The Nine Peak Traverse rivals the Cactus-2-Clouds hike in its intensity, making up for less elevation gain with a 26 mile trail that traverses nine peaks above 10,000 ft (hence the name). Two of these peaks top out above 11,000 ft. The trail is located in the San Bernardino mountains to the east-northeast of Los Angeles. I joined a team of folks with the goal of making this hike in a single day. We estimated that it would take us 18 hour to complete the trail.We spent the night before at a town called Angelus Oaks in cabins located a mile or so from the trailhead, which is the traditional start to the hike. The elevation here is 5,700 ft. and staying the night certainly helps a bit with acclimatization. Given the expected duration of the hike, we set the ridiculously early wake up time for 1:30am. This gave us a trailhead start time of 2:45am. I started strong given the early wakeup and outpaced the group for the first few hours.
Just over four hours later, I reached the first peak, San Bernadino (10,649 ft.), just in time to catch the sun's first rays on that peak. It took me 30 minutes later to reach the second peak in the sequence, San Bernadino East (10,691 ft.). Here I rested and waited for the remainder of the group to catch up.
With the group back together, we set off at a quick pace, hitting Anderson Peak (10,664 ft.), Shields Peak (10,516 ft.), and Alto Diablo Peak (10,439 ft.) in short order before descending slightly to a col called Dollar Lake Saddle. .
In the below picture, I am holding up five fingers to indicate my successful climb of the fifth peak, Alto Diablo. Dollar Lake Saddle is so name because of a nearby glacier lake, which provides a strategic water source for those needing water. But, we were good on water and drank lots here at theSaddle while stuffing ourselves with calories.The trail from Dollar Lake Saddle is not readily apparent, so we benefited from a GPS unit carried by one of the members of our group. We followed the track driectly up the side of Charlton Peak (10,808 ft.), which is steep with loose footing, reaching the summit at 12:39pm. We proceeded directly to its sister peak, Little Charlton Peak (10,696 ft.) before turning south to regain the main trail. We never did find the trails to & from these two peaks.
Although I was happy to reach the main trail, which is much more smooth than the cross country treking we were doing, I began feeling fatigued for the first time on the trail. This was a bad omen since the final two peaks are the highest points on the trail.
By 1:45pm, we reached the point in the trail where the eighth peak, Jepson Peak (11,205 ft.) was directly north. We turned that direction and climbed on all fours up a ro
cky slope. Apparently, the actual trail leads in from the east. Of course, we had no way of knowing this, but we did have GPS and GPS told us that Jepson was North. This was an exhausting climb for me. I lagged the group on the way to the peak, but still managed to reach it by 2:09pm. My summit picture is to the right. Behind me is the ninth and final peak, Mt. San Gorgonio, which at 11,493 ft. is the highest one of the bunch. If it looks like a long way from Jepson, you are correct. It would take nearly an hour to reach that final summit, and then begin the nearly five hour descent back to the car we had parked at the end of the trail.At 3:00pm, my exertions paid off with the successful summit of the final peak. The view was amazing. Aided by the near perfect weather, we could see all the way to the ocean, out to San Clemente Island (East), southwest to Orange County, southeast to Palm Springs, and north to Big Bear Lake.
It's easy to think back now and be happy, but the entire group was exhausted. Additionally, one of our team showed signs of altitude sickness. So, we did not spend more than a few minutes on the summit. The hike down did indeed take us five hours and we arrived at the car just before 8:00pm.When we arrived back at Angelus Oaks, I rented a cabin instead of driving back home. My body was hypothermic, not from the cold, but from lack of available food in my blood system. Having gone without food for the past few hours, combined with 18 straight hours of hiking, cleaned all available carbs from my blood, forcing me to rely upon body fat conversion, which is too inefficient to support the level of activity in which I was engaged. I'm mentioning to underscore the urgency for me to reach a stable place - in this case, a cabin witha dry bed. I shivered uncontrollably for the first 30 minutes in bed, before falling into an uneast sleep. At 4:00am I was woken by a huge storm that brought the seasons' first snow to the region. We beat the storm by 8 hours; an earlier arrival could have been fatal to our group. The storm was a stark reminder of the importance of weather to the success of any hike.
