Whatever the motivation(s), through sort of a process of accretion and escalation I eventually had this 10.5 mile mostly X-Country route anyone would consider repetitive, monotonous, difficult, unremarkable and generally, well, unappealing. And I wouldn’t disagree with you. But I guess I wanted to push myself using all of those criteria. I think it was sort of a monastic sensibility I had in conceiving of this route - this wasn’t supposed to be a great hike. But it was all the specific challenges I’ve faced on hikes before, taken further, deeper, longer.
I left my car at the mouth of Sand Canyon and Justina and I drove to the mouth of Iron Canyon - which we discovered was completely gated off because of a big fancy Iron Canyon Ranch. driving the access road further, I realized I needed to change my route and on the fly decided I would climb up the ridge to the North of Iron Canyon, eventually linking up with the road when it crossed one of the saddles. Justina dropped me off at the end of the road, joyously free of any dreaded “No Trespassing” signage. I strapped on my gators and plunged once more unto the breach. Cal Topo’s slope angle shading immediately became incredibly useful picking an impromptu route up the start of the ridge. During this my cheap sunglasses I found in the Tujunga broke, but I could tighten them with a strap to stay in place.
This initial ascent was steep, but there was a faint use trail I followed.
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This lead to an impressively large cairn of gabbro rocks. Gabro is what the majority of my ascent would be upon. This is a black, mafic, ancient rock rusting red with iron - chemically similar to the basalt erupting from oceanic volcanoes but intrusively cooled miles beneath a long-gone surface. Its probably a couple billion years old, but dating information does not seem to be available. Its the stuff that was already here when all the other stuff was deposited from above or intruded from below.
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Having attained the beginning of this unnamed ridge, one of many rising towards Magic Mountain, I could now see my day layed before me. A bumpy ridge stretching miles and miles ahead, all of it covered in a thick, rich carpet of unbroken green brush.
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Bump after bump after bump!!! I quickly lost count but I must have gone up and over a dozen of them. None had registers or even cairns. The Iron Canyon road cut I could just *barely* make out winding its way along the north side of the ridge, ever so slightly graded into the steep slope. The brush had started at knee height at the beginning of my ridge, but steadily became taller, and by the time I reached the saddle where I connected with Iron Canyon "road" 2.2 miles in, I was up to my shoulders. In the saddle there was absolutely no indication of road ever having been there. It was nothing but thick brush. Using my track, I followed along exactly where the road was *supposed* to be, but there was no sign of it. And the fact it lead me along the north slope of the ridge did me no favors. It was no road and all steep slope with endless, thick as hell tangle of brush. I had answered my question. Iron Canyon Rd was a non-entity post-Sand Fire, and is useless being on OSM.
Here is a photo down Iron Canyon Road where I abandoned it to climb back up to the ridge line. Not much of a road.
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More bumps! Must have been another dozen as I cruised along the ridge. The brush got slightly lower as I climbed, from shoulder height down to waist, which made the going much better. At 12:00pm I reached the forest road up to Magic Mountain and my first trail, 3.6 miles into the hike.
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Not sure what the name of this road is exactly, but its in great condition, having been recently plowed and graded. I hiked along it for 0.3 until I scurried off again to save myself some mileage through more X-country. Closer to the city, this route would have had a nice little informal use trail along it. Way up here deep in the Magic Mountain Wilderness, I wasn't so fortunate. All brush battle, including meeting our old friend, Buckthorn. Huzzah!
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I could look back and see my entire route up from the Santa Clarita Valley, 2500 feet below.
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I came upon power lines making their way up to the Nike Missle site on top of Magic Mountain. They must have survived the Sand Fire. Still no use trail.
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After a mile of x-country travel through various brush, I reconnected with the forest road at about 1pm, and traveled a little further along it until I was at the head, the very very beginnings, of the one and only Sand Canyon, where I turned off the sweet sweet bare gravel of the road to meet my fate down this 6 mile drainage. The time was 1pm, with sunset at 5:30. 4.5 hours to make it 6 miles down this canyon to where my car waited for me at the other end. Lets do this!
Looking down Sand Canyon from the top:
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It was chilly up here at 4500ft in the winter winds so I found a sheltered spot (not hard) to munch a lunch of a can of delectable canned milkfish. If this couldn't fuel me down the entirety of Sand Canyon, nothing could.
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This highest reach of the Canyon was a decently fun scramble down white granite, a more recent intrusion into the gabbro that makes up the majority of the San Gabes. This was a similar idea to the ledge and boulder hopping I did down to Alder Crag. Rough and rugged, but engaging and I could make slow but steady progress. I took a decently cautious pace, being out here in a remote location alone.
Came down this sort of thing, looking down at it from above:
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And looking up at it from below:
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The rock hopping got a little less intense, but with that, the brush started to become a real problem. The worst thing about navigating these narrow canyons are blow-downs. You can push through the willows, the scrub oaks, even the buckthorn when you have to. You can even step gingerly around most of the Yucca. But blow-downs that criss-cross the drainage 9 years after a fire in a giant tangled mess? It SUCKS. You can't push through it. You can't even cut it. You gotta crawl, or jump, or smash, or I don't even know what. I don't think there is anything worse. Blow-downs blow, and they were making me increasingly nervous about the 6 miles I had to cover before nightfall.
This was what my life looked like in Sand Canyon:
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Amidst the abuse I did notice we returned to the gabbro basement rock again. Won't ever let canyon torture fully distract me from lithologic observation.
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After 2.5 hours I had progressed a grand total of 1.3 miles. As determined as I was to conquer the entirety of Sand Canyon, this was just not going to happen with the available daylight. I had 2 hours left of daylight to go 4.7 miles, and things weren't getting better at all. I really didn't want to engage in this level of crash and thrash in the dark. I also didn't have cell service in there so I would have scared my poor wife to not return home until the wee hours of the night. I had to abort. There was absolutely no remotely good way to do that. The canyon was narrow, steep, and absolutely covered in brush. I found a zone a little further down that at least was not cliffs (THANK YOU SLOPE ANGLE SHADING FOR THE BEAUTIFUL SERVICE YOU PROVIDE) with the Clara Divide rd somewhere above and went for it. Choked with buckthorn and scrub oak at a 45 degree slope, it somehow was preferable to the tangle of chaos and pain that was the canyon bottom.
It all looked like this:
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I finally burst out onto the Clara Divide Road in a battered heap, questioning all of my life decisions.
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It was 3:30 now, I had 2 hours of daylight. I cruised down the Rd at a steady clip, and decided I could still get back to my car by taking the ridge over pt 3270. I was feeling a lot better about ridge lines than canyons at the time.
Sunlight waning, I took my turn onto the 3270 ridge. I had done a portion of this as a birthday hike 2 years earlier, calling it birthday ridge.
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I was pretty bruised and beaten at this point, but kept up a quick pace. Luckily there was a use trail along the ridge which saved me time and mental energy.
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At the 3270 summit there was this epic hole in the ground?! It looked deep, so sign of a bottom, just blackness into the mountain. What the heck?? It looked kind of recent?? I didn't know what to make of it, and didn't have time to poke around. Anyone have any ideas?
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I was racing against the sun now, but still stole a few glances back up Sand Canyon where I had come.
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Here is the little group of homes at the mouth of Sand Canyon I had investigated with Forest on a Pirate Preschooler hike last year. I was kind of happy to not have to sneak through it at this point.
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The road was in sight now, but it was a steep steep descend between me and my car and light was rapidly failing. I had to move smart and fast.
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The use trail had dissolved into a mess of coyote paths, and in a race against the clock, I decided to conveniently not entirely believe the slope angle shading that there wasn't cliff in the gully I wanted to take to get to the road. Pro tip: Don't conveniently disbelieve the slope angle shading. I glissaded down a gully strait to the top of an unnavigable plunge.
Swearing at my own mistake, I tried a few circumnavigations, nearly at the point of needing to pull out the headlamp, but they were all too sketchy. Finally I found a crumbly glissading slope that had enough brush to arrest my falls with, and tumbled into the wash and safely home free, now with a big tear in the butt of my pants.
I was at the car at about 6pm. Wooohooo!
This hike had everything the San Gabriels are famous for when it comes to torturing us. Why we keep coming back for more I have no rational explanation!
I even nabbed a special, iconic San Gabes souvenir to bring home with me. With this I knew the day was truly complete.
