9/19/09: Mt. Yale Loop – Starting from Sierra Madre trail will head up and connect to Jones Peak and go along the newly carved fire break to the Mt. Wilson Toll Road. From there head on up the ridge to Yale. Depending on time or how I feel, may just want to come back down the same way.

9/27/09: No hike – Will be busing/boozing it up with Ze. Will most likely end up biking somewhere with hills to work on cardio.

10/3/09: Mt. Wilson via Santa Anita Ridge – haven’t done this one. Will probably not do this one though if it’s hot. If it is hot, will probably do Mt. Wilson from Chantry Flats.

10/10/09: ?

10/17/09: Hike in the back country. Not sure where exactly. Also depends on what areas are burned out.

10/24/09: Baldy via Bear Flats – The warmup hike for C2C.

10/31/09: Baldy via Register Ridge – sneak in one more weekend at elevation.

11/7/09: The big day!!!

Once at “Graduation Hill,” we ran into Sunny at the base of it about to ascend. We had a brief exchange of pleasantries, and then continued on up it.

Up “Graduation Hill” from john quan on Vimeo.

After Graduation Hill, all of the serious gain is over. Just a few little bumps stand in the way. So back up to the bench was no problem. But once we finally got there, we ran into a group of Korean hikers who were cooking up some Ramen. Oh that looked and smelled especially good on this cold day.

At this point, half of the group split up. The others went down Winter Creek trail and back to Chantry Flats. The rest of us pushed on towards Mt. Wilson. We took the trail since the ridge portion after the bench looked a little slippery. The trail wasn’t as bad as we thought. There weren’t too many hikers so the snow didn’t thin out too much to get the trail muddy.

The Toll Road itself must have been covered in a good foot of snow. But the path up was already beaten by previous hikers. It was already well worn and compacted which made the journey a little easier. We didn’t take the path up to the Mt. Wilson parking lot though. We just followed the road all the way up to the locked gate and had lunch there.

After about 30 minutes, we set back off down the road. We took Winter Creek for a 1/4 mile until we got the Santa Anita Ridge junction. We decided to take the ridge back down since the Winter Creek trail runs about 5-6 miles back to Chantry Flats as compared to the ~3 miles along the ridge.

Here’s a video of us walking back along the Mt. Wilson Toll Rd.

The View from john quan on Vimeo.

You can see more photos at my Picasa album.

Meetup reviews here.

KML Google Earth file

Santa Anita Ridge & Upper Winter Creek Trail loop at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging