Molly's First Backpacking Trip

After a few hairpin turns winding our way up into the San Bernadino National Forest, Molly made it clear that I either needed to pull over and let her drive, or the interior of my car was getting sprayed with half-digested breakfast and coffee. I obliged. As the blue dot on google maps approached the campground, I ticked off the distance out loud, “half mile… quarter mile… point one miles…” We missed the turn off.

Molly turned the car around and we made it back to the campground. The host, thickly bearded, weathered, and with the twinkle in his eye of an old-timey miner who’s either found a secret vein of gold, or lost his mind looking for it, informed us with a chuckle that the campground was full. Not to fret, he said. Go on up the road, turn here, turn there, and just find a place to camp in the woods. Not far from the South Fork trailhead we found the perfect spot - a flat, sparsely forested glade, right next to the creek, without another soul around.

In the morning, through the fog of our breath rising in the cold, we could see the snow-capped ridge where we planned to camp that night. With our packs on we started up the trail. The trail winds through a burned out area from a forest fire that must have happened at least ten years ago. It’s exposed and not incredibly scenic, with the charred remains of evergreens spiking through the younger green underbrush and saplings.

There were a number of other people on the trail, including a group of four or five 20-something guys carrying skis and snowboards. They were headed to dry lake, along with pretty much everyone else we passed. When we got to the split off where we were going right, up to the snowy ridge, and everyone else was going left, up to dry lake, the skiers/snowboarders caught up with us again. There were other faces we had seen on the way up too, getting water from the stream. We sat down, took a break, chatted with our new friends, and then went our way up the other side of the mountain. “We’ll see you at the top!” we promised.

The trail was more of a staircase to this point. Relentless. It only seemed to become moreso after the split. With every switchback the ridge seemed further and further away. Eventually we came to the spur trail going to dollar lake. We dropped our packs and walked down toward the lake to see if there was any place to camp - the ridge was looking out of reach. Once at the lake we pulled out our sleeping pads, inflated them, and just laid back on the ground, gazing up at the sky through the canopy of trees. Molly slept, I read.

After our rest, there was just no way of continuing up the mountain any higher. We even talked about abandoning our push for the summit and just going back down the next day. We agreed to camp at a secluded spot over the hill from the lake and see how we felt in the morning. During the night our human bodies did the amazing thing that human bodies do when they sleep and almost completely recovered. The push for the summit was back on.

Hiking that day felt a little easier than it had the day before. Despite large swaths of the trail being covered in snow and having to either climb straight uphill, or trounce through the snow, the summit soon appeared to be just around the next bend. As summits usually are, it was a bit further than it seemed, but we made it. We immediately threw the tent up, and Molly laid down for a nap. Meanwhile I went to check out possible ski descents down the North face, where I met a snowboarder who was about to drop into one of the main chutes. I watched him leap off a tiny cornice before plummeting down toward Dry Lake, smoothly carving out the 2000 ft descent.

Later, we made dinner and watched the iconic cone-shaped shadow of San Gorgonio stretch to the East as the sun set. The night was windy, but the tent held up amazingly, and we both slept like logs. In the morning we both watched the water boil on my beer-can stove, and sedulously mixed the instant coffee in our cups. There is no better coffee, than coffee sipped atop a towering mountain, sitting next to someone you utterly love.

The day beckoned. We packed up camp and got back on the trail. The descent was comparatively easy, and before long we found ourselves back at the car.