Wilderness Park

[JeffH]

I know it’s not something technical or hard or remote but it is really close to home for me. Drove over to the main parking area but the lower lot was full so we headed over to La Puerta to traverse the alternate route up Sycamore Canyon. From there it’s through Johnson’s Pasture and connect to CHWP down Burbank Canyon and finally back on the paved Thompson Creek trail. This way works out to the same mileage, just a bit less traffic for the first half of the hike.
With a little bit of sun it was a great day to be out. I saw these markers - one I’ve seen before, the other new to me but in the same general location.


This one I knew about although the ground has been eroding the last few years.



His one is unfamiliar, it’s about 50 feet from the other.


Pic just for attention, I like to go visit this lone oak tree.

[Sean]

The first disc is a reference mark for the second one, which is notable for being a traverse station. Typically you see triangulation stations in the Gabes.

[JeffH]

If the first pic is a reference, would there have been one there prior to this? I ask since they are dated 20 years apart. I don’t think the arrow points to the other, I’ll have to go back and look.
And after reading the Wiki page I’ll have to go look for more markers along this traverse.

[Girl Hiker]

What Sean said. He beat me to the punch!

[Sean]

If the first pic is a reference, would there have been one there prior to this? I ask since they are dated 20 years apart. I don’t think the arrow points to the other, I’ll have to go back and look.

It's the third reference mark ("RM 3") for that station. It should point toward the other mark. I suspect that it replaced a missing reference mark when surveyors returned to the site years later. There might be another reference mark (1 or 2) on the other side of the station. But these things have a tendency to grow legs and walk away, or get destroyed by firefighters building breaks.

[tekewin]

I didn't know about Traverse Stations. Interesting.

JeffH, do you have a link to a map of this park? Local parks are always a draw for the easy access.

[JeffH]

This is an easy one - five mile loop or if you're ambitious it's a nine-mile round trip to Potato Mountain from the lower parking lot. As a kid my friends and I would be up here before it was a city park, hiking to Potato or going up to pee on the P that was on the mountainside (for Padua). Lots of folks refer to this place as the Claremont Loop.
http://www.ci.claremont.ca.us/governmen ... -park-chwp
By the way, email from the city last week said they are raising the parking rates once again, now something like $10 during peak hours in the morning. I have a resident permit for the lower lot but that fills up quickly. When that happens we'll park for free at the top of Indian Hill and go up via Sycamore Canyon to the fire roads.

Here is a standard loop:

And here is the alternate loop from Indian Hill:

Both are about the same distance and elevation gain - the one from Indian Hill is obviously much steeper at the beginning.

[tekewin]

Thanks, JeffH, will check it out. And $10 is too much for small park!

[JeffH]

I knew there was a “10”in the email somewhere...

Single Use Four Hour Parking Permit
Saturdays and Sundays opening until 10:00 a.m., $7.00
All other days and times, $5.00

The 2018 Annual permits will remain valid in both lots and residential permits will remain valid in the Thompson Creek Trail parking lot.

Still too much for me but I’m spoiled by living close. The whole loop is 11 miles round trip from home, only 7 for the alternate.

[JeffH]

We walked back over approximately the same loop, except I took a use trail I had seen from the roadway that cuts up to the electrical towers. While taking a photo of what I thought used to hold a triangular marker, I noticed another benchmark right at my feet! Here is the one below the towers, with a topo map I could probably draw a line from this to the other reference point. Of course that would mean that I actually have a map....
Also, I can now confirm the marker placed in 1957 points directly at the one placed in 1937.

Just off the road below the electric line towers - where use trail leaves the road.

Use trail I took to the towers. The fire road goes around this hill behind them from this view.

The other two markers I have seen are in a clearing at the top of this road, where it joins the main road mentioned above.

Picture of the 1957 marker pointing at the older model, next to the metal post.

[JeffH]

Well CalTopo didn't help, it doesn't have the trail leading up from Higginbotham Park so I was a little lost. Google Maps to the rescue, here are a couple of screenshots of the journey.

This is the route up to the road and also the use trail to the towers. Benchmarks are circled.

Zoomed in on the road and use trail. Pink circle is the traverse station marker, Red circle is the later benchmark pointing at the pink, Green circle is the one I found today which is not a traverse.

I know it seems like I'm obsessing over this but from the earlier discussion it seems if I draw a line along these points I should find one or more additional markers, correct?
Anyway, since I get up there a lot it might lead to more exploring and this is a good time of year to do it. All the grasses have gone dormant and the rains knocked the rest of the stickers off the stalks. Since it's cold we don't have to worry about critters or slithering things underfoot either.

[Sean]

I know it seems like I'm obsessing over this but from the earlier discussion it seems if I draw a line along these points I should find one or more additional markers, correct?

Probably not. What you found today was a quarter-section corner mark. It identifies the surveyor's boundary between two sections (28 and 33) on the Mount Baldy Quadrangle. I don't know much about these particular survey marks, but they are different from benchmarks used to measure elevation.