EISPIRATEN

Last week I tried to ascend Little Bear Canyon, but ended up bailing out on the ridge with the Switzer's chapel ("Chapel Ridge", let's call it). Today I got up earlier, and climbed the whole ridge.

This is the ridge between Arroyo Seco and Little Bear Canyon. I didn't capture a good gps trace (only a spotty one), but the route is simple. This is the ridge:

https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=34.2592 ... =t&o=t&n=1

I parked at Switzer's, walked the Gabrielino to (almost) the waterfall, and picked up the ridge at the metal grills in that area. This initial part is very brushy, and there're a lot of poor animal tracks. Eventually I got to the flat saddle from before, and saw the same view as last week:



For a while after this point there's an intermittent animal trail, or maybe a very old human trail. Lots of brush. Terrain is manageable. The next bump looks more technical, but it's not, really



From the bump at ~ 4500ft, the ridge looks like this. Point 4711 is ahead. The brush past it looks alarming.



Here I found a trail to the North side of the ridge, and there was a whole network of pretty good trails. I followed the main one back, and it looked like it drops down into the Arroyo Seco. No idea if it remains a useable trail below the ridge. Further ahead on the trail was what I initially thought was a birthday balloon; instead it was this:



It was a pain to get here my way. If there's some sort of shortcut from the Arroyo, maybe that's what's going on? After this artist practiced on the small rock next to the beer bottles, they were ready for bigger things



There was a fire ring on the ridge at this point. I don't know. Before 4711, the trail devolves to the intermittent animal track I was accustomed to. From 4711, the upcoming brush is still alarming.



Once I got to it, it wasn't great, but wasn't terrible either. Mostly it's manzanita (i.e. no thorns), and there's a clear-ish drainage in the middle that works well as a trail. Past most of the manzanita:



Above that, the final climb to the main ridge comes into view



I was initially aiming for the area on the right, since it looked less steep. But the line I was following through the brush mostly followed the ridge, and I ended up at the rocky wall on the right instead. This was maybe 3rd class, but really wasn't bad. Lots of holds. I took my time, and it yielded. It's less steep above, and there're LOTS of deer tracks:



I gained the ridge, and backtracked a bit to look at Supercloud Hollow:



Weird. And I found this:



The ridge top has a GOOD trail. I walked up to Mt. Deception (it isn't very peaky), and got a good look at Mt. Disappointment straight ahead:



I then followed the trail to the road to the trail to the road, and ended up on top of Mt. Disappointment, looking back at Deception:



Looks like it's actually somewhat prominent. And you can see a bit of my ridge poking out above Disappointment's right shoulder. Then after what felt like a never-ending trail walk, I was back at Switzer's.

Nice work! That's a cool looking ridge.

Cool. Thanks for the report. This route has been on my list for years. I'm glad you didn't call it Modelo Ridge.

In the literature somewhere they call part or all of your route Disappointment Ridge. I'll see if I can dig something up.

I haven't looked into it, but "Disappointment Ridge" would make more sense for the next ridge to the South: the one between the two Bear Creek drainages. That ridge goes straight up Mt Deception without jogging around the head of Little Bear Canyon. It looked much more hairy than what I did here, and an earlier TR confirms it:

viewtopic.php?t=6329

dima wrote: I haven't looked into it, but "Disappointment Ridge" would make more sense for the next ridge to the South: the one between the two Bear Creek drainages. That ridge goes straight up Mt Deception without jogging around the head of Little Bear Canyon. It looked much more hairy than what I did here, and an earlier TR confirms it:

viewtopic.php?t=6329

Yeah. I was thinking of this trip description from Trails Magazine :



Disappointment Ridge is the one with the dry lake feature.

Hey Dima, great trip. Thanks for posting that. I love the crisp clear light in your photos.

"The Ghost of Modelos' Past" must be a relatively recent addition. I made several trips along this ridge about 6-7 years ago and never encountered him. I descended from chapel ridge to the Gabrieleno Trail from that general vicinity a couple of times but never saw signs of use trails around there, so that seems new. It looks like the brush is quite a bit more robust than it was sooner after the station fire so nice work on completing the whole route - It's a long haul!

The "Switzer-Land" brochures from the 20s list Dry Lake as one of the hikes that could be done from Switzer's. Like Sean suggests, I'd guess that they're referring to supercloud hollow. However, I'm pretty sure they arrived there not by chapel ridge but by following the Arroyo to the Red Box area and following a route roughly similar to the Bill Reilly trail or the road.

In the earliest era of Switzer's Camp 1884-1896, there are references to a "Lucky Camp" where a spring was located just below Disappointment Ridge. The newspaper reports from back then say that Switzer himself built and maintained the trail that I believe came from the Red Box area up to there, but I'm not sure of what route it took.

I've found some old switchbacks on the northern slopes directly below Supercloud Hollow, but can't seem to find traces of them in old aerial photos, so I'm not sure when they were made and what they are from.

Nice work!

I like the name Modelo Ridge. Very nice pics of the beautiful green ridge.

Very cool trip and report. I haven't done much exploring in the front rage/bear canyon area. Looking forward to checking this out.