I knew it was going to be a hot day, so I woke up Cecelia at 3:45am to get an early start. Out the door by 4:45am, we hit the trail around 5:45am. The gate for Gold/Trail Canyons was still locked. So we parked at a turnout along the highway and hoofed it up to the Gold Canyon fire road (3N29).
A little ways up the trail we had a nice, sunrise view of Mt. Lukens.
The fire road is in okay condition for walking. Hardly any light brush. Someone had recently driven the road up to at least the Gold Cyn tank.
It must have been a rather bumpy ride.
After this tank, the road becomes a little more overgrown, but still good for walking. The upper Yerba Buena Ridge came into view.
After a couple hours we stopped at Gold Creek Saddle to take a break on the Yerba Buena water tank.
Here we left the main road and turned sharp right onto the trail up to Mt. McKinley.
I don't think anyone has worked on this trail since the Station Fire. It was overgrown, rocky, and partly crumbling away.
A couple highlights were the flowers and a view down Slaughter Canyon.
By 9:30am we had reached the McKinley saddle and were heading up to the summit.
At the top we found a register and a post. The register had been soaked. The PVC cap doesn't seem to fit very snugly. I guess some rain got through the crack.
We snapped a few pictures and ate something before heading out.
(North Fork of Trail Canyon)
Back at the saddle, the trail switches from the west side of Yerba Buena Ridge to the east side, as it climbs gently to the Mendenhall Ridge road.
A rockslide area in this section has mostly wiped out or covered the trailbed. Though it's still possible, with care, to safely negotiate the use path that has been created.
When we hit the Mendenhall road it was 11:30am and getting hot. Cecelia had some stomach issues, so we stopped a couple times along the road to lay down in patches of shade provided by some brush. We had to push up right into the brush to escape the overhead sun.
Meanwhile, I took a picture of Magic Mountain looming large over Pacoima Canyon.
Eventually we found the west ridge path to Iron Mountain #2.
By now there was a mild breeze which felt good as we rested atop Not-So-Big Iron.
Cecelia posed with her Chinese fan that we bought at the Strawberry Festival in Garden Grove last weekend.
We also carefully inspected the Nat BM.
And admired points to the east, including Mt. Gleason (also on my to-do list).
It was now 2:30pm. We headed down the east ridge and south slope to engage with the Trail Canyon Trail.
A burned trail sign still stood at the top of the route. Not an encouraging omen, but still we pressed on. We were almost out of water and hoped to refill down in the canyon.
Immediately the path was overgrown. We pushed through light to medium brush, sometimes thorns, simply to get down to the convergence of the various headwall gullies.
Somewhere down where the route is supposed to meet the Big Cienega branch, we started losing the trail and all hell broke loose.
The trail might be followable here, but I certainly couldn't find it. We decided to try our luck in the streambed. This was a nightmare. We exhausted ourselves climbing over deadfall, falling through deadfall, climbing around deadfall, pushing through thorny vines and stinging shit, stepping in pools of muddy water and biting mosquitoes, banging our bodies against branches, crawling through poison oak. Basically moving a couple feet per minute. Hours went by. We collected, treated, and filtered water to keep us sane. Nightfall was approaching. We entertained the notion of spending the night in that mess. Cecelia didn't care for that too much.
Finally, about a half hour before complete darkness, we spotted a flag along the north bank. It was a canyoneer's trail. Not much of one. But while up there I then spotted the actual trail along the opposite bank. What a relief that was!
After scrambling back across the junk in the gully, we were very happy to see a cairned path. Not too overgrown, but not perfect. Even so we would take it.
Unfortunately, Cecelia was exhausted, and I wasn't doing too great either. All of our limbs tingled fiercely from the stinging nettles. Our shoes were soaked. Hands and legs bleeding. Clothes torn. Thankfully we had enough food and water for the extremely slow march out, which would take many more hours. We didn't reach the car until 1am, but we were alive and not in need of a rescue.
(Bandana filtering the treated stream water in upper Trail Canyon post-sunset.)
