Get Outside and Explore
On a cool fall day I set out to hike to two peaks, in one day: Thunder Mountain, and Telegraph Peak. The Three T’s is a popular hike in the Angeles National Forest, near Mount Baldy. I would be hiking up Mount Baldy Rd. from Manker Flats, passing “the Notch,” and heading on to Thunder Mountain, before coming to the sign for the Three T’s Hike, in the Cucamonga Wilderness.
This guide details hiking over Mount Whitney from the High Sierra Trail, and what to expect. We completed the trail in July 2022, and this is our story. We would wake up at 3:30am on Day 7 of our journey on the High Sierra Trail. I did not take any photos in the pitch black darkness that morning, but had fortunately photographed our site the night before. We had camped on this mesa, that was just before Guitar Lake. We decided we would take our time as we hiked on up the switchbacks, in order to acclimate to the altitude gradually. Neither of us had hiked to 14,505 feet before, let alone with heavy backpacks. I had been to 12,000 feet before once, to Trail Camp, just below the 99 switchbacks, on the opposite side. There were so many unknowns.
So here we were, at the South Fork Trailhead, just three days before we would leave for the High Sierra Trail, doing a shakedown hike. We were starting late, and that was my fault. But I wanted to go ahead with the shakedown hike anyway, since we were running out of days to do this, before the Sierras. I wanted to have one day to recover before we headed up there. We arrived just after 4pm, and had just a few hours of sunlight left. The parking lot was completely empty of cars, which was not what I was expecting.
I would hike 11 miles roundtrip to Mount San Jacinto from the tramway. It was not the first time I had climbed Mount San Jacinto. In fact I had climbed this mountain from Idyllwild once, a year ago, as a birthday present to myself. I love challenging myself, and with the temperatures down in Palm Springs into the triple digits, it was a perfect time to escape the desert heat, on a tram ride.
Sierra Peak hovers right above the 91 freeway corridor at 3042 feet. It is sandwiched between Corona, CA and Yorba Linda, CA, as the northernmost peak, in the Santa Ana Mountains. We would be hiking from the Orange County side, up Coal Canyon past Fremont Canyon and the Cypress Reserve. The most popular route to Sierra… Continue reading Hiking to Sierra Peak
Serafina Hikes 