I drove up the 39 on Fri night. I'd sleep in the general area of Crystal Lake, then bike up to Islip Saddle in the morning, and do my thing. A bit above the East Fork junction I entered the low-hanging cloud, and spent the rest of the drive moving very slowly through the mist. At the Crystal Lake junction the road was closed for some reason. I was practically at the end anyway, so this was fine.
In the morning, the fog was still there, but the roadblock was gone. Up the road, the gate was open, but there were humans there, making sure that only authorized vehicles enter the section up to Islip Saddle. And they wouldn't let me pass, even though I only had a bicycle. Apparently Edison is repairing something up there, and the closure is going to be up for a few weeks. I tried getting more information out of them, but they really had no idea what was going on other than being told to not let anybody through. This was a weekend morning, so sneaking by probably isn't happening while they're up there.
Fine. So the original plan, as envisioned, was out the window, and I decided I'd just go for a hike, doing less bushwhacking than planned. I went up to the lake. I want to say it has lots of water right now, but the visibility was so poor, I'm not entirely certain. The water's edge seemed higher than I remember seeing it. I then found the trail up Mt Islip's South ridge, and started the ascent. The trail is in great shape. At ~ 6500ft I ran into this guy:
He was descending the trail to a traverse. Stopped dead in his tracks, and started whimpering when he saw me. He did want to get to his traverse line, which was now between us, so he'd cautiosly approach and if I made any motion, he'd whimper and jump back. Gave me plenty of time to get out the camera, and take some photos. At about 7000-7500ft I broke through the clouds, and could see the top
And soon after that I was looking down at the world from the peak of Mt Islip
The fog was mostly contained on the South side of the ridge. Mt Williamson:
North to the Mojave:
At this point the trail leads 1 mile East to Windy Gap, but the topos showed a promising ridge directly to the North, so I took that. It's a nice part of the forest. Not too steep, and no brush. There's even a little use trail.
There're several options; my line ended up at the start of the road to Little Jimmy. I walked West a bit to what the map says is the "Pine Hollow Picnic Area". There isn't anything here other than a turnout. I crossed the berm to descend the ridge and was surprised to see a pretty good dirt road. This switch-backs nicely for a while. About half-way down to the creek the ridge steepens, and the road becomes too hard to follow. Above that the roadbed is pretty good, except a few spots where it's overgrown with pines.
Eventually I got down to the creek (one of the branches of South Fork Big Rock Creek). It's flowing nicely
I hung out for a bit, and climbed back. It took so long to get here, I didn't end up walking around as long as I would have liked. Next time. On the return I went through Windy Gap instead of going up/over Islip again, which saved ~600ft of gain. In the meantime, the cloud layer rose up, and crossed the ridge. It was cool and drizzly until I was beneath the mist at ~6500ft.
