EISPIRATEN

Baldy Bowl is southeast-facing; when you are in LA or at the beach, you are looking at the southwest face of the mountain.

Download Google Earth and play around with it.

When I was a kid, maybe 12 years old, a buddy and I decided to hike along the shoreline from Dana Strands beach to Dana Point Harbor, around the headlands (basically crawling along rocks and tidepools, plus a big cave). The tide came in and we had to go up. I guess it was my first real climb. Pretty...

My troop was a backpacking only troop. One outing every month. The only car-camping we did was at the annual district Camporee. It was an awesome troop (I actually had to shop around for a decent troop, as my local troop in Laguna Niguel sucked; so I joined the San Juan Capistrano Troop 12 a few mil...

On more remote peaks, only serious hikers get out that far, and those registers can go back years and years. Once around 1990 I wandered up to the top of Grinnel Mountain from Fish Creek Saddle in the San Gorgonio Wilderness and was a little surprised to find a register can there. Looking inside, I...

Last time I was there, the ranger manning the station was Korean, which I think is also a smart move.

You see now? National Park Service is trying to take over the San Gabriels, as well as other SoCal ranges... I don't think they are. This study was requested by Congress, not the NPS: As directed by Congress through the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-229-May 2008) , the Nation...

Call the visitors center the day before and ask for a permit. They will pin it to the bulletin board outside the building, across the street from the Baldy Lodge. You can pick it up in the morning as you come up. Mt. Baldy Visitor Center Mt. Baldy Road Mt. Baldy, CA 91759 (909) 982-2829 M-F 8:00 am ...

Hikin_Jim wrote:

TacoDelRio wrote:True.

November, so I've heard.

Just in time to have the rains wash it out. Great.

Government road contractors need to make a living too, ya know.

I suspect the reason it isn't adopted more widely in the San Gabriels is bureaucratic inertia as well as civil service abhorrence of volunteers A prime example is the plans to get contractors to fix trails damaged in the Station Fire. (most of these contractors are current or former FS employees ) ...

Do you guys have other suggestions for improving the SGMs? Sure. The local NFS district should prioritize the recruiting, training and deployment of a corps of volunteer rangers for trail patrols and parking lot orientation and education. Last time I was at Icehouse Canyon I noticed there was a ran...

Make it stop!

Obstruction of justice? Someone may be in deep kimchee.

TacoDelRio wrote:
HUZZAH!

I would prefer that the CA grizzly wasn't extinct. It's my understanding that they were more of a lowland bear and had mostly seperate areas from the black bears in CA. I understand the black bears are not native here. The California grizzlies lived up in the mountains. There were so many of them t...

For the last two years, they have opened their pilgrimages to all faiths in the name of world peace. In many parts of the world, such an invitation would be a non-starter. But Southern California has a long tradition of tolerance for the unconventional. So the Aetherians' hike drew local Muslims, C...

406 wrote:I have spent 1000's of hours in grizzly country and have no negative experiences with them.

You have been lucky.

Again, my objection to grizzlies is they represent a danger that simply cannot be mitigated, as can all the other dangers in the backcountry.

But.... I am sorry that there are no Grizzlies in California, and would have been happy to adapt my hiking to their presence. ( a big gun maybe?). There is no firearm short of a rifle or a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with deer slugs that will be of much use against an 800 lb grizzly. These jokers who c...

Is anyone here really sorry the California grizzly was exterminated nearly 100 years ago?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100729/ap_ ... ling_death

99% of weekends, it is not a matter of beefing up the rangers, it's that there are not any rangers in the first place. Either the forest administration is so broke they cannot put rangers on the trail or they just do not care. Opinions vary, but the bottom line is the forest suffers either way. I a...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/phaedrusre ... 539468034/

It got the point we have to consider the permit system or beef up the number of rangers out there. A permit is required to go up Icehouse Canyon. I see so many people on the trail, I often wonder how many of the hikers actually have permits. Not that it matters. A volunteer in the Visitors Center t...

I hope they aren't anywhere near Icehouse Canyon.

I big pile of stickers was deposited in the summit hut on Mt San Jacinto on Saturday.

He hated those things.

What caught my eye about that site is how every hike includes a listing of quantitative information that might serve as a partial model for what you are thinking of doing.

Is this similar to what you are trying to do?

http://nobodyhikesinla.com/

If the box is collapsed or filled with sediments, then the artesian well will be a thing of the past. Given that it's in a Federal Wilderness Area, there's little chance the box will be repaired.

Shit! I knew I should have turned right at the ridge instead of left!

I'm no geologist, but from what little I understand about these things, I have two theories: 1. Sometimes springs just dry up. The subterranean watercourse gets shifted for some reason and the water no longer appears at the surface at the usual location. I hope that's not what happened here, because...