I've been eyeing this hike to thorn point along the ridge for a few years and last time tried it on a whim while in the area, wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and without a saw. So when last weekend's passage ride was cancelled, Rich and I made plans to instead try this bad boy out, and this time, to come well prepared. It started off well enough: we set up camp Friday night at the creek side piedra Blanca backcountry site, complete with massive oak trees, a nice fire pit, and ample stuff to burn. Saturday morning we started the real hike, up the canyon on the trail overgrown with whitethorn and replete with poison oak on the lower sections. After a few thousand feet of gain, we got to the high point of the trail, a saddle, and at this point moved onto the ridge toward thorn point. The ridge traverse is about 2.5 miles one way, versus hiking the established winding trail 8 miles and 2000ft of elevation change, so it seemed worth a try. The beginning is deceptively friendly with pine trees, soft duff, and such, but after ~1/2 mile it takes a turn for the worse. I later realized this is probably because that initial section is north facing, which is less hospitable to white thorn. After this easy section, one must navigate a field of vegetation, and get up on a gradually sloping boulder. In the past, this is where I had turned back due to overgrown white thorn. Not this time... We spent fifteen or so minutes lopping and sawing through the thicket just past this boulder, making an alright path through it. It was pretty slow going after, but the theme of the ridge traverse gradually settled in: lots of white thorn all over, with patchy rock outcroppings to scramble over. These rocks offered a respite from the pointyness, but were tricky to navigate due to the grade and random drop offs which necessitated frequent down and up climbing to make progress over (mostly 2nd/3rd class). We eventually figured we'd go along the ridge but just north of it behind some cliffs bands, as this offered more trees and less white thorn, but as we kept going, these rocks got more severe, and the slope we were traversing steeper. Ultimately we made it probably 2/3 of the way accross the ridge, coming to about 1 mile of the point. Looking at the topo map now, it makes sense why we had so much trouble here: it gets quite steep on the north side of the ridge as one closes in on thorn point. The top of the ridge itself is too jagged to traverse, and the south is too vegetated with white thorn. All in all it seems like a futile exercise to try again, but at least the views were great, and the exploration was fun. Rich even found an old tin can at the spot we truned back from, so clearly someone had been here long ago.
On the way back we stuck much more to the north side of the ridge, following a game trail with what looked to be bear prints most of the way back to that initial boulder where the white thorn hell all began. It was far more efficient than the path we had initially taken. Bears know how to do it right I guess. After another couple hours of hiking we were back in camp, beaten down, but feeling refreshed after a sunset dip in Piedra Blanca Creek.
Was this one of those trips where you can see the goal the whole time, but it's unattainable? Sure you don't want to go back? You know the bear trick now