Maura Fox: ‘A rite of passage’: San Gorgonio looms over Southern California as a challenge for serious adventurers

SAN DIEGO — We’ve been hiking for less than half an hour, and I’m already dripping sweat, trying to remember what it is that I love about climbing mountains.

It’s 3 p.m. on an early August afternoon, and my sister Claire and I are about a mile into our climb up San Gorgonio, the highest peak in Southern California, located in the San Bernardino Mountains.

We’re hiking up what feels like a nearly vertical grade in scorching heat, each carrying a 25-pound backpack stuffed with our food and shelter for the night. The footlong Subway sandwiches we inhaled before starting the trek aren’t helping.

At the end of each switchback, we stop and laugh at the ridiculousness of our exhausted breathing, exchanging glances that seem to say: What are we doing?

The first section of the 18-mile out-and-back hike to San Gorgonio is the hardest, but for Claire and me — and hundreds of other hikers across San Diego and Southern California — it’s worth it.

At roughly 11,500 feet, San Gorgonio is a challenge to summit, whether on foot, ski or horseback. The whale-shaped mountain, once known as Old Greyback, can be seen from San Diego County’s Laguna Mountains, nearly 150 miles south, especially on a cloudless winter day when the summit shimmers with a coat of snow. Seen from points south, it looms like an older sister behind San Jacinto, the often more recognizable second-highest peak in Southern California.

But on the summit, its feel is far removed from San Diego’s more modest peaks, or even from San Jacinto. From atop the rocky and barren San Gorgonio, hikers feel as if they’re in a moonscape, gazing over earthly giants like the Eastern Sierra Nevada, Mojave Desert and Pacific Ocean.

“It’s really cool to ... get above the tree line and feel like you’re just so far above everything else,”...