Mt San Gorgonio (known locally as Old Greyback) is the highest peak in Southern California. Its located in San Bernardino County and has an elevation of 11,503 ft.
I’m an avid shopper and fan of REI and subscribe to their ‘Gear Mail‘ which features sales and outdoor classes. One of the classes is ‘Mount Whitney Training Hikes‘ which feature progressive hikes to prepare one to eventually summit Mt. Whitney. The hikes they offer, in order of difficulty are.
- Cucamonga Peak
- Mt. Baldy
- San Bernardino Peak
- Mt. San Jacinto
- San Gorgonio Mountain
I’ve always enjoyed hiking and I’m never one to pass up a challenge so climbing Mt Whitney is a goal I’ve set for myself. I thought ‘Old Greyback’ would be a good stepping stone to Whitney so I invited by buddy Jim and we signed up for the REI class.
The class meet at the trailhead at 6am and our two guides said we should hit the summit by 3pm and be back to the cars by 7pm. The hike up had its challenges but overall it wasn’t that bad. Out of 7 hikers we only had 2 that didn’t reach the top.
Me and Jim broke off from the group for the last mile and blazed a trail to the top. We got there around 2:30 and relaxed for 30-minutes. I then put on my knee brace rubbed on some BioFreeze and we started the descent down. We wanted to see how fast we could make the return trip so we ended up jogging a good portion of the trail. By the time we reached our cars it was a little before 6pm. (So our ascent took 7+ hours and our decent took less than 3 🙂 The distance was up and back was 19-miles with around 5,500 of elevation gain.
The views from the top were incredible and I highly recommend checking out the mountain. My next two hikes will most likely be San Bernardino and San Jacinto. After that, Its time to make my way to Whitney.
Here are the rest of the pictures from the hike. (Click Here)
Life is Dan.dy 
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