Ross Mountain and Alder Gulch
Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 6:26 am
Pat Macha wrote a book called "Aircraft Wrecks in the Mountains and Deserts of California" in it he says:
Date Unknown. North American F-100 USAF hit Mt. Baden-Powell and exploded. Scattered wreckage is visible on SE side of mountain.
And the qnet carcomm guy says:
01/01/59 Military Jet Crashed In Alder Gulch Southeast Of Mount Baden Powell In Angeles Forest
Other than two comments in web forums, this is the entirety of the information on the internet on the subject. In particular, there's nothing in the newspapers that I could find. I chatted with mattmaxon about it, and he produced a photo that Pat Macha took from an aerial flyby. This photo showed some white specks that supposedly came from an airplane. This was enough for me, so a trip was on. I would bag Ross from Heaton Flat, hit the Pole of Inaccessibility, and come back via Alder Gulch. In the process I would look for the crash site and the Blue Jay mine (another not-obviously-existing site). This is a LONG route, so I'd take two days, and camp out in the middle somewhere.
I left the Heaton Flat trailhead on Saturday. LOTS of people. Good flow in the river. The bridge was packed with humans: the bungee people were doing their thing. Past the bridge, there are no more humans, and it is quiet and peaceful.
Lots of water. It's dripping off the walls
I arrived at the Iron Fork confluence
And after a bit more walking, I found the slope I'd climb up. The previous evening I spent some quality time with the map, trying to find ascent and descent lines that would have manageable levels of brush, and a reasonable grade. The line I picked starts a bit after Clark Gulch, climbs up and to the right to a scree gully, follows that to the SE ridge of Ross, and follows the ridge up. After I planned the route I remembered that I had RJ's gps track from when he did this. His route wasn't exactly the same, but similar. Anyway, I filled up on water (5L), and started climbing up here:
It's steep, so views open up quickly. Iron Mountain with Falls Gulch on the left and Clark Gulch on the right:
Falls Gulch is named correctly, it looks like. Here's a full-length shot:
Which is the North Ridge route up Iron? Is it the one on the left of Falls Gulch, or the one on the right? Both look unfriendly. I kept climbing. At one point I saw a snake hanging out on a rock that I was about to use as a hold. We stared at each other for a while, flicking our tongues. I blinked first, and went off to find another line. This route is very brushy. I tried to use scree fields as much as possible, but there aren't enough of them, and you're left fighting brush most of the time. I was supposed to cross an old trail, and maybe I did. There're lots of sheep trails around, and they're now as good as any long-abandoned human trail. After about 1800ft of work, I finally met the main ridge, and could finally see the destination:
The bump on the right is point 6658. The bump at the center is Ross. In any case, my excitement was tempered because the ridge top looks like this:
Oof. It's a solid carpet of brush. The only real positive here is that most of the plants are the bushes with the tiny green leaves: they're soft and lack spikes. And they tend to grow outwards, so pushing through isn't too bad. The ones here look yellow because they're covered in pollen. If I was allergic, this would be a problem. At this point I discovered that the brush claimed my water bottle, so I lost 1L. This didn't change the plan very much, so I continued pushing. At point 5599 the brush FINALLY relented, and I could walk on the steep and loose rocky slopes underneath. Rather the ridge-top itself was still brushy, but you could walk around. The Alder Gulch side was a bit less steep than the Iron Fork side. Eventually I made it to point 6658. It was now 19:00, and I decided this is where I'd camp. One could do worse
Ross Mountain is directly ahead
I should say that I'm in AWE that RJ managed to go up to Ross AND back down in a single day. From the top, Ross is just a silly end of a ridge. But from the bottom, it is a MOUNTAIN. A mountain I'd climb the following day.
It took me a while to get here, and I had an unknown, wild canyon to descend, AND I lost some of my water AND I forgot to bring my PLB. So leaving the Pole of Inaccessibility for next time seemed like a reasonable decision. In the morning I spent some time studying the face of point 7407, trying to see wreckage.
Baden-Powell is in the background. I made some notes, and then finished the climb up to Ross. From the top, it became clear that the peak I was looking at wasn't 7407 at all, but rather 8375, so my notes weren't worth very much.
Ross has a new register book, placed by Chuck Hodi in June. He came in from Crystal Lake. Other than the two of us, only one other person has been here since. I walked over to the saddle before 7407, found a scree field matching Pat Macha's photo, and dropped in.
The white specks in the photo were mostly at the right edge of this clearing. I aimed for that general area, and in complete disbelief, found this:
And a bit further was a slope filled with lots and lots of stuff. Many big pieces, but no huge pieces. No complete fuselage sections or flight instruments, or anything like that. But lots of pieces of skin, wings, and so on. Plenty of items with labels and part numbers. All the photos live here. Click on a photo to get a low-res preview, and then click that to get the original. If you want everything in an archive, ask me. A sampling:
Bomb pylon attachment point indeed. As I descended, the field started to thin out, and I traversed to the South: the topography said that would be a friendlier descent. View of the area as I'm leaving:
Now that I'm looking at this photo, I see a tire front and center, which I didn't notice before. Maybe I should have stuck around longer. The area is very steep, and it's likely that there's more stuff further down. It would be interesting to come back, and check out that possibility. The site is relatively close to the top of the ridge, so the obvious way to do that would be to come up via Baden-Powell. That approach isn't easy, but it's MUCH easier than coming up from Heaton Flat. Maybe there're huge fuselage pieces here after all. There was no yellow paint on anything. mattmaxon: do you have any info about what happened here? Whose plane was this? Were there any casualties? Was there a recovery effort where parts would have been pulled out?
Onwards. Next task at hand: descend down to the East Fork. The topos show the feeder channels consolidating at just under 5200ft. The climb down was as expected: a mix of loose scree, and big dryfalls that needed bypassing. I didn't count the falls: there were several. The rock here is loose shale. At 5850ft most of the big dropoffs are done, and the canyon gets some greenery
Water comes and goes
This canyon is really nice. To my relief, none of it is choked with brush. There're plenty of trees, and enough room to move around. What I didn't expect is that just because you're in the main channel and the grade has eased, doesn't mean that you're done with the waterfalls. There are 2 series of cascades that needed bypassing. The first one is at ~ 4800ft. I want to say there are 3 tiers here. I could sorta see the top one from the side
It stayed really loud as I descended, so presumably there's a middle tier in there, and when I rejoined the channel I was looking up at this:
These are all bigger than they look. Big. There's another set (4 tiers I think) at 4000ft. These are pretty, but not as big. No photos. The canyon stays nice
And eventually meets the East Fork
Whew. I never saw anything human-made. Where's the Blue Jay mine and/or cabin? This canyon wasn't THAT wide, so if there was anything to see, I should have seen it. Now I was sorta home-free. Just about 9 miles to walk down to Heaton Flat. I decided that trying to keep your feet dry here was way more trouble that it's worth, so I ended up crossing the river countless times. There is no trail, and the canyon is narrow, with the channel meandering back/forth. This section of river is fantastic. The water is clear, and has this nice turquoise color. The tributaries are more brownish. Here's Fish Fork coming in from the right:
Fish Fork Camp is apparently an actual thing that exists. Here it is in its entirety:
The rest was a long, wet slog. Humans reappeared at the bridge, and other than them, I only saw this guy:
Date Unknown. North American F-100 USAF hit Mt. Baden-Powell and exploded. Scattered wreckage is visible on SE side of mountain.
And the qnet carcomm guy says:
01/01/59 Military Jet Crashed In Alder Gulch Southeast Of Mount Baden Powell In Angeles Forest
Other than two comments in web forums, this is the entirety of the information on the internet on the subject. In particular, there's nothing in the newspapers that I could find. I chatted with mattmaxon about it, and he produced a photo that Pat Macha took from an aerial flyby. This photo showed some white specks that supposedly came from an airplane. This was enough for me, so a trip was on. I would bag Ross from Heaton Flat, hit the Pole of Inaccessibility, and come back via Alder Gulch. In the process I would look for the crash site and the Blue Jay mine (another not-obviously-existing site). This is a LONG route, so I'd take two days, and camp out in the middle somewhere.
I left the Heaton Flat trailhead on Saturday. LOTS of people. Good flow in the river. The bridge was packed with humans: the bungee people were doing their thing. Past the bridge, there are no more humans, and it is quiet and peaceful.
Lots of water. It's dripping off the walls
I arrived at the Iron Fork confluence
And after a bit more walking, I found the slope I'd climb up. The previous evening I spent some quality time with the map, trying to find ascent and descent lines that would have manageable levels of brush, and a reasonable grade. The line I picked starts a bit after Clark Gulch, climbs up and to the right to a scree gully, follows that to the SE ridge of Ross, and follows the ridge up. After I planned the route I remembered that I had RJ's gps track from when he did this. His route wasn't exactly the same, but similar. Anyway, I filled up on water (5L), and started climbing up here:
It's steep, so views open up quickly. Iron Mountain with Falls Gulch on the left and Clark Gulch on the right:
Falls Gulch is named correctly, it looks like. Here's a full-length shot:
Which is the North Ridge route up Iron? Is it the one on the left of Falls Gulch, or the one on the right? Both look unfriendly. I kept climbing. At one point I saw a snake hanging out on a rock that I was about to use as a hold. We stared at each other for a while, flicking our tongues. I blinked first, and went off to find another line. This route is very brushy. I tried to use scree fields as much as possible, but there aren't enough of them, and you're left fighting brush most of the time. I was supposed to cross an old trail, and maybe I did. There're lots of sheep trails around, and they're now as good as any long-abandoned human trail. After about 1800ft of work, I finally met the main ridge, and could finally see the destination:
The bump on the right is point 6658. The bump at the center is Ross. In any case, my excitement was tempered because the ridge top looks like this:
Oof. It's a solid carpet of brush. The only real positive here is that most of the plants are the bushes with the tiny green leaves: they're soft and lack spikes. And they tend to grow outwards, so pushing through isn't too bad. The ones here look yellow because they're covered in pollen. If I was allergic, this would be a problem. At this point I discovered that the brush claimed my water bottle, so I lost 1L. This didn't change the plan very much, so I continued pushing. At point 5599 the brush FINALLY relented, and I could walk on the steep and loose rocky slopes underneath. Rather the ridge-top itself was still brushy, but you could walk around. The Alder Gulch side was a bit less steep than the Iron Fork side. Eventually I made it to point 6658. It was now 19:00, and I decided this is where I'd camp. One could do worse
Ross Mountain is directly ahead
I should say that I'm in AWE that RJ managed to go up to Ross AND back down in a single day. From the top, Ross is just a silly end of a ridge. But from the bottom, it is a MOUNTAIN. A mountain I'd climb the following day.
It took me a while to get here, and I had an unknown, wild canyon to descend, AND I lost some of my water AND I forgot to bring my PLB. So leaving the Pole of Inaccessibility for next time seemed like a reasonable decision. In the morning I spent some time studying the face of point 7407, trying to see wreckage.
Baden-Powell is in the background. I made some notes, and then finished the climb up to Ross. From the top, it became clear that the peak I was looking at wasn't 7407 at all, but rather 8375, so my notes weren't worth very much.
Ross has a new register book, placed by Chuck Hodi in June. He came in from Crystal Lake. Other than the two of us, only one other person has been here since. I walked over to the saddle before 7407, found a scree field matching Pat Macha's photo, and dropped in.
The white specks in the photo were mostly at the right edge of this clearing. I aimed for that general area, and in complete disbelief, found this:
And a bit further was a slope filled with lots and lots of stuff. Many big pieces, but no huge pieces. No complete fuselage sections or flight instruments, or anything like that. But lots of pieces of skin, wings, and so on. Plenty of items with labels and part numbers. All the photos live here. Click on a photo to get a low-res preview, and then click that to get the original. If you want everything in an archive, ask me. A sampling:
Bomb pylon attachment point indeed. As I descended, the field started to thin out, and I traversed to the South: the topography said that would be a friendlier descent. View of the area as I'm leaving:
Now that I'm looking at this photo, I see a tire front and center, which I didn't notice before. Maybe I should have stuck around longer. The area is very steep, and it's likely that there's more stuff further down. It would be interesting to come back, and check out that possibility. The site is relatively close to the top of the ridge, so the obvious way to do that would be to come up via Baden-Powell. That approach isn't easy, but it's MUCH easier than coming up from Heaton Flat. Maybe there're huge fuselage pieces here after all. There was no yellow paint on anything. mattmaxon: do you have any info about what happened here? Whose plane was this? Were there any casualties? Was there a recovery effort where parts would have been pulled out?
Onwards. Next task at hand: descend down to the East Fork. The topos show the feeder channels consolidating at just under 5200ft. The climb down was as expected: a mix of loose scree, and big dryfalls that needed bypassing. I didn't count the falls: there were several. The rock here is loose shale. At 5850ft most of the big dropoffs are done, and the canyon gets some greenery
Water comes and goes
This canyon is really nice. To my relief, none of it is choked with brush. There're plenty of trees, and enough room to move around. What I didn't expect is that just because you're in the main channel and the grade has eased, doesn't mean that you're done with the waterfalls. There are 2 series of cascades that needed bypassing. The first one is at ~ 4800ft. I want to say there are 3 tiers here. I could sorta see the top one from the side
It stayed really loud as I descended, so presumably there's a middle tier in there, and when I rejoined the channel I was looking up at this:
These are all bigger than they look. Big. There's another set (4 tiers I think) at 4000ft. These are pretty, but not as big. No photos. The canyon stays nice
And eventually meets the East Fork
Whew. I never saw anything human-made. Where's the Blue Jay mine and/or cabin? This canyon wasn't THAT wide, so if there was anything to see, I should have seen it. Now I was sorta home-free. Just about 9 miles to walk down to Heaton Flat. I decided that trying to keep your feet dry here was way more trouble that it's worth, so I ended up crossing the river countless times. There is no trail, and the canyon is narrow, with the channel meandering back/forth. This section of river is fantastic. The water is clear, and has this nice turquoise color. The tributaries are more brownish. Here's Fish Fork coming in from the right:
Fish Fork Camp is apparently an actual thing that exists. Here it is in its entirety:
The rest was a long, wet slog. Humans reappeared at the bridge, and other than them, I only saw this guy:
