Looking at the topos and the aerials, there's a pretty clear route to take: Deer Canyon to a gully that runs NW just past the West Cucamonga Truck trail crossing. The gully looks to be brush-free, and connects to the ridge past most of the bushwhacking. Then you'd take the ridge all the way up. Looking back, this is exactly the route headsizeburrito took when he did this earlier.
Unrelatedly, I rode up the West Cucamonga Truck trail last month to see how good is. It was much better than expected. I didn't reach the end of the maintained section, and wasn't clear on when that ends, exactly. So the plan this time would be to kill two birds with one stone: try riding the truck trail all the way to Deer Canyon, hopefully. Then stash the bike, climb the gully, then the ridge to the top.
Alright. For various uninteresting reasons I couldn't schedule this like normal people. So I worked all day, then showed up at the foot of the mountain at 2AM on Friday, aiming to hit the saddle at 4736ft at sunrise. That's where the really nice section of truck trail ends. Parking is restricted at the very top of Sapphire rd, but just below that, normal street parking is allowed, I think.
The local SAR is tired of dealing with dumb rescues:
And the start of the canyon road has VERY ambitious signage.
I'm assuming this is referring to the Joe Elliot camp, on the other side of miles of heavily overgrown road. Other than that, there isn't a single tree to be found, big or little.
And the falls are closed. Too many people get stuck and need rescue? Or too much trash and graffiti? Both?
This road is STEEP. I was ahead of schedule to get to my saddle at dawn, and there was no reason to grind out the climb. So I just hike-a-biked most of it. There has heavy fog on the ground, and I started breaking through it at about 4000ft. It was around in some form all day.
Even with the walking, I still made it to the saddle a bit early. Took a break, drank my coffee, etc. Continuing up the road, it starts deteriorating, and the end of maintenance TODAY is around the switchback at 5200ft. I stashed the bike there. From there until it meets the ridge at 5300ft (a pretty short section) the brush is pretty thick. There's actually a bypass trail on the ridge from 4915 to 5300 directly, and I guess the current trail builders are clearing both the bypass and the roadbed. I haven't actually walked the bypass, but it looked clear. There's some signage that feels comical given the conditions today:
Past 5300ft the roadbed is clear until the junction at 5385ft (the start of the ridge to Calamity Peak). Sean, tekewin and co came this way.
The big prize and Calamity Peak and point 6786 ("Greater Calamity" from here on) are clearly seen.
I tried to stay on the road towards Deer Canyon, but the brush was thick, and it was taking more effort than I felt like putting in. So I decided to go to Calamity Peak instead, as a consolation prize. To my surprise, there's now a clear trail all the way to the top. The trail builders (the hikerevolution people or maybe just @rockhoundhiker) totally rock. View down from the climb. Check out the thick trail cut at the center of the photo:
At the top is a solid register box.
with lots of hikerevolution stickers inside. As expected by now, Chuck Hodi has been there. Has anybody met this guy? He's like the Mars Bonfire of obscure peaks.
Cool views from Calamity. Turtle's Beak, Ontario:
The city and road I came from
The road I decided not to battle
And you can look ahead to Greater Calamity, and Cucamonga
The ridge to Greater Calamity looks rough, except the maintained line continues. It doesn't quite get all the way up to Greater Calamity yet, but probably they're working on it. No register or anything on top. The only human-made anything up there is this old broomstick with a wire:
The next section is the worst brush of the whole day. It sucks. It's thick and composed mainly of whitethorn.
It ends at the lateral ridge that runs to pt 6524. Past that is all the cool stuff. There's still a lot of brush, but lots of interesting terrain and knify ridges. Generally, the right side is cliffy and the left side is brushy.
There's some really cool green rock.
And you can see the next section
It's very steep and very unstable. The rock is bad. On the way up I went right (E), on the way down I went left (W). Both are sketchy. The sketchy lines are shorter on the left, but maybe are harder if climbing instead of descending. I wouldn't call this "climbing" even. Be careful.
At the top there're some narrow ridges, and eventually the next climbing section comes into view
I wanted to avoid all the brush on the left, and just climb the gully on the right instead. Some sketchy moves are needed to even get to the gully, and once in it, it feels kinda dangerous. I eventually gave up, and went left to deal with the brush instead. headsizeburrito made the same decision. Once done with all that, you get to point 7585. It's full of cool narrow ridges and some trees, even. The route ahead:
It's steep but manageable. The brush isn't as thick, the rocks are cool and the trees are nice. Looks like this
Then I summitted, and got to see the view I came here for
And it started to snow
There's a wooden board thing at the summit
And another (with a bigger number) at the false summit
Eventually the clouds cleared, and the view opened up. The brushy section, Greater Calamity, and so on:
View of pt 7585 on the descent:
Approaching the green saddle
It is really cool. Have another photo
So yeah. This was a cool ridge. But now that I wrote this, I see that in fact, it actually kinda sucks. In either case, I'm not coming back soon.
