High on 'Neight Thousand'
Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2023 9:31 pm
I navigated 2.5 hours of brutal traffic from Culver City to join Sean and Cecelia at their campsite in Crystal Lake, in the process traveling deeper and higher into the thrashed and tortured granites of the San Gabriel Mt range than I ever had before, driving my little SUV into a remote bowl encircled by shattered grey monzonite ramparts studded by ancient Jeffrey pine turrets. More sentinels than trees, the creatures had seen enough people come and go across the centuries to no longer bother paying them mind.
I feasted modestly upon tender nuggets of carne wrapped in warmed tortillas Sean had generous offered me, and we burned oaken chair legs of my former dining room table set well into the night, speaking in hushed and reverent tones of grand attempts to enter into the deepest canyons and traverse along the most isolated ridges of this hostile, seductive upheaval of stone that sings a siren song we’ve habitually failed to refuse.
I downed a High Brew coffee per the day’s theme, and joining forces with the grizzled, convivial likes of JeffH, Uncle Rico, and new-comer Tim and we made our way through the cool calm shade of the early morning to Pinyon Ridge, a buttress of gravel and junipers that leads the ambitious cross country traveler via a tangled smattering of game trails up the side of Hawkins Ridge, growing progressively steeper and more resistant to our progress until we emerged upon Hawkins road, which led us majestically across the rockfalls and gullies into the sun and SoCal’s most scenic toilet seat on South Hawkins.
And yet, Nellie Hawkins was no ordinary waitress, and she has a whole ridge worth of peaks named in her memory, and we took it upon ourselves to follow it northward and upward to the very crest itself of the transverse ranges. Most of our party accepted the added challenge to summit each and every member of Nellie’s service industry legacy, and the likes of South, Sadie, Middle all fell to the sword of our footfalls.
Only Hawkins proper remained undisturbed on this day, but that was only because we had far more prestigious summits to declare annexed by our empire of GPX archives: The San Gabriel Mountains newest, trendiest highpoint sensation, Neight Thousand.
A demoralizing plunge downwards through high altitude deadfall and buckthorn was required to reach this enigmatic summit, and only myself, Sean and the indomitable Tim were determined enough to see it through to the very grano-dioritic pinnacle of the bump itself, in the process losing 500 feet of elevation we knew would not be easily gained back again. But such physical hardships are trivial in comparison to the divine pursuit of giving Ranger Nick ( @adventures_in_nomansland ) one more peak he now must bag.
(Meanwhile, a few paces into the deadfall JeffH called it good at his own special peak of “Neighty-four-hundred” and turned back to rejoin the others and plan lunch.)
Myself, Sean and Tim signed the brand new Neight Thousand register (shockingly there wasn’t one already present) and battled the ridge back up to follow the PCT to the rest of our companions and discover fresh, cold, miraculous water emerging from the deepest subterranean heart of the mountain to fill our canteens and souls before we plunged down the Windy Gap trail, fueled by hungry anticipation of the gourmet grilled cheese meal we knew was contained within Jeff’s backpack waiting to be realized.
Back down in the Crystal Lake campground Jeff unleashed his carefully curated collection of tools and ingredients to form us crunchy, gooey tablets of unctuous salvation, shared amongst fellow slayers of stone. The ingredients grew steadily more elaborate and absurd with each grilled cheese sandwich until we were reinventing culinary conventions with pestos and gummi bears to create a brave new thriving society of trailside lunching, with Jeff our unanimously elected sovereign.
Eventually the sun waned in sky and we all grudgingly dispersed back down into the misbegotten world laying below, though not before a scare with locking myself out of my car, a miserable scenario which was mercifully rectified in time by using a few long pointy sticks carefully fished through a crack in my passenger side window to depress the start and unlock buttons of my SUV from the outside, and allow entry.
Ideas for future expeditions were discussed, and I am certain more iconic adventures are in the offing. In the meantime I am still feeling the lingering intoxicating effects of traversing the high country of the San Gabriels, and very much consider myself high on its exposed, rugged magnetism.
I feasted modestly upon tender nuggets of carne wrapped in warmed tortillas Sean had generous offered me, and we burned oaken chair legs of my former dining room table set well into the night, speaking in hushed and reverent tones of grand attempts to enter into the deepest canyons and traverse along the most isolated ridges of this hostile, seductive upheaval of stone that sings a siren song we’ve habitually failed to refuse.
A demoralizing plunge downwards through high altitude deadfall and buckthorn was required to reach this enigmatic summit, and only myself, Sean and the indomitable Tim were determined enough to see it through to the very grano-dioritic pinnacle of the bump itself, in the process losing 500 feet of elevation we knew would not be easily gained back again. But such physical hardships are trivial in comparison to the divine pursuit of giving Ranger Nick ( @adventures_in_nomansland ) one more peak he now must bag.
(Meanwhile, a few paces into the deadfall JeffH called it good at his own special peak of “Neighty-four-hundred” and turned back to rejoin the others and plan lunch.)
Myself, Sean and Tim signed the brand new Neight Thousand register (shockingly there wasn’t one already present) and battled the ridge back up to follow the PCT to the rest of our companions and discover fresh, cold, miraculous water emerging from the deepest subterranean heart of the mountain to fill our canteens and souls before we plunged down the Windy Gap trail, fueled by hungry anticipation of the gourmet grilled cheese meal we knew was contained within Jeff’s backpack waiting to be realized.
Back down in the Crystal Lake campground Jeff unleashed his carefully curated collection of tools and ingredients to form us crunchy, gooey tablets of unctuous salvation, shared amongst fellow slayers of stone. The ingredients grew steadily more elaborate and absurd with each grilled cheese sandwich until we were reinventing culinary conventions with pestos and gummi bears to create a brave new thriving society of trailside lunching, with Jeff our unanimously elected sovereign.
Ideas for future expeditions were discussed, and I am certain more iconic adventures are in the offing. In the meantime I am still feeling the lingering intoxicating effects of traversing the high country of the San Gabriels, and very much consider myself high on its exposed, rugged magnetism.
