EISPIRATEN

Sunday morning, I parked at the end of the public portion of Acorn Drive up in Wrightwood and set foot for Old Baldy's summit. Despite a warm weather forecast, temperatures were pleasantly cool all day. I started up The Acorn Trail heading for Blue Ridge at 0700. The Pacific Crest Trail took me from Acorn to the head of 7W06.2, the north Devil's Backbone. The portion of the trail that divides Prairie Fork from Lytle Creek's north fork was devoid of meaningful snow. There were plenty of opportunities to bypass the sections of snow covering the balance of the trail up to Pine Mountain's summit. Similarly, it was easy to stay out of the snow by hanging west of the trail for a short stretch of the climb up Dawson. For the steep ascent up Mount Baldy, I donned crampons and axe, planning to ascend the snowfield that I had been eyeballing from the trail across Dawson. The snow turned out to be a bit soft for the crampons, so I intermittently chose dryer terrain. I reached the crowded summit of Mount San Antonio at 1300 and hung around for around fifteen minutes before heading back down. The soft snow was perfect for boot (crampon) skiing all the way down to the saddle. The return trip to Wrightwood was uneventful, save for some striking cloud shadows over sections of the high country.


Dirt road between the end of Acorn Drive and the trailhead.


Slide area near the top of Wright Mountain.


Mount Baden-Powell and Mine Gulch seen through the morning haze.


Prairie Fork, with B-P in the background.


Summit of Iron Mountain.


Mount San Antonio as seen from Pine Mountain. Dawson is at the extreme left of the picture.


Eyeballing the ridge up Baldy from Dawson.


Crowd on Mount Baldy's summit.


Fish Fork and Pine's long ridge.


One of many prominent trees on Baldy's ridge.


Looking down towards Stockton Flat.


Fish Fork, San Antonio Ridge and Iron Mountain.


GPS track and elevation plot.

Most excellent!!

Awesome!! 8)

I like this picture. The shadows are cool.

nice hike. great pictures. first ever picture of the approach to the beginning of the acorn trail i've ever seen.

nice to see more TR's being posted too. keep it up. next time i see someone mention they were hiking somewhere and i don't see a corresponding TR, i'm gonna...hmm...well...i'm gonna say something nasty.

Great TR. That hike is on my to do list. Bet you didn't see very many people on the trail (besides Baldy). Nice photos of the San Antonio Ridgeline too.

Nice job! I made this trip on 8/13/97, the day the Charmin Fire started in the east fork. The fire really got moving on our return leg on the northern backbone hike. As you can well imagine, the view of the fire was amazing. Anyway, great narrative and photos

congrats on a great hike.

nothing to sneeze at - it's a strenuous hike out and back.

nice pix too!