EISPIRATEN

I compensate for the brevity of this trip report by including a ginormous panorama.

We went out to the Golden Trout Wilderness for the long weekend. Drove up from the Owens Valley to Kennedy Meadows, and past it to Blackrock trailhead. Everything is paved and open. Trailhead is just below 9000ft ...

Tom Kenney wrote: Fri Jul 12, 2024 10:54 am 'LIKE'

There's now a button on the top-right.

I've done this before, but mostly sticking to the trail. I now see that this was completely inadequate, and doesn't count.

That's just N of Middle Mermaid, I guess. I've photos from West Mermaid , but they're of the wrong side of the ridge. Headsizeburrito has photos from Middle Mermaid itself , but can't see the thing you're talking about. So I guess you want a view from Triplet Rocks... When I was there I made a ...

Yall may have heard of lost cities being found in the Central American jungle using LIDAR scans. If not, go look that up right now! An airplane flies over the jungle, and uses a laser scanner pointed at the ground to measure lots and lots of distances. Most of the laser returns come from the trees ...

That looks excellent! I can see what you're saying about it being right in the sweet spot. Looks like some fun terrain and no brush. Perfect!

The price is in your link (it quotes $/sqft/mo by default, and you have to click a thing to quote $/mo instead). I get the sense that the Thompson Ranch is occupied full time, so their taxes would be up-to-date and all that.

Post a report if you go up there!

The second-to-last image (from the turnout) is looking at Ontario Peak and Turtle's beak from the West. From Sunset peak rd or GRR or something.

Thanks for writing that up. I've biked Barrett-Stoddard towards Cucamonga canyon before. It's overgrown, but I THINK it's still used by MTB people periodically, so it should still be passable.

I've also hiked up to Frankish from the south (Mountain Ave). This wasn't recent, but at the time it was ...

OSM has gone back/forth a few times too: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/7931873046/history

It looks like there's one person that's pushing the "Thoreau" thing: Stan Robinson. He wrote a long email about it, posted to Bob Burd's report . And the OSM change to rename it to Mt Thoreau references ...

Here're my photos.

Start of the canyon. The ridge at the back is 6.5kft above.

https://gal.secretsauce.net/travels/WhiteMountains/2024-09-01--White-Mountain-Peak-from-Bishop/R0007611.jpg?variant=medium2

View of the Sierra

https://gal.secretsauce.net/travels/WhiteMountains/2024-09-01--White ...

What burned?

Behold (click on the image; very un-exciting otherwise):

whatburned2.gif

This is Sentinel images (from paid caltopo) before the fire and on Sat (after most of it was done). The fire wasn't done done yet, but that's the latest we have today. So... the East Fork has been stripped ...

Here's the sensed burn map all by itself:

Well this is just stupid: https://www.fs.usda.gov/alerts/angeles/ ... ?aid=90800

The misplaced "Muir Peak" label is an annoying error from the USGS map. I think the error occurred on the '95 version, but don't quote me on that. It's been awhile since I did the research.


So the "MapBuilder Topo" layer comes "from a variety of sources, including USGS data sets, OpenStreetMap ...

Oh yeah; how about that. They're actually on the map. Here's the full topo quad, for easier referencing

Thanks for organizing, Sean and to everybody else for coming out! We hiked some old fire breaks, looking for spotty bits of shade and an occasional artifact or critter. The views made this all worth it. Great to finally meet you, David!

The 6 of us started at Monte Cristo camp in the morning, and ...

The road from above is clearly seen in the magic high-resolution DEM map:
No clear roads or trails below that. Were you looking for something specific? Or are you exploring every single canyon?

Years ago I tried to summit Cobblestone Peak with some people. We drove from Hungry Valley to the end of the road by Sewart peak, started the hike, and then hiked White Mountain instead for some reason. I think it the weather was weird or something? I don't recall. But I do recall the road we drove ...

Peak summer is behind us, so Death Valley is visitable again. I just went over there to check out the Albatross .

I started walking in the morning from Towne pass. Looking back down from a bit up the hill:

https://gal.secretsauce.net/travels/DeathValley/2024-10-13--Death-Valley-Albatross/R0008002 ...

Yesterday I climbed Mount Wilson from Eaton Canyon, a bit above Idlehour. The idea was to pick a side drainage, and follow the creek as much as possible, ending up somewhere at the summit area, with a victory coffee at the Cosmic Cafe. It worked!

The river has falls

https://gal.secretsauce.net ...

The article: https://archive.is/GKrFY

So I'm trying to get to Cobblestone mountain. The usual approach from Sewart peak isn't an option because of the Post fire. I tried to approach from the West , but that route is laughably rough and un-bikeable. That leaves the approach from the South as the only remaining route that I've heard of ...

Here's the caltopo link from my route planning, with the extra road walk added. If I ask caltopo for the profile, it says 6142' gain, 1836' loss. This comes from sampling the elevation maps, so I would expect this to be a slight underestimate of the true effort (because in reality I didn't follow ...

I rode up to the San Olene water tank at ~7pm yesterday. From the tank I could see the chopper flying in the canyon, shining its lights on the Lower Clamshell rd. On the descent I rode by the chopper sitting on the helipad, blades spinning. Lots of firefighter, SAR folks were congregated at the end ...

Found post-event (Jan 10) imagery from Altadena and some of the mountains: https://soar.earth/maps/2025-los-angeles-wildfires-10-jan-2025-107279?basemap=OpenStreetMaps&pos=34.18900524530363%2C-118.11496414528641%2C18.35 Altadena looks devastated. Mountains are mixed. South-facing canyon slopes are ...