EISPIRATEN

Norma, Camille, Zach and I sort of hiked together today. We were all on the same basic mountain range, so we will count it as a group trip. Norma and Zach wanted to ascend Falling Rock Canyon. Camille and I thought that sounded crazy and somewhat unpleasant. I had a trail camera to maintain on Bighorn/Ontario ridge. We met at 7:30 at the trailhead, and decided to pick our own routes, but meet on Ontario Peak around 11am.

The short walk from the parking lot to the FRC turnoff revealed a fresh set of mountain lion tracks - something I never would have expected on such a busy trail. So kitty had been through that evening, no doubt about it.

Zach and Norma headed up the rocky canyon, while Camille and I took the trail and followed the tracks all the way up to the saddle. Continuing on toward Kelly's Camp, we saw bighorn tracks, and here and there could still pick out the lion, who, like us, apparently prefers well graded trails.

At the ridge, Camille and I replaced the somewhat malfunctioning camera with one I know is working. I was happy to find one bighorn video, and know there will be many more in the next few weeks.

We hiked on toward Ontario, and shouted out various animal noises, and thought we heard some replies back from FRC. Norma and Zach made it up to the peak about 20 minutes before we did. Impressive!

A nice break on the summit with cool breezes, tree climbing, and several renditions of the national anthem entertained us for about an hour. Zach wanted to hit the Three Ts on the way back, and Norma wanted to show us Falling Rock ridge, and a bit of the canyon, so we split up once again. We did see more mtn. lion tracks, and fairly fresh scat on the ridgeline. (Someone has been helping to manage the bighorn population... ) I was nervous about the infamous scree slope, but it turned out to be fun, and not scary at all.

The canyon was a jumble of small boulders and a few downclimbs. It was interesting, and I'm glad I saw it, but also glad I did not have to ascend it.

More stories and pics will follow, but for now here is a Very Special presentation of the FallingRockCreekOntarioPeakSnowCreek SCREAM.



and the sheep video

YESAAH! The hiking today was awesome. It was my first time through Falling Rock Canyon and boy was it a treat. The terrain was great with mostly scrambling and a few scree slogs here and there... kept things interesting. Unbeknown to me there were GROVES of delicious wild raspberries along the canyon (which had a pretty decent water-flow for this time of year).


There was also this cool granite face with some great top-roping possibilities.


During one of our breaks along this hidden Eden I could have sworn we were surrounded by 6 or so busy little hummingbirds. It was sweet. We got to Ontario (all but Timber were new summits for me) and I put in another stellar vocal performance before we parted ways. I headed along the ridge-line to Big Horn Peak, quickly summited and followed a faint use/game trail down the other side to Cucamonga saddle and kept moving up the other side to hit the 3 T's.



At Timber I realized that my 2 liters for the day were going to be quite inadequate but still felt pretty good so I pushed on to Telegraph, which now has a really cool sticker on its summit register.





Not wanting to retrace my steps, I slid down a scree slope to the saddle between Telegraph and Thunder. Thunder summit was kind of disappointing and I was starting to feel the effects of dehydration.



I picked an easy "scree run" to the bottom and ended up below the Baldy Ski Area... weird. By some small miracle I found an unopened, albeit old, bottle of water and guzzled it down. Ugh, it had a nasty plastic taste. At that point I didn't feel like climbing anymore so just went with the path of least resistance. I followed a small canyon until it opened up to none other than the base of Lightning Couloir. I laughed to myself because Taco had voiced an interest in exploring that particular canyon during a much colder and whiter outing There was also a delicious little spring with ice-cold water that I indulged in before scrambling down to the road. My thanks to the off-duty ranger for picking me up and taking me down to IHC and Camille for leaving me that ice-cold water bottle!

Lenticular over Mt. Baldy


There's a Bighorn Ram somewhere in there:

8)

Sounds like you all had a great day. I want to try that Falling Rock Canyon one of these days....Nice Pix (can't see the video from where I'm at bummer)

Did you go to the actual summit or was this an official NHPS outing??
Looks like fun!

The scream video is primordial!

hvydrt wrote:Did you go to the actual summit

Yes, we all summited Ontario. On the way down, we near-summited Sugarloaf peak though...so they cancel each other out I think!

a Few pics I took:



Kitteh (this is from one paw landing on top of the other, so it looks a little messy)



Summiteers



Camille on the ridge



Norma climbs the tree

cougarmagic wrote:
Norma climbs the tree

Another Hiker was spoted in that same tree on Saturday morning 8/14/10 at around 9 AM and it's hard to make out who it is
but I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count


It appears that Ontario is a popular spot these days.
Would have been nice to join you up FRC what's the word for this weekend?

Hey, look! A tree ballerina!


Total NHPS fail.


HJ

Patrick and Norma, I can see both of you as kids climbing the trees now you're just big kids climbing anything you can!

beautiful day for a hike Wednesday was. lookie here...

Zach in the lush Eden that is Falling Rock Canyon


flowers, flowers everywhere and berries too!


one of those so fun climbs that you never want it to end


on the summit with Camille, Zach and Johanna


the infamous Snow Creek Scream!!!!!!!!!


Johanna scree skiing down from the Sugarloaf Saddle.


the rest of my pix are here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ryan.norma8 ... ckCyn81810#

Great pictures as always Norma

You all make it look soooo easy. What a great day of hiking, and videos. I bet you could hear that scream from the top of Ontario (the tree top that is) all the way back down FRC!