San Bernardino 9 Peaks Loop Unsupported
Mixed Gender Team: Cindy Gonzalez, Melissa Perez, and Jose Montellano
The 9 Peak Traverse Loop is a 29 mile route with over 9,000 feet of gain traversing the San Bernardino Mountain Range starting at Vivian Creek Trailhead and descending Momyer Trail to close the loop. The San Bernardino Divide Trail passes 9 peaks all of which are over 10,000 feet of gain and includes the summit of San Gorgonio, the highest mountain in Southern California at 11,500 ft.
The 9 Peaks:
San Gorgonio (11,500’)
Jepson (11,205’)
Little Charlton (10,676’)
Charlton (10,806’)
Alto Diablo (10,563’)
Shields Peak (10,701’)
Anderson Peak (10,864’)
San Bernardino East Peak (10,691’)
San Bernardino Peak (10,649’)
Jose, Melissa, and I started at 5:04am from Vivian Creek Trailhead and ended at Momyer Trail to close the loop with an elapsed time of 11hours and 55 minutes. We each carried all our fuel and refilled water from High Creek and High Meadow Spring.
As we made our way up to the summit of San Gorgonio around 9:00am, we spent some time refueling and taking pictures of views. A couple of minutes later, we headed towards Jepson and followed the ridge up to the summit. In no time we were at our second summit at 9:59am. We stopped to take pictures for about a minute or two and started making our way down.
On the way from Jepson to Little Charlton Jose tripped on the flat section of the course and hurt his toe. Luckily he was able to continue, and push on. Moments later, we were at Little Charlton at 10:35am and Charlton at 10:54am.
We found ourselves at the High Meadow Spring at around 12:00pm eating Funions and filtering water for the next task that lay ahead of us. This was certainly one of our favorite spots to rest and refuel before heading out.
As the day went on we reached Alto Diablo at 12:27pm, Shields Peak at 12:51pm, Anderson 1:28pm, San Bernardino East Peak at 1:58pm, and San Bernardino Peak at 2:24pm. Once we were done, we headed back to the turn off to head down towards the car. We were glad we had done our research and decided to bring pants for this section because there was plenty of buck thorn and bush-wacking along the way.