EISPIRATEN

After talking about Mt. Yale last October, I finally made it. Took advantage of the break between storms to head up to Mt. Yale (4760'). First snow was at about 3800' on the north slopes and shaded areas. Above 4500' there was decent accumulation. I was one of the first few to leave tracks in the snow on Mt. Wilson toll road, but on the way down there were a bunch more people heading all the way up to Mt. Wilson. Henninger Flats down to Eaton Canyon Nature Center was crawling with seemingly hundreds of people.

Snow had matted down a lot of the grasses and small shrubs which made the scramble up the south ridge fairly pain free...


Incredibly clean air made the views far reaching...

view towards the Verdugo Hills from Mt. Yale...


San Gorgonio...


Catalina...


Fun in the snow! Heard lots of what must have been rock falls on the sunny snow covered slopes of Wilson, Occidental, etc. Sounded like thunder.

Nice stuff, looks beautiful!

Cool! Nice views, and snow to boot.

What route did you take?

Augie wrote:What route did you take?

I started at the Eaton Canyon Nature Center (~980') and took the Mt. Wilson Toll Road up to where the ridge from Bailey Canyon/Hasting's Peak intersects the road. Literally about 50' further up the road there is a steep but very short use trail on the left that goes up to the south/southwest ridge of Yale. It's not too hard to find the use trail from the road - it's a low tunnel through the brush (currently there is a red ribbon tied in a bush on the opposite side of the road marking the location). Once on the ridge, I just scrambled straight up to the peak. The 6 to 12 inches of snow made it a fun scramble. Returned the same way, making it 12.5 miles round trip and 3800' elevation gain/loss.

And no traffic jambs!

Did you find any remnants of the plane crash? I guess it would have been hard to with the snow,

Travis wrote:Did you find any remnants of the plane crash? I guess it would have been hard to with the snow,

Yeah, I didn't feel like going down into snow (rapidly melting snow) covered brush looking for snow covered airplane parts. I was in shorts and my boots were collecting enough snow as it was . I did however look down towards where I think it was supposed to be - saw only animal tracks so I decided that was enough.

HikeUp wrote: ↑Snow had matted down a lot of the grasses and small shrubs which made the scramble up the south ridge fairly pain free...

Do you wanna upload the lost pic of the south ridge?

We can do this gradually and restore some images per report. I'd focus on ones that might be useful in comparing conditions then to now.

Sean wrote: ↑

HikeUp wrote: ↑Snow had matted down a lot of the grasses and small shrubs which made the scramble up the south ridge fairly pain free...

Do you wanna upload the lost pic of the south ridge?

We can do this gradually and restore some images per report. I'd focus on ones that might be useful in comparing conditions then to now.

Haha. Yeah I can do it when I get home. This hike was the first hike I took my new camera on (before I had a phone that took pictures). Snow on Yale was pretty cool.

One looking up at Yale...


One looking down from Yale...