With the cold wind I cancelled my more challenging hike that I had planned for Sunday and decided on a more moderate route to Pickens. I had missed out on this peak as I had tried to hike it from the north originally on a very hot day and it had become completely overgrown on what used to be the firebreak and I decided to hold off a try from the south with the heat. I started from the top of Harter up the great Tipi Trail that is awesome for workouts it is quite steep. The wind did not really pick up until I got to the tipi and then it became damn cold in a hurry.
I made the left turn onto the fire road and decided to skip Hawks which I had already done and also has a brushy north side now. My hands almost froze so I put on my gloves as I got buffeted by some nice winds. I reached the junction with the other fire road coming up from La Crescenta. The fire break looked decent but yucca was plentiful. The hike up to the first bump was moderate. From there the brush got really thick but fortunately there was vestiges of a use trail. There was one more final slog up the steepest section and some more yucca dodging. The top was pretty flat with lots of brush that was relatively easily avoided with a little foresight. The views from on top were to the ocean with all that wind. I did not stay long with the cold and beat a pretty hasty retreat down the firebreak being even more careful of the yucca infestation.
Once I got back to the tipi trail, I started seeing hikers that use the trail regularly. Otherwise there was only a couple of bikers with bright red faces from the cold. The hike had about 2,300 feet elevation gain in 7-8 miles in just over 3 hours.
I'm guessing that Pickens is one of the bumps along the road from the fire station to Mt Lukens? Which one?