Situated between Big Tujunga Canyon Rd and the Angeles Crest Highway, and circled by the Angeles National Forest highway, Josephine Peak and its ridge are not at all remote by San Gabriel Mtns standards, with thousands of people getting an eyeful of its charismatic granitic south face when coming up the ACH and rounding the bend at Georges Gap.
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The ridge is also striking to view from above by hikers leisurely climbing the fireroad to the popular Josephine summit.
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The contrast between the craggy, steeper south face and the carpeted green slope of the north remind me of the sort of topography one sees in the bedding planes of sedimentary rock, for example in the Santa Monica or Santa Susanna Mtns. Much more rare in the homogenous uplift and tectonically tortured intrusive igneous crystalline rock of the San Gabriels, where shapes are cut by erosion in equal measure in a variety of chaotic angles, and you don’t have see these triangular or polygonal shapes. I think the unique character of the Josephine ridge can be credited to the extinct but powerful San Gabriel fault, which up until about 5 million years ago was the location of the San Andreas fault itself, leaving a readily-erodible gash of mashed rock in the San Gabriel Mountain pluton and effectively delineating the boarder between front and back country we know and love to this day. That San Gabriel fault line is now traced by clear creek, and I believe is responsible for effectively severing Josephine Peak from Mt Lukens in violent fashion, and displacing them east and west of each other by about 4 miles, as vividly illustrated by the current course of Big Tujunga Creek. The resulting tear in the rock now expresses itself as the craggy granitic cliffs of the south face of Josephine Peak’s ridge, while the brush-choked north slope is the older, more conventionally eroded former north slope of Mt Josephlukens. This is an original theory of amateur geologist yours truly, but there is genuine lithologic, tectonic and topographic evidence to support it.
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I love me a good ridge, and this one caught my eye last November en route to a Strawberry Peak ascent. Here is a subsequent thread of recon done here at Eis Piraten, with lots of helpful insight from this knowledgable community:
viewtopic.php?t=9301
To my great surprise, despite being in a readily accessible location, with plenty of visual charisma, there is no record of the entire west ridge of Josephine peak being travelled by a human other than one Sierra Club member Erik Siering WAY back in 1998. https://hundredpeaks.org/archives/hps01360.htm And he came up the north slope, so there is truly no record of total completion starting from the very southern tail. The reason is, attaining this super cool ridge line from below is very, very difficult. The south face is riddled with crumbling cliffs, and then 16 years after the Station Fire, the north slope is a thick carpet of impenetrable whitethorn and all its brushy friends. Erik Siering came up the north slope, in a pre-Station Fire world where political polarization was congenial under a Bill Clinton presidency, the economy was booming in the .com bubble, global warming was *maybe* a thing, Radiohead was at the peak of their powers, and this area of the San Gabriel mountains was a whole lot friendlier to the curious explorer. Erik Siering was enjoying a different world than we have today.
But I vowed that on April 5th 2025, like summiting Oat Mtn from the north side, to make history. And I had two brave and accomplished mountain explorers willing to join the quest. JeffH and Jeko are absolutely the sort of people you want for a mission like this.
500 feet from the ANF Highway turnout we parked at, only 10 minutes into the hike, we hit the crux of the whole day. Attaining the ridge is what had turned around previous attempts, because there is no easy way to do it. My route I had carefully traced, using Cal Topo’s once again MVP slope angle shading feature, dodged and weaved around various crumbling cliffs, and we had to remain BANG ON the route up and out of the little drainage bowl if we were to not get cliffed out and put in dangerous position. You could try the north slope like Erik did, but in this day and age you'd be cutting through whitethorn up an extremely steep slope for nearly a mile, which would be hugely time consuming. And you wouldn't arrive at the beginning of the ridge, but rather a fair distance up it already.
I’ve learned that the blue shading is generally unnavigable unless you are fortunate with holds, and black is cliffs. With our route here, we had only 15-20 feet for margin of error in any direction. You can see below we had to shift our path a few times, but only by a few feet each time, but were able to keep the backtracking very minimal while threading our needle through this unforgiving terrain. The navigational precision necessary would sometimes decide which side of a Yucca to walk around! As tempting as some lines might have appeared on the ground, I had done enough preparation to know they would have eventually lead to cliffs higher up. We had to stick to the exact slalom course around the crumbling cliffs I had mapped, and we did.
Not that there weren’t sketchy moments. Because there were.
Here Matt attempts a lateral traverse, stepping gingerly between crumbling granite and a very stab-tastic landing if were to fall. This is one of those blue/black bits I had us going below, if it weren't for the poorly-placed Yucca blocking the way.
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Holds always had to be double-tested, as the rock was so crumbly. Often a hold would turn into a boulder in my hand I then had the challenge to find a place to securely put it down so as not to fall to JeffH or Jeko below me. It ended up being that brush was actually very useful for finding holds. You had to check if it had green on it before grabbing on, so you knew it was alive and more likely to support the weight you needed it to bear. At one point I lost my footing and tumbled backwards, a surreal moment I've never experienced in that precarious of a circumstance. Thankfully brush saved me - both by cushioning my fall and offering holds I could arrest myself with pretty quickly before I tumbled into Jeff and greatly escalated the situation. I've never been more grateful towards brush in my life! From foe to friend. My rose-gardening gloves were clutch for allowing me to strangle-hold a whitethorn or chamise bush without having to think twice. There sometimes wasn't time for thinking twice.
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The slope eased ever so slightly as we neared the ridge, and the brush took advantage, but never to the point of needing loppers.
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After traveling one of the longest, most challenging quarter miles of my hiking life, we emerged on the very beginnings of the Josephine ridge, exactly where I wanted to be. It immediately delivered its guarded, fortified bounty to us, right from the start. We had solved its problem.
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Our walk along the ridge was now a beautiful balance of exposure, challenge and ease.
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We reached one of those enigmatic rusted metal triangles at the farthest western bend of our ridge, broken off at the base. We erected it anew, and up-cycled it as a temporary flagpole.
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We left it proudly standing in its isolated, nearly inaccessible location.
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The Tujunga reservoir snaked below us, and the going continued to be that wonderful balance of exposure, challenge and ease, with the loppers not having to come out once. We were just on the outside edge of a thick menacing wall of whitethorn carpeting the north slope.
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Further up we had circled the drainage we had used as our entry point, and could see our route up high above from the luxury of our new ridge-life. The challenge of ridge-attainment and generally all of life's difficulties seemed so distant now. The ridge-life is the good-life.
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That slope was not for Gabe-beginners...
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On another higher prominence, we came across an old and worn but well-anchored pole of some kind. Another big-kids mystery object.
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Ridge-life continued, and it was glorious. The summit loomed up ahead, but the only ominous thing about it was it marked the eventual end of our ridge-life, which I wanted to last forever. There were no loppers, just epic views and delightful intermittent rock scrambles.
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Jeko and I side-quested to investigate a couple big crags on the north slope, prominent from Big Tujunga Rd, and what originally piqued my interest for this hike. Jeko took one, photographing its snow patch.
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And I took the other.
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We came across another enigmatic triangle.
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And admired more of the ridge appearing in our rear view mirror. Sorry to see it go.
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As we approached the summit, the ridge became a little more average in character, with less exposure and a few bits of whitethorn we had to punch through, meaning we finally unsheathed the loppers.
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The cretaceous granitic intrusion gave way to our old old friend the ancient, swirly Mendenhall gneiss, which I knew meant we were nearing the summit.
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AND FINALLY WE EMERGED AMONGST THE MORTALS ON THE JOSEPHINE PEAK FIRE ROAD!!!!!
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I love when a summit opens up all-new views, and this one totally did, revealing the epic world to the east. Munching my smoked oyster and fruit lunch, I got to take this obligatory photo.
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Hurried participants in the Tourist race rushed past, unable to leisurely bask in summit success like we were, including this odd fellow we happened to encounter:
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I tried to convince him that the west ridge would be the perfect shortcut on bike, but he seemed to be pretty good at navigating these mountains already.
Now for the long and winding road back, continued in the next post.
Solving the Josephine ridge problem
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Nate U
- Posts: 466
- Joined: Wed Apr 05, 2023 7:38 pm
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Nate U
- Posts: 466
- Joined: Wed Apr 05, 2023 7:38 pm
Jeko got his nap in.
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Then we walked and talked all along the Josephine fire road, and then taking a steep little use trail down to Clear Creek station, as ever wondering what all the mysterious infrastructure could be used for. .
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Then onto the Clear Creek trail, which was well maintained through thick brush, and surprisingly popular with other hikers. .
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This dropped down to Clear Creek and the San Gabriel fault itself, where Jeko felt empowered in its cold, purifying bath. .
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It was a great spot to relax in the first shade of the whole day, and out of the brisk spring wind.
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We accidentally walked into the Clear Creek School, and had to backtrack to the ANF Highway, dodging a few cars back to return to our starting place and closing the loop, and sharing a Starry and a beer with Jeff, discussing adventures of the past and future in the afternoon sun.
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Josephine ridge gave up its treasures with much resistance, but once cracked, it proved to be totally excellent. It now stands as my favorite ridge I've had the pleasure of scrambling along in the San Gabriel mountains, and second in the world only to Gnomes Bridge in the Wasatch. viewtopic.php?t=9117 (With New Vineyard Mountains in Western Maine forever being the sentimental favorite)
Can't wait to see if I can find one that tops it!!
9.52 miles, 3560 gain.
.
.
Then we walked and talked all along the Josephine fire road, and then taking a steep little use trail down to Clear Creek station, as ever wondering what all the mysterious infrastructure could be used for. .
.
.
Then onto the Clear Creek trail, which was well maintained through thick brush, and surprisingly popular with other hikers. .
.
.
This dropped down to Clear Creek and the San Gabriel fault itself, where Jeko felt empowered in its cold, purifying bath. .
.
.
It was a great spot to relax in the first shade of the whole day, and out of the brisk spring wind.
.
.
.
We accidentally walked into the Clear Creek School, and had to backtrack to the ANF Highway, dodging a few cars back to return to our starting place and closing the loop, and sharing a Starry and a beer with Jeff, discussing adventures of the past and future in the afternoon sun.
.
.
.
Josephine ridge gave up its treasures with much resistance, but once cracked, it proved to be totally excellent. It now stands as my favorite ridge I've had the pleasure of scrambling along in the San Gabriel mountains, and second in the world only to Gnomes Bridge in the Wasatch. viewtopic.php?t=9117 (With New Vineyard Mountains in Western Maine forever being the sentimental favorite)
Can't wait to see if I can find one that tops it!!
9.52 miles, 3560 gain.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
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Matthew
- Supercaff
- Posts: 290
- Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 8:25 am
- Location: Pasadena
To ANYONE who is reading this and feels like they want to attempt it, message me because I might want to do it again. This hike was so so dope and definitely up there in terms of favorite climbs up a ridge.
stoke is high