EISPIRATEN

GoalHiking wrote: Thu Feb 05, 2026 11:00 am If anyone's interested in doing Villager on Feb 14, please let me know. Moderate pace, starting around 7am or so.

Maaaaybe. I think I'm doing something that weekend already. But if not, I'll let you know. Do write a TR in any case!

Don't hold your breath on Barley Flat Trail - upper Big T to Barley Flat route. We're estimating 2027 at the earliest for tread completion. It's a major mess and severely overgrown. But we are working on it.


I'm not holding my breath. Thank you very much for taking this on. Hopefully I'll join ...

Wow. So little snow. I guess it has been far too warm?

I dunno. But this dude has been there, before the new govt road from Mt wilson was completed (Sun, Sep 13, 1908 ·Page 82):
The_Los_Angeles_Times_1908_09_13_82.jpg

Then the new govt road was built, and there was much rejoicing (Thursday, August 23, 1928)
Pasadena_Star_News_1928_08_23_25.jpg

In ...

Yeah, I know That's why I wanted to see the Barley Flats truck trail. Cleaning that up will be the obvious next thing to do, but I bet it will be less work than fixing either of the trails.

Oh interesting. The modern day Shorcut saddle and pass and road sit E of Barley flat, but maybe that's not the original routing. Thanks for the info

Thanks for the link. MS teams makes me angry, so I think I'll sit this one out. If anybody attends, post an update here!

Anticipating some future trail restoration efforts, I'm thinking of potential loops, and of trails that I wish were usable. One of these is the old powerline road from Red Box to Barley Flats . I've never been on it, but heard that it is quite abandoned. Today I saw it. It's abandoned indeed, but ...

The springs are delightful. The water levels in the creek are high, so the pools are warm only up near the source. Also means the place is hard to get to, and isn't overrun. Whatever naked people are there have put in the work! The gate is closed at Tar Creek, and we biked the 2.5 miles each way to ...

We did the same trip just now. The trail received some maintenance, and is now clear all the way to the springs. Thank you, trail builders! There's a lot of erosion and the water levels are very high. Lots of creek crossings in Alder Creek. The two crossings of the Sespe are deep and fast. The hot ...

Is "finders keepers" a valid legal principle?

What? Seriously? Is that real? On ach?

Regarding the trout: are they still there? Old newspapers have countless articles about people going to the upper areas of the East Fork and "catching the limit" within a few minutes. This thread says that humans fucked this up.

Was out at Mt-Lowe-ish today. The sun mid-day makes the barges near the port stand out:
And the following day you could clearly see Santa Barbara island and San Nicolas island, behind and to the right 105 miles away!

Thanks for the link! One of the photo's captions says "1997". Have you really been running that group for that long? I had no idea.

HikeUp wrote: Tue Jan 06, 2026 10:28 pm

dima wrote: Tue Jan 06, 2026 10:03 pm The new map shows Mt Lowe rd as the border. What does that mean about Mt Lowe Rd?

I would interpret it as the road is open. Same as mt. Wilson trail is open.

Is that what you're asking?

That's what I was asking. Thanks.

The new map shows Mt Lowe rd as the border. What does that mean about Mt Lowe Rd?

I'm looking on ANF alerts page. The original closure order expired. Are we good now? Anybody hear anything?

Found the lead-up to the hunters' paradise article above. It has a great old map!

Speaking of rock quarries and dam face rubble removal, there is an abandoned dam site closer to the east/west fork. The site is visible on the far side of the canyon from the highway. Supposedly some county supervisors went to jail over corruption involving contracts to build the dam at the site ...

Here're some interesting articles I've found that don't belong in any obvious existing thread.

Apparently they had some unexpected problem sourcing rock for the San Gabriel dam. There was a lot of talk to getting rock from Bichota Canyon or Devil's Canyon (I'm not sure which one) instead of ...

Found a few more relevant articles. This one (Morning tribune 1912/03/23 page 8) says that the power plant thing was approved in 1910 and financing was secured in 1912:

Morning_Tribune_1912_03_23_8.jpg

In 1937/08/22 on page 72 the LA Times recommends driving your car up and over GMR, then up to ...

When the road exits the first tunnel, it immediately takes a left to follow the drainage until the crossing at the hairpin: https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=34.25581,-117.76654&z=18&b=f16a. The map shows an imagined road that goes straight out of the tunnel and another imagined road bypassing the ...

This was cool. My photos are here . The lesser tunnel is at the end of an old road, half-way down on the canyon wall. So it was never a water tunnel: the water isn't in the middle of the wall. It isn't big-enough to drive through either. At the other side is a tiny spot in the middle of a really ...

I continued past where I left off the last time . The trail above the second tunnel had washouts I didn't like, so I teleported past them to walk the next chunk of trail. I walked through both of the Shoemaker tunnels to the route up the back ridge to Rattlesnake Peak. After a bit of climbing, the ...

The 5th shot is out-of-focus, I think? The rest look sorta like what I get. You probably want more sensitivity and/or a longer exposure, but then the stars move more. These experiments require patience. Send results if you go again!

Cool stuff. What did you conclude about camera settings? Open aperture, high iso, long, but not looooooong exposure? I play with it sometimes, but don't have the patience to spend the time to do it right.

Is the canyon far deeper than it was?

Should we do another logo? Send some snow photos next time one of yall goes up there

That first map is confusing. I THINK it's just drawn very sloppily. What's going on with the bottom of Rubio Canyon? Where's the incline railway and the PE rail connecting to it supposed to be?