Ahead of a recent hike up San Gorgonio, I found myself checking the weather forecasts obsessively. The mountain forecasts were predicting “possible” thunderstorms for the day of my hike and I was nervous. I was on a tight schedule that week and was foolishly determined to summit that mountain. In an area prone to flash flooding, there were already several road closures throughout the San Bernardino National Forest due to some wild weather in the previous week. While Southern California is currently in the midst of a record setting drought, the mountains have their own volatile weather systems. A hot, dry and windless day down below can become cold, rainy and frighteningly windy in the higher elevations; and the weather has a tendency to change in an instant up there.
The thunderstorms were forecasted to begin in the late afternoon so I decided to put my trust in the weather reports and start the long hike at a rather early time in hope of beating the storm down the mountain. Knowing that I was about to spend the better part of a day in a flash flood zone with a potential thunderstorm, this was not a wise decision. I was concerned but I was also stupidly stubborn.
I woke up at 2 a.m. in order to hit the trail by 4 a.m. It was dark and quiet and I was happy to be there in the mountains. I crossed a few dry creek beds on the way up, nervous at the thought of their potential to become raging rapids of dangerous debris after a little bit of rain. I planned on moving quickly to ensure that I would not get caught in any of those potential afternoon storms. Unfortunately, moving quickly became more difficult as I climbed higher and higher towards the 11,503 foot peak, the highest in all of Southern California. After 6 hours of huffing, puffing and regretting all of those years of chain-smoking, I reached the summit, only to be greeted by a massive assemblage of black clouds rushing in from the east. While I intended to stop and rest at the top, the foreboding clouds were urging me to turn immediately around and get off of this mountain as quickly as possible. So I did.
With no time for a rest, I began the long journey back down. About ten steps into my descent, the raindrops began. A slow drizzle at first, the rain quickly picked up the momentum and so did I as I began to rush down, knowing that it would take a few hours to get back down the mountain. Accompanied by booming rolls of thunder, it began to pour and continued to pour for the entire four hour descent. Thunder at 11,000 feet can be unnerving, to say the least; the violent crashes are so loud and so near, they are spine-chilling. Not to mention the fear of potential lightning as I jogged, soaking wet, down the ridgeline alongside the forest of towering trees that often serve as direct targets of that lightning. It was a dicey way down and I was feeling stupid for not listening to my better judgement. Lightning strikes, flash floods and washed out trails are a few of the very real dangers of hiking these mountains during a storm. These have the potential to become very real life and death situations and my decision to push on, despite the forecast, was not a wise one.
As I was nearing the end of the hike, some of those previously dry creek beds were now picking up some momentum. The final challenge was crossing Mill Creek, which had quickly become a rushing river of brown water. A careful game of leapfrog over some slippery rocks took me back to the base of the mountain. Soggy shoed and exhausted, I somehow had made it down. As I walked back to the parking lot the rain stopped and the sun came out; as if all of that rain and thunder had never happened. The mountains are strange like that. Beautiful and sunny at the base, there were families having picnics and family parties. An hour ago I felt that I was facing my possible demise and now I am surrounded by cars while speakers are blasting reggaeton beneath gazebos. I had successfully hiked San Gorgonio and I was feeling good. I stripped off my soaking clothes, hopped in the car and headed out the lot towards home, or so I thought.
At the exit a ranger stops me, telling me that he hopes I am not “planning on going home anytime soon”. My heart sunk as I realized that there must have been some rain related issue on the road out of there. He informs me that there had been some flooding and that we would all have to wait until work crews could come with their equipment to start clearing out the road. It was around 2 p.m. and he said that it should take about an hour or two so I figured that I would just sit down in the car and get some well needed rest before making the drive back to L.A. So I rested and I waited, and I waited… It was now four hours later and I began to notice the other 50 or so people that were also stuck here were all walking out of the park area. I decided to see for myself what was going on and was not quite prepared for what I saw. It turned out that there were three massive mudslides on the road out of there and one of them left behind a wall of debris about eight feet high.
My fellow mudslide hostages were heading into town to pick up food and alcohol, assuming that we were going to be stuck there for quite a while. It looked like I was going to be staying in the very small community of Forest Falls indefinitely. While I would normally love to spend some time in a quaint little mountain town like this, an involuntary vacation under the particular circumstances was not ideal. Tired, sore and stressed about the uncertainty of the situation, I resolved to sit in my car and continue to wait. No phone service, no food and no energy to do much else, it was painfully boring. The others, however, decided to make a party of the situation. The music continued and the alcohol flowed amongst the conversations and the laughter, while I sat in my car, parked away from the crowds, always the introvert.
I sat in the car and waited. Watching the sunset, I slowly nodded off to the sounds of the parking lot party people. Then I awake in the darkness. I am disoriented and confused. I fumble for my flashlight and step out into the night to figure out what is going on. It is eerily silent now and the people from earlier have seemingly vanished; it’s as if they were never even there in the first place. It is now 3 a.m. and apparently the roads were cleared at some point during my sleep. My decision to park away from the crowds kept me out of sight of the rangers and they must have not noticed my car in the back when clearing out the parking lot. Still a bit dazed from the experience, I find my way back to the car and get back in. I drive out of there, past the gravelly remnants of the days destruction, speeding away through San Bernardino into the dawn.