Saturday, December 08, 2007

CALIFORNIA THIN AIR

San Gorgonio, CA is the highest peak in Southern California. It measures 11,502 feet (3,506 m) above sea level and it is part of the San Bernardino Mountains. NeNe, Olive, Sheila, Rhoda and I plan this trekking for the last 3 months. One attempt failed, in September, because of the first rain of the season. A second attempt, in October, while I was in Nepal failed because during the night NeNe, Sheila, Rhoda and Oliver were attacked by bears. A really scary adventure! Lucky them that they are still alive. An other attempt, while I was still in Nepal, failed again because Oliver, Sheila and Rhoda got here too late to make it back to the car with daylight. So this time is our 4th attempt. The first one for me. But I really want to get on top. I don't have too much time left here in LA. Soon we will move to Seattle. And I really want to get up there. So this time we planned everything all right. Wake up was at 3.40AM. We left Hermosa at 4.00AM. And by 6AM we were at the trail head, ready to go. We took the Vivian Creek trail, and the sun was not out yet, though ...
And these are some of the pictures that I took on the way up. I think it took us 6 hours to go up and 4 hours to go down. A pretty long day for us ...And this is the summit. When we went there we found this American flag ...

The trekking is nice, bit it is not that exciting. It is very much Southern California style, very dry and with not a lot of green vegetation. Maybe I got a little bit spoiled in Nepal. But this really looked like a hill to me. It had also some challenge. The last part, above the 3,300 meters was harder because we were coming from sea level. We definitely felt the change into thinner air ... it was good the feel it. For a moment I felt like I was in Nepal ... :D

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