I love hiking Baldy I just hate the crowds that seem to be everywhere nowadays. Register Ridge is now known by many hikers, the trail from the Village is covered with the fitness buffs. This has left me with thinking about Good as my primary ascent route, I'm not 100% bought in but thinking about it.
I now think I've got the majority of canyon routes down after this last foray. The water was flowing nicely in most portions of the canyon other then the lowest sections. This did make the clambering a bit more challenging but not by much. The waterflow also made it clear where different canyons were coming in from, helping orientation.
I reached the first critical fork and made the right turn like I was supposed to. This clamber is the most dramatic of the hike over three sets of cascades. On my first hike I had left the canyon after the first clamber and followed a small subsidiary gully to the trail right where the Ski Hut trail hits the ridge. This time I stayed close to the canyon with the second bypass being the most difficult. Once you succeed getting around the cascades the canyon gets much more gentler as you are in the upper section. Unfortunately so did the amount of manzanita and whitethorn requiring bypasses outside the drainage.
I reached the next fork and going straight ahead towards Baldy was very brushy with lots of scratchiness ahead. I opted for the left fork where water was still flowing and was much wider. This was a nice gentle climb up to a spot just south of West Baldy. I reached this point three hours into the hike. From there a quick hop skip and jump through some minor snow fields got me to the top. I met a ranger there who was impressed with my hike from the Village and I corrected him telling him I had hiked up Good Canyon but he didn't know where that was.
From there I joined the freeway down Ski Hut. I met two hikers at the beginning of the ridge above the bowl who had been hiking three hours to reach that point and were completely wasted, they wanted to know how much further and I didn't really know how to answer them. Anyway beautiful weather and not a hiker to be seen climbing Baldy, who knew?
