EISPIRATEN

I hiked through that area a few weeks ago on my Wilson loop and snapped a few pics of the burn and the poodle dog bush: Nice pics! I've been doing some work on the Wikipedia article on this species. Would it be OK with you if I adapted one or two of your pics and put them in the article? You would ...

dima wrote: Why is it there? Was there a fire?

Yes, it's a burn area. The fire was in October 2017.

There is poodle dog bush growing along the burned area near the top of the Mount Wilson trail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eriodictyon_parryi This is an opportunistic plant that tends to be one of the first colonizers of burned areas. It's extremely nasty if your skin touches it -- in my experienc...

Hey, it's me, always trying to avoid snow :) I've seen some trip reports on the tall mountains lately where people seem to still have spikes on. Any idea what elevation the snow line is at these days? (Obviously it'll vary North/South face of the mountains). Just looking for a vague estimate. How h...

As a bonus, the alternate route through Anza Valley was looking really beautiful this weekend after the spring rains. The Desert Sun article was from March 12, and says that "traffic officials now expect both roads to be closed through at least June." I talked to a local, and she said the ...

Does anyone have any up-to-date info on the condition of the roads in and out of Idyllwild? Apparently there are multiple roads that have had stretches destroyed by rainfall, and it may take a long time to fix them...?

Thanks for the info, @bapolis. I hadn't been aware of the So Cal Snow Avalanche Center, http://www.socalsnow.org/ . Looks like an excellent source of information. If I'm understanding correctly, this was at about 3 in the afternoon on Saturday, and was the second of two avalanches that day. You can ...

I made an unsuccessful mid-week solo attempt to do Baldy today via the Bowl. There are lots of inaccurate and out of date signs on the road saying chains are required (actually the road is plowed and completely free of snow and ice), that there is "no access for snow play," and that parkin...

Back in late winter 2015 (pre-Lake fire), friends and I went up the right side of Xmas tree hill (as shown in your picture), up the Jepson bowl to Jepson, then over to the saddle between Charleton and little Charlton. Cool. How was the top of the Jepson bowl? It looks pretty steep on the topo. What...

Sean wrote: Thanks! Was that 10 degrees with the wind chill? I'm guessing it was more like -10.

The 10 degrees was without wind chill. With windchill was supposed to be a little below zero IIRC.

A group of four of us had been planning to do San Gorgonio from the north on Saturday, but the forecast was for a one-day cold snap with high winds, so we shifted to Friday, which was still forecast to have cold and wind, but not as bad. The forecast for Friday was about 10°F on the summit, with 30 ...

I'm looking to get a boot/crampon combo that will allow me to do a bowl ascent of Baldy. I've gotten a lot of different advice for what is actually necessary. It looks like you're familiar with the B2, C3, etc. terminology. I use B2 boots and C2 crampons, i.e., there is a heel bale and a toe strap....

Hi Ellen -- Nice to hear from you. How have you been? I wrote a separate TR that describes the snow and conditions: charlton-peak-from-south-fork-jan-27-2019-t7972.html Interesting, I hadn't realized that anybody bothered to mark backcountry ski routes. Would it be the forest service putting these u...

Lara sent me some pics she took that show the snow conditions in the bowl.

Left side, where we went up:

Middle/right:

Photo of one of the signs, with most of the paint peeled off.

My friend Matt Kraai and I did Charlton Peak today, leaving the South Fork trailhead at 6 am. The hardest climbing of the day was about 100 feet from the parking lot, where the trail was completely covered in ice. Matt somehow managed to get up it, probably through some combination of patriotic ferv...

A friend and I did Charlton Peak today and then came back approximately by the route shown as a black line below. We saw a bunch of old-looking orange triangular signs on the trees, about 10' above the snow. I should be able to post a picture of one. On one tree there was also an arrow pointing east...

To me, the purposes of microspikes are: (a) They let you move efficiently in mixed conditions where booting it would force you to move more cautiously and crampons would be a pain. (b) They work great for low-angle ice, especially on roads and in parking lots. (c) If you can't afford crampons and cr...

BrianK wrote: > Would micros be enough to summit Baldy on a warm day? It depends on the route and the conditions. If you're doing the Ski Hut Trail, then you would want to go up through the trees where the trail goes up the left side of the bowl, and people often do that without even having microspi...

Went up Baldy Friday with Dima Kogan and Lara Schoen via the Ski Hut and bowl. This was the first time Lara and I had hiked with Dima, although I had a connection to Dima through a friend, Matt Kraai, who, like Dima, is an open source software enthusiast. Since it's important to start the day off ri...

ReFreshing wrote: Great report! Sounds like a great hike despite the icy roads and mini-postholing. Did you see any others on the trail today?

We were only sharing the mountain with two other people all day. It probably helped that the road was closed

I did San Gorgonio via Vivian Creek yesterday with a friend from SCMA, Lara Schoen. There were some difficulties getting to the trailhead, which will be important for anyone planning to go there in the near future. Several of the off-ramps on the eastbound 10 are closed. Also, the final stretch of V...

Thanks for posting about the Wilson trail. By the way, if you want to help out financially with maintenance on that trail, you can donate to the Fletcher Fund. By check: Sierra Madre Community Foundation, PO Box 716, Sierra Madre, CA 91025 Online: http://sierramadrefoundation.org/smcf/donations/ Inc...

I got some responses from this board and from a post on the SCMA board. Jan 19-20 looks not practical/safe because of the huge storm and possible avalanche danger, but have some tentative playdates set up for the following week. Anyone who's interested in this sort of thing is still welcome to get i...

I'd like to do San G from the north side while the conditions continue to look like they might be good. Have done the route once before. This is class 2/3, steep snow, where you want to bring ice ax, crampons, and a helmet. I'm chicken to do this sort of thing alone, since it would suck to lose cont...

There's a similar phenomenon if you look at trailrunproject.com compared to strava.com. Trailrunproject emphasizes high-quality descriptions of high-quality trails. Strava is just an app, and all you have to do is strap a cell phone to your arm when you go for your run. Trailrunproject does have som...

Possibly helpful info: https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2018/1 ... -shutdown/

Sean wrote:Do you mean the snow on the ground was melting fast, or just the stuff in the trees?

Both. The reason for the extreme balling conditions was that the fresh powder was melting so fast.

We had a second snowstorm this week, so I went up to San Gorgonio again, and got my butt kicked even more severely. My brilliant idea was to improve my chances of summitting by starting earlier, so I left home early and was able to start up trail at 6 am. This of course meant that I had arranged for...

JeffH wrote:

> Did you have any traction devices - Microspikes, crampons instead?

I used microspikes. Brought crampons in my pack but never took them out.