about the 2-mile (3 km) point of our over 8-mile (13 km) descent when my condition rapidly deteriorated.
I slowed my pace, repeatedly, but it only slowed my deterioration, it didn’t halt it. By the halfway point, I caved and took Bill’s suggestion to flop on the ground to do my yoga cobra push-ups to treat a lumbar disc dysfunction. We converted the pause into a long break to pull-out our headlamps, pee, put on more clothes, and position ourselves for a long, ugly descent in the dark if I didn’t have a sudden improvement.
In another half mile (0.8 km), the deep, familiar ache became a unique, white-out pain when I planted my right foot. I let-out a muffled shriek, froze, un-weighted my foot on that side, and struggled to process what was happening. Even with this scenario repeating itself a dozen times, I couldn’t say if I had shooting pain down my leg, a classic sign of sciatic nerve irritation, or if it was confined to my right buttock. My brain instantly shut down with each overwhelming bout of pain.
It was getting late, but we took a break for Barb to stretch, but these muscles weren’t tight.
I systematically experimented with every compensating technic and position I could imagine between the intense pain episodes and finally discovered that doing extreme, sustained, lumbar flexion, like a dog tucking its tail between its legs, and walking very slowly, would thwart almost all of the stabbing pain events. That extreme flexion of the lumbar spine was the exact opposite motion I was told to do for my buttock pain, which was presumed to be due to lumbar disc injury. It was baffling that that outlawed position worked and I expected that there would be a backlash from my body from rigidly implementing the contrarian compensating technic, but it seemed to be my only option for getting home that night.
I could slowly walk, and as the hours went by, my generalized agony and despair rose, but I knew I couldn’t give up. I could barely shuffle by the time I made it to the truck; I could barely hold myself upright. I had become stiff and tippy and struggled to keep from falling over with every step, even with the use of a pair of trekking poles.
Anticipating that I couldn’t even sit up, I told Bill that didn’t think I’d be able to take my 30-minute driving shift on our way back to the trailer. I guessed that I sat in the truck less than 10 minutes and then realized that I basically felt like nothing had happened. As quickly as the pain episodes started, they stopped, though there had been hours of serious, mind-numbing misery in between.
Once in the trailer, I struggled to shuffle around but it wasn’t because of pain events, only because of the abuse and misuse of so many muscles for so many hours while I had stabilized my body on the trail. In the morning, there was no evidence of the horrid experience in my tissues, though my mind was terrified that it might happen again without understanding what “It” was.
Two days later, we did a hike half the distance of the one on San B and again, about 2 miles into the descent, I was forced to shift my standing position when another one of those pain events struck, though I was able to interrupt it midway. A day after that, I was meeting online with a physical therapist who had diagnosed my lumbar disc dysfunction 2 years ago, who was all-but-certain that I again was having the same lumbar disc issue. I wasn’t convinced however, because the pain pattern was so different, because I’d kept-up with the daily cobra push-up intervention for 2 years, because I had been doing so much better, and because my relief on the trail came from what should have been an injurious and painful position. Sadly, once again and without a convincing diagnosis or intervention, my peak bagging fitness was coming up short.
Not only was it beautiful, but it was relatively warm for sunset at 7000’.
The 2nd of the 2 big storms hit 3 days later, on Tuesday, after our big San B hike, but like the first one, it didn’t develop like expected. Instead of snow, we received over 4 inches (10 cm) of rain in a little over 24 hours at our Pine Cove RV park near Idyllwild in the mountains above Palm Springs on the first snow day. The snow was delayed and dumped less than expected the next day, but the temperatures stayed low for almost a week, instead of a day. It wasn’t until Friday that we dared to venture to the market in our truck because the temperatures rarely rose above freezing, even though temperatures in the 40’s (6-7° C) were consistently predicted. It wasn’t until Saturday that kids were out making snowmen.
Our next scheduled peak bagging event was on San Jacinto with our friend Margaret for Sunday after the 2nd snow and was a non-starter. Though the mountain forecast consistently indicated freezing levels being above the 10,600’ peak, we still had troublesome snow in the shade at 6600’ on Saturday. Our hike to the 11,600’ summit of San Gorgonio 9 days later was in jeopardy also. That hike was usually a dawn-to-dusk event for us, and that was without navigating around snow and ice. It was hard to imagine that it would be ice-free with so many freezing nights after the 2nd snowfall.
I had no clarity about my disabling buttock pain condition on the horizon and Bill and I agreed that I was a menace to him, myself, and others with us on the trail until I at least knew how to shut-down the pain. Sadly, snow or no snow, our much-anticipated peak bagging season ended with our unplanned hike up San B between the storms. Ah, but it had been glorious….and I was surprisingly successful in only retaining the stunning images from the day and sequestering the pain into a data point, a lesson to be further dissected. Our peak bagging would have to wait for another year.