EISPIRATEN

Jeff Steele joined me in another ludicrous canyon adventure. I have a canyon that drops into Roberts Canyon north of Azusa that I've been eyeing for a couple months now. We drove up R39 and parked at the turnout with the fire road on the west side of the road, just north of Morris Dam. This road goes up along Water Canyon (which is dry). Haven't hiked the whole road yet so it seemed like a good idea to take it to the top of the ridge Silver Mountain belongs to, as that would theoretically provide a path of least resistance.

HAH.



I think it took us 3 hours to get up the damn thing. The road probably hasn't been used by vehicles in however long it takes for the damn trees growing out of it to grow as thick as they did. We low-crawled through very dense foliage, chopping what we could. Loads of Poison Oak of course, as well as that damn bush with the thorns on it (not Buckthorn, that other juicier one).



After what felt like an eternity, we hit the ridge and took another water break. We decided to go to the drop-in to see if it was more work than we were willing to put in, especially considering we were low on water and I didn't have a rest day after doing some PT.



Yeah, nah.

The Brits have a thought on climbing that's real important. You have to want to go up more than you want to go down/home. I certainly didn't want to go down this canyon more than I wanted to go home, so we boogied out.

We descended the firebreak that goes down a ridge south of the fire road, to a water tank and down to the car. It's steep and loose, and very fast to descend. I went up this when descending Cactus Slot. Much better downhill.

I may return to attempt this canyon next week with some Machete Brothers. Hopefully it will feel less-humid, and we shall take the easy way up (even though it's a disproportionately large amount of work).

Adventures.

Three of us guys worked on that road (Silver Fish Motorway) in Feb 2010. We cut through a lot of poison oak and tried to cut a reasonable path through the trees that were growing in the road. Guess none of that work stuck around...

The 1964 ANF map showed a trail off there that dropped into Roberts Canyon. In the late 60s I followed the trail until it vanished on a ridge above Roberts Canyon. I bushwhacked down the steep hill and was very very happy to get to the bottom.

At that time it had been may years since the last fire. The brush was thick and over my head. Before I descended I lost about two years of my life when I flushed some quail that scared the crap out of me.

Mike, there are several sections where the road has completely washed-out. The first one would be a careful hike across with nothing larger than a mountainbike, and the second is completely gone and covered in both strong low tree cover and those spiky bushes growing higher than I've ever seen them before.

Which direction did you head? Did you guys cut all the way up to the ridge from R39? There are some easier sections along the way, but it's super dense nearly the entire time from where the first trail goes uphill from the road until you hit the ridge I took last time.

Gene, I think I see it on the map: http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=34.20165,-11 ... rvoir%20CA

Is that the one you're talking about?

That area hasn't burned in a long time and is incredibly dense. I can imagine your misery.

If anyone is interested, I'd like to hike all the way down Roberts Canyon from Pine Mountain when it's not too hot out, sometime in fall.

Taco wrote: ↑...Gene, I think I see it on the map: http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=34.20165,-11 ... rvoir%20CA

Is that the one you're talking about?

That area hasn't burned in a long time and is incredibly dense. I can imagine your misery.

If anyone is interested, I'd like to hike all the way down Roberts Canyon from Pine Mountain when it's not too hot out, sometime in fall.

It looks close, but the old FS maps were really poor, see the red start/end arrows in the scan below.

Taco, we made it to either point B or C: Silver Fish Motorway
It took us forever to get even to that point because of the dense brush.

Waterfall above road:


Roadbed with trees:






Lunch at point B with my homies:


One of the slide areas:


Consider this a four years late trail report!

Gene, that kinda looks like it goes south along a firebreak. The travel is not too bad there, thankfully. Then again, I haven't gone down into the canyon from there, and that looks very thick!


Mike, I forgot how nice the SG's are during rains. Real pretty. Can't wait to go experience that again.

The trail was clear to waypoint B, after which it became a bit of a minor nightmare. We made it maybe a bit past C and took the watertank ridge trail up from there. We looked back at our chopped path on the way back down and could barely tell anyone had even come down that 'road'.