~ 22 miles, 8000 ft gain

damn 4 minutes

Photos are geo-tagged
Click for more stats & gps files

In the book The San Gabriels: The Mountain Country from Soledad Canyon to Lytle Creek, John Robinson mentions offhand about some football player being able to summit Mt Baldy via the Old Baldy trail in under 2 hrs. Sounds like a great challenge? I agree.

With 9 days till the Baldy Run to the Top Race, I thought it would be a great time to give it a go. The weather had thankfully cooled down, and I was at the Baldy Visitor Center in tank top and shorts at 7 am ready to go.

Instead of the normal 60Csx GPS I usually bring, I brought my Forerunner 305 with heartrate monitor that I have had for maybe 4 months but haven’t used much “in the field”. Based on many bouts of training with heartrate monitors, I had a good feel for what heartrate I could sustain for a 2 hr hike. I wanted to use the Forerunner for 3 purposes, 1) make sure I don’t go out too quickly 2) check my pace and 3) make sure I’m getting up to the the right heartrate at the right time. I expected I could stay between 165 bpm and 170 bpm for the duration. Seem like a bit too much? Yes, yes it is

Things were going good up to Bear Flat, with a mixture of hiking and a bit of “running” if you could call it that. The switchbacks out of Bear Canyon seem to be the steepest part of the hike, and my quads and especially my calves were really burning. I hadn’t hiked up anything steep at a fast pace in a while and I think that bit me in the ass a little bit. I felt okay at the top of the switchbacks and thought I was on pace for my goal although I didn’t really know. I was about just under 1 hr in and my heartrate was at 165 so it seemed all good.

I kept chugging up along the ridge. The weather was really good for this, nice and cool with some breeze. Higher up, the wind got fierce and become more of a nuisance. My heartrate was starting to drop into the low 160’s – I wanted to it to start getting up near 170 so that wasn’t good. “Just go faster!” you all say. Well if it were that easy! My legs didn’t want me to go faster.

Eventually I got up to the part where the ridge flattens out a bit and you can see West Baldy and Baldy ahead. Only 20 min left and they seemed so far away. The grade lessened enough for me to get caught in the Walk/Run Vortex – you know that area where it seems just a little too much energy to run, but too little energy to walk? That’s where I was. The running was too much so I walked as fast as possible but I wish it was a little steeper. Finally, it flattened out enough to run for a good 1/4 mile and I was at the base of West Baldy with maybe 10 min left. Can I make it? 3 min left and I am ascending toward Baldy-West Baldy saddle. Not looking good. I try to run but its just too much. I finally make it up in 2:04, 4 minutes too late. Damnit!

Well it still was a good try but I felt the effort was lacking. I don’t know if it was the lack of training on steep slopes, the fact that I ate too much late in the day on Friday, altitude, or a combination…but I knew via heartrate that I wasn’t at the right intensity I know I could do. The funny thing is that if I didn’t have the heartrate monitor, I would have felt like it was a better try!

Anyways, it was freaking windy on top. 50, 60 mph? I had the summit to myself (9am) and ducked behind one of the rock-stacked walls. I didn’t stay for very long as it was kinda cold with the wind, so I headed down Devil’s Backbone.

Refilling at Baldy Notch, I decided I needed to put in some more effort, so I went ahead and did the 3T’s trail. From before Thunder to just before Icehouse Saddle I had the trail to myself. I forgot how nice that area is.

I got down to Icehouse parking lot 6 hrs after starting, not too shabby in halving my days compared to the last 2 weeks. I was going to hitch a ride (turned off GPS), but didn’t see anyone leaving, so I jogged / walked the 1.5 miles back to my car.

I don’t know what goal to set for the Baldy race. 1:25 seems too low, I don’t think I can do that at 192 lbs. I’m shooting for 1:28.

A bit harder than the 11 peak SGW hike.

Final Stats:

26 miles, 8500 ft

Photos are geo-tagged
Click for more stats & gps files

Ok a lazy trip report. Last year we did 11 “peaks” of the San Gorgonio Wilderness in a very nice, hard hike out of Forest Falls. There were still 6 peaks left that would have added significant work and made a very long day ala Rick Kent. So the plan was to do another hike for those peaks, and that day was yesterday.

My initial plan was to start out of South Fork, but I thought that would just be way too many miles. Then I thought about Vivian Creek, but realized that would be probably 10,000 of gain. Finally I thought I could get away with a direct assault on Grinnell via it’s north ridge. This would keep the total elevation gain “low” (7500) and keep the miles ~ 20.

We got a permit for the Lost Creek trailhead although I wasn’t planning on really being on it. However, looking at the lower terrain (no pic), I didn’t think it would be fun or fast to go cross country at this altitude. Not that there was heavy brush, but there was enough to slow us down. So we opted to start on the Lost Creek trail, and then diverge onto Grinnell’s NW ridge instead of N. This worked out pretty well as we gained enough elevation on the trail to allow the vegetation to clear up before getting on the ridge.

And eventually it turns into a really nice forested area for about 2,000 ft till the top of Grinnell.

The problem is that the the ridge has some flat sections, and it curves around to Grinnell, and combined with some additional miles on the Lost Creek trail, we probably lost time compared to what I thought we could do on the north ridge (in theory).

From Grinnell, we dropped down to Fish Creek saddle, and then headed toward Mineshaft saddle and along the Sky High trail. It was nice being on trail for a bit following the x-country up Grinnell. We dropped down to the Tarn and headed up the steep face of Bighorn Mtn.

Bighorn was a tough climb with scree, but Dragons Head was a bit easier but definitely a cooler and more imposing peak. There is a use trail up the NE side looking down all the steep, crumbly rock to the SE.

At this point, we were probably about halfway but had already been out about 6 hours. I thought we could get it done in 10 hours – I don’t know what I was thinking! We headed back up to the Sky High trail and back to Mineshaft saddle. We did a quick jaunt up Zahniser, then back down and over to Lake Peak.

Lake has a nice little summit with good views to the W and NW.

We headed off east to Ten Thousand Foot ridge. 2 guys took a break from the peakbagging and we would meet up with them back on our descent. It seemed I wasn’t picking a great route as we were continuously climbing over fallen trees and scrambling over rocks. It took longer than expected to reach the 10 K ridge high point, but were rewarded with great views.

We headed back to Fish Creek saddle x-country, yet more slow going. Finally we made it but had yet another 500 ft climb up to Grinnell, but at least there was a use trail.

The way back down seemed never ending; even though it was a ridge it seemed we weren’t losing elevation that quickly. Finally, around 7:30 (we started at 6:30), we hit the Lost Creek trail and took that back as it got dark out.

We finished with a whopping 26 miles, and 8500 ft gain, and a lot of cross-country. It was one of my worst underestimations, partly because of the changed route. Everyone talks about the “9-peak challenge”, but I think this hike was even more of a challenge.

I’m still not sure on what the optimal route on bagging these peaks would be. Perhaps using the south fork trail, or Grinnell’s north ridge. Well actually Fish Creek trailhead could be the best, but with the long drive and dirt road I wasn’t considering that.

It is cool that all these peaks really were different, even being in the same area. Different terrains, different trees, different views. A great time overall.

Snow Creek in the summer = a strong candidate for ‘mother of all hikes’ in Southern California.

Final Stats:

15.5 miles, 11000 ft

EDIT: I am adding some wisdom for those who want to do this ‘hike’. This is not a hike, this is a off-trail scramble / climb. If you even want to attempt doing this as a day hike, you need the following requirements

1. Be able to sustain 2000 ft gain / hr on normal trail for a long period. Like hiking Skyline (8500 ft) in 4 hrs. This is going to take you at least TWICE as long to get to San Jacinto than via C2C
2. Have strong navigational skills. Understanding where you are going is extremely important. You don’t want to take the wrong chute and end up cliffed out, or simply run out of time.
3. Be comfortable hiking through brush and stinging nettle.
4. Be comfortable with sustained class 3 climbing at high altitude and when fatigued.
5. Prepared for conditions (snow, ice, etc…). Do you know where water is available? How high is the last source? Very tough info to get and prepare for
6. Plan on spending the night

Photos are geo-tagged
Click for more stats & gps files

Snow Creek is a relatively popular spring climb for its potential to have 5000′ of sustained climbing on snow. Not being a mountaineer, a spring climb never appealed to me. But when Snow Creek Steve posted pictures of he & Fernando doing the climb in the summer, I was highly intrigued. The climb looked beautiful and had a lot of scrambling. When Steve suggested doing it again, I was in.

The old standard was a route trespassing through DWA’s private property up the canyon. Since a bunch of ninnies started announcing all their illegal plans online, the DWA cracked down, leaving people looking for an alternative. Rick Kent and GigaMike explored a route along the ridge east of the creek, and Steve and Fern have done and “refined” this route 5 or so times, so a harder, yet legal alternative appears to be set. Add on the increased difficulty of rock scrambling / climbing instead of a snow ascent, this route is very strenuous!

We started a bit after 4 am about 1/3 of the way up Snow Creek Rd. Fern couldn’t make it, but he still got up and help us with a car shuttle. Then he went to go run / cycle up the tram road for a while. At 4 am!

After traversing SE for a while, we approached the base of the ridge. It was very steep, and I probably was carrying too much weight as usual. This was going to be fun.

After 1500 ft of climbing the grade lessens a bit and we get our first view of San Jacinto

We hit a bump at 4300′ and began a slight descent while traversing on the west side of the ridge. You can sort of see a shelf in the terrain to follow, but it wasn’t that easy.

Most of the traverse was a mix of this

It took ~ 80 min to do the traverse down to Falls Creek. We took a break under the trees below

After a short climb onto the west side, we connected up with the old route on a use trail. We reached Snow Creek at 5400′ and took a nice break. I wanted to ice my ankle a bit but the water was so cold I could only hold it in for 30 seconds! Steve took his weekly nap:

While I was resting I saw this rock that looks a lot like an angry man’s head. Maybe he’s watching you to make sure you don’t trespass!

After a bit we continued up, where the rock scrambling begins. I let Steve go first so he could check out his favorite plant, stinging nettle.

We approached the chockstone, and took this chute to the right to get around it.

Then we hit the main slab of snow left, with perhaps 800′ of climbing. And it’s melting away fast.

Now if you know me, I have no real interest in winter climbing, but I knew this short climb should be relatively innocuous – it wasn’t that steep and it would have been hard to slip on that snow. The main concern was making sure we did not step walk around parts that had been severely melted away underneath.

The crux may have been the transition from snow to rock. According to Steve a few weeks ago there was a direct transition, but now there was a 3 foot gap that we had to jump across. Our main concern was that the snow would give out when we jumped, but it turned out pretty solid.

We hiked underneath a few more snow tunnels. This was really cool and one of the main things I was excited about seeing. It did not disappoint.

Now, we’re at around 6800′, so there’s still 4000 ft of scrambling left! It was a lot of fun, but tiring. Climbing up is more work than walking up a steady incline for sure, and that definitely adds up on this route. We took the chutes that end up directly hitting the peak (R R L R).

I was definitely feeling it. I was drinking lots of fluids but still getting a headache. Not surprising since I hadn’t been hiking much lately and was not used to the altitude nor whole day exertion. Heading up the final chute was a nice feeling.

We hung out on the top for a brief moment before heading down. It was an exhausting 15 hr day, but well worth it. The views were spectacular. There was a unique feeling of isolation in the canyon, we could see the 10 freeway but were so many hours away from people. This is definitely a special hike/climb and the toughest I’ve done.

As for avoiding private property, this is the route compared to DWA’s property.

Crazy encounter with 3 mountain lions with “Pitownpi”. Check out his photos and captions here.

Final Stats:

15 miles, 4700 ft

Click for more stats & gps files

This was my first time to Sequoia and I have to say it is as enjoyable as Yosemite, with less people. We car-camped in the Sunset campground for 2 nights, planning on a long dayhike on Saturday and a few really nice short hikes to the Sherman Tree and Moro Rock on Sunday before leaving.

Our Saturday hike to Alta Peak was great. We drove down the Generals Highway through beautiful forests about 45 min to the trailhead at Wolverton. From there we took the Alta Peak trail. The first portion of the trail to Panther Gap is nice and not too steep (~ 500 ft / mile), but pretty.

At Panther Gap (~8500′) I suggested adding in a side ascent up to Panther Peak to the west. I hadn’t read anything about Panther Peak so just assumed it was some named bump, but in actuality it was a very enjoyable scramble to summit rocks with outstanding views.

If one wanted to show someone a hike that isn’t too difficult but gets away from people, gets in some scrambling, and shows some excellent views, I’d highly suggest Panther Peak. Round trip would be about 6 miles and 1600 ft gain.

From Panther, we descended back down east and continued along the trail as it wraps around the south side of Alta Peak.

After a few miles Tharps Rock came into view to the NE. I read about this rock in Bob Burd’s trip report and I wanted to climb it, but I would wait until after reaching Alta’s summit.

Having not been at high altitudes in a while, I was taking it easy and making sure I didn’t get too high too quickly. This worked pretty well and soon we veered north and were quickly approaching the summit.

Of course the summit had great views of the Sierra. Lots of domes and spires nearby too. Just a beautiful area right here in California’s backyard.

Tharps Rock was still calling me, so after a while I headed off the summit and back down a ways to veer off to the north side of the rock.

This was a lot of fun scrambling around with a bunch of 3rd class and some 4th and low 5th mixed in. I got to the base of the summit rocks on the north side and ran into a 12-15′ overhang. There was a few good holds, but I didn’t want to try without a helmet, so I turned around. A nice challenge to try out in the future.

After that, it was all downhill. We had to rush a little bit at first with bad weather moving toward us, but it eventually died out.

Can’t wait to come back!

A “little” stroll in the mountains just outside of Tokyo.

Final Stats:

20 miles, 6300 ft

Click for more stats & gps files

If interested, other Japan walks with geo-tagged photos we did here.

During a vacation filled with lots of urban sight-seeing, I had an open day available and gladly choose to explore less densely populated areas of Japan.

Of course Mt Fuji is the first choice of many, but with significant snow cover for a few thousand feet and being more than 2 hrs away, it really wasn’t feasible as a dayhike for me. So I stuck a bit closer to Tokyo.

Mt Takao (Takaosan) is one of the most popular hikes in the area, if not the most. I found mention of it in the Lonely Planet and used that as a base for planning a longer hike. I found additional info on other peaks sharing a ridge, culminating in the high point of Mt Jimba (857 meters). Seemed it would be decently long but not a ton of gain, and when you have a chance to hike in a “Quasi-National Park“, you just do it.

Getting There:

There are two main trains you could take out of Japan. From the Shinjuku, you can take the Keio Line to Takaosan-guchi Station, or take the JR East Chūō Line to Takao then take Keio Line the rest of the way. Right outside the station, you’ll see a big map of the trails up to Takaosan, and likely a bunch of hikers hanging out.

A short walk from the station leads to a lower tram station that you could take all the way up to Takaosan. Just past, the trailheads appear. I chose the Inariyama trail as it was relatively short and the first trail along the walk. The trail starts out steep with built in steps.

Up to Mt Takao, the trail switches between steep and flat sections like this.

I saw a lot of people on the trail, and even more on the summit. This photo doesn’t even do justice to the ~ 200 I saw 10 min later.

I probably said “konnichiwa” at least 50 times, so it was really good practice. Since a lot of people draw out the end, I started saying “konnichiwaaaaaa” and I have to say it felt good. Sadly my vocabulary was probably 10 words overall so I couldn’t do much more!

At this point I had “only” climbed 1400 ft, so I figured the traverse to the other peaks would add on maybe another 2000 more. I headed west and quickly reached the next peak, Koboteshiroyama. Some girl jogged past me wearing Vibram Five Fingers…and a ninja outfit. Some sort of black and yellow crazy thing!

I left to continue onto the next two peaks. This was a nice area with fewer people and more solitude. I really enjoyed the lush green and tall-treed forest here; not bad for being so close to Tokyo. The route seemed relatively flat, but had a lot of ups and downs of a few hundred feet at best. And the parts that actually go up are steep.

After a while, I thought I was getting close to the final peak, Mt Jimba, when I reached the summit of a small bump that I hoped was it merely because I had already done 8 miles and was ready to turn back. I set and ate a to-go sushi set when a few Japanese guys stopped to rest. I “communicated” with them with many hand gestures and a few phrases (I didn’t bring the phrasebook with me) if this was Jimbasan and they indicated it was further. Although disappointed, I was fine with turning around.

Moments before heading off, the ninja trail runner girl hit the peak and took a rest. I asked if she was going to Jimba and she indicated yes. Well damnit, if the ninja trail runner is gonna go to Jimba, so am I!

The peak was about another 1.5 miles further and I made it in good time. Unfortunately the clouds ruined the potentially nice views in all directions from Jimbasan, but at least it had this, whatever it is

Motivated by the ninja and a few other trail runners (and time), I decided to run the way back. This worked out pretty well except for the portion that I went on the wrong trail for a 1/2 mile and had to turn around. I avoided the temptation to just follow the trail down whatever ridge descent it was taking since I may have ended up who knows where. (Posthike analysis indicates this would have taken me to some main road, so probably would have been okay)

Overall, this turned out to be a monster of a hike, about 20 miles and over 6000 ft gain (even without my side excursion). I would highly suggest this hike (or a subset of it) to anyone who has a day to hike while in Tokyo. It’s not the best of Japan, but quite feasible and really nice.

PDF Map

Document with description of closure boundaries

However, there are some previously closed areas that are now open…including the north side of Mt Waterman and the moving the closure line north of the ACH a bit west past the Winston Peak / Winston Ridge area. Additionally, it appears the south border has moved further north in the Monrovia Peak area. I can’t offer specifics as I’ve just glanced at the pdf map at moderate resolution. The text document offers more specifics. Any comments on specific changes are appreciated.

A modified way to Stanley-Miller, and this time we found the mine.

Final Stats:

18 miles, 7500 ft

Click for more stats & gps files

Last August, a bunch of us made the trek up the East Fork to Iron Fork in search of the elusive Stanley-Miller mine. The old “trail” that we followed up was pretty much a disastor waiting to happen, and while we found the cabin ruins and some artifacts, our delusional minds led us chasing ghosts as the actual mine location was nowhere near where we thought we saw it was.

Of course, I knew I had to go back. Now was the time.

That crappy way up was so bad that I actually didn’t mine the idea of hiking up Iron and descending the NW ridge to Stanley-Miller. And who could resist a new cross-country exploration? Well I guess most could resist, as only two others opted for this last-minute proposal. And Mike only had time to summit Iron and turn around, so it was just Winston and I. Winston has previously hiked some brutal ones with me, including the last Stanley-Miller trek and the real (eastern) Yuciapa ridge, so I knew he’d be fine with whatever we had to encounter.

We took about 3.5 hrs to ascent up Iron, and it went by quickly as Mike and I were discussing science & religion. After a nice rest, we began the cross-country descent. First we descending the summit south as usual, and after about 5 minutes we hit the large buckthorn brush patch. Here we wanted to veer west…luckily the south side of the brush was trampled down and made it easy to cross.

The first part of the western ridge was relatively gentle and not too steep. There was a nice area for camping about 1/4 mile away from the south ridge. After that, the ridge got nice a rugged with lots of rock outcroppings which we scrambled over and on the sides of.

After this section we continued west. There seemed to be a decent use trail up to this point…At about 7200′, the west ridge splits into SW and NW components, both of which have been hiked up before, with the SW likely more popular due to the shorter approach. We began our descent down the NW ridge.

I thought the ridge was nice and rugged, but not too bad. Steep with lots of bouldering here and there and avoiding some brush, but not enough to really slow us down. We were making good progress, taking a little over and hour to descend the first 2000′.

Near 6000′ there are couple of navigational issues along with the terrain changing into classic “brushland”. The ridge has turned more northernly and splits into 2 spurs and you must veer off onto the NW spur although the N spur seems like the natural way to go. Soon after, at 5800′, you must veer W to maintain the proper descent. At this point, the brush quickly thickened. It was somewhat annoying but not really that bad, as we could usually find an opening or two to continue switchbacking down.

We also were about 10′ away from this guy. He was not happy

watch out for the rattlers from Zé Apelido on Vimeo.

At about 5200′ there is a benchmark. This signals another route change; we had to turn from heading W to again heading NW. Now we were heading down the ridge that eventually ends up right by the cabin ruins 1000′ below. At 4800′ we crossed a huge pipe, maybe 8″ in diameter. Hmm, I wonder what that could be leading to…The pipe headed more westerly than our NW direction. It’s path seemed covered in brush so we continued our descent NW while knowing eventually we would have to head south to meet up with this pipe (and hopefully the mine) again.

Descending to the elevation 4000′, we traversed south in search of the mine. It took us a bit of time, as initially we travsered about 100 yds and did not see anything so we sat down and studied the map and how far the mine should be. We decided it must be further south (and obviously the pipe was too). I climbed backed up a few 100 ft while Winston traversed across, and when I found the pipe Winston found the pipe, and a bunch of ruins!

There was a bunch of terraced platforms with equipment. Lots of old machinery.

But the mine wasn’t here. We looked around a bit further, and finally found the mine just south of the machinery. Finally!

After passing the ore cart near the entrance, the mine splits into two. You can see the railway on the ground that goes out and over to the machinery.

The two shafts continue back and eventually connect back up into a loop. There are various small spurs, one or two with vertical or “oblique” shafts.

Really cool stuff. This mine was damper than the others – you could see water droplets forming on the ceiling, and the air was misty, although I’m not sure if that was from moisture or also rock debris.

After checking out the mine, we were ready to get off the mountain. We descended down, this time generally following the gully south of the gully we had ascended last time. It was a relatively better, but that’s not saying much. It was better in that there were no “if this rock breaks I’m going to be a crash test dummy” moves, so yeah…Ascent to Stanley-Miller mine is just a pain no matter what.

Getting near the Narrows, I was hoping the water level wouldn’t be too high to cause that much of a problem. My “backup” plan was to follow the old “Wetwater” trail. Then I saw it – literally carved out of a cliff, and preferred to take our chances in the water.

We had about 6 crossings in the Narrows section, a few of which got up to our waists. The current was decently strong in some spots, but it was negotiable. Here’s one pic I got of a shallower crossing:

After reaching the bridge, we were homefree. What an adventure. This hike had a bunch of great things, peak-bagging, cross country travel, rock bouldering, mine exploration, and water crossings. And not many flies.