EISPIRATEN

Jeff, Nate, Cecelia and I celebrated the forum's sixteenth birthday by hiking to Mt. Islip on Sunday and eating grilled cheese sandwiches on the peak.

The celebration actually started on Saturday. Jeff, Cecelia and I camped at Crystal Lake, cooked hot dogs, drank alcoholic beverages, enjoyed a camp fire, and listened to sounds of the wilderness, including mountain lion calls, and a couple yelling angry things at each other half the night.

Nate joined us in the morning, and we all started hiking from the lake parking. Our route took us to the Lost Ridge Trail to Deer Flat to Big Cienega. I prefer this route over the Windy Gap trail, because it's less busy and there are less rocks all over the tread. Also, I've hiked Windy Gap enough to last a lifetime. Why do it again when good alternatives exist?

Big Cienega still had flowing water, so we filled a few bottles en route to the Islip Ridge trail. We passed a group taking pictures of themselves at a vista point. The sun warmed the path a bit, but the weather remained mild as we climbed higher and higher. Tall trees provided shaded rest stops. The upper portion of the ridge was very pleasant and offered a nice trail through rock outcroppings.





When we reached the summit of Islip, there was another group taking a break in the shade. We set up our stuff in the ruins of the cabin, where there was shade against the walls.

Jeff cooked grilled cheese sandwiches. Nate brought snails for his magic ingredient. I brought cookies for mine. Jeff added some crunch with a box of Cheez-Its. Cecelia prepared peppers for the mix. Along with pesto and dried tomatoes, I think we've nearly perfected the wilderness grilled cheese experience.



After our gourmet meal and celebratory champagne, we stuck to the ridge route all the way down to the lake. The lower half of the trail has suffered minor burn damage from the Bobcat Fire.




Descending to the lake took longer than Cecelia had hoped it would. After the first, good view of the water, it's still another couple miles to the south bank. The trail here is also brushy and rocky. It needs much restoration and maintenance. But at the end of it all is the beautiful lake, nice and full of water these days. Apparently it's also full of trout now, having been restocked recently. But the unlucky fishermen were not catching anything that afternoon.




We made it back to the cars after a pretty full Crystal Lake adventure. I cracked open a cold beer from the cooler. Nate had taken off, eager to get home. Jeff was filtering water, but dreaming of an ice cream shake. I wonder if he found a good one down in the city.

A perfect day for a hike. The islip ridge trail was new to me and I was loving it until the last 2 miles.

Anyways, as always the grilled cheese sandwiches were awesome!

Bummed I missed out on the arguing couple. Those are my favorite wilderness sounds.

Look at all that cheese

This is my new favorite cheese with Tequila and Habanero pepper

• Not a cloud in the sky. Love the dark blue, shades of almost black sky you get on a perfectly clear day at high elevation.

• Neight Thousand is on Peak Finder! With the wrong elevation, but I'll still take it.
• Along Islip ridge great views west where one could see the San Gabriel Mts centroid on the side of East Twin! Once the ACH reopens, definitely looking forward to that expedition. The Bobcat burn zone looked reasonably healthy from our position, but hard to really know until you are up close.
• Crystal Lake itself is a unique curiosity, though I wouldn't necessarily show it off to your friends who just came back from backpacking the Sierras.
• Jeff's grilled-cheese was on point once again, and even my snail experiment (I got them sort of as a joke Christmas present from my sister in law) worked out pretty well, pre-frying them. They kinda worked like mushrooms.
• Can't beat champagne with friends at 8,251ft... happy sweet sixteen, ice pirates! ☠

So here's ALL the info about Neight Thousand: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/11155277996

Apparently I decided it was at 2460m. I'm not sure why I decided this. The topo says "a bit more than 8000ft". Do we have a better estimate? 8010?

dima wrote: ↑So here's ALL the info about Neight Thousand: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/11155277996

Apparently I decided it was at 2460m. I'm not sure why I decided this. The topo says "a bit more than 8000ft". Do we have a better estimate? 8010?

If I remember correctly I think it was, if anything, a little shorter than 8000' but not by much...I think I remember myself or Tim standing on the summit rock and reaching above our head to be at 8000'? If it were up to me I'd call it 8,000' for the sake of the name pun.... but 7993 or something might be more accurate.

Oh yeah? The topo has it sticking up above the 8000 contour. I'll just set it to an even 8k I guess

There's a guy who camps in one of the upper loops that looooooves his Styx. A few times I've been up there after dark, I could clearly hear some cosmic soft rock wafting through the oaks. "Come sail away... Come sail away! Come sail away with me, lads!"

On the lower Islip Ridge Tr, there was a neat switchback in a cliffy section. The 'sutter wall' was an old fir log holding the whole switchback nicely in place. The log burned, and now that switchback is slumping.

Late 19th century, as glaciation became understood, prevailing theory was that the Crystal Lake area was a glacial cirque. It's not hard to see why the mistake.

Dang that sandwich looks like ambrosia!!!

I'm pretty sure Crystal Lake is on a fault which is what probably created it, this also causes the water to drain faster from the bottom which has been one of the reasons that it almost dries out in the drought years.

dima wrote: ↑Oh yeah? The topo has it sticking up above the 8000 contour. I'll just set it to an even 8k I guess

It's under 8000 on the newer, computer-generated USGS maps. But it's over 8000 on the 1995 version, which CalTopo uses for the "Scanned Topos" map. We're in that middle era where people still use the '95 maps for elevation readings because the computer-generated maps are lame.

Taco wrote: ↑Bummed I missed out on the arguing couple. Those are my favorite wilderness sounds.

"I got into an argument with a girlfriend inside of a tent. That's a bad place for an argument, because then I tried to walk out, and slammed the flap.

How are you supposed to express your anger in this situation? Zipper it up really quick? Zip, zip, fuck you!"

--Mitch Hedberg, Strategic Grill Locations (1999)

Random thoughts and a few more pictures-

I liked the Deer Flat campground, might just go up there for a night and enjoy solitude and some dark skies. Hope the mountain lions stay away!
Trying to cook with two stoves was hard for me, we'll have to keep working on this activity. I think I'm taking too long for prep and the one cooking gets burnt.
Going up Big Cienega was more pleasant than I remembered coming down. Maybe it's because we took an alternate route to the road junction.
Islip Ridge trail was really nice when actually near the ridge, good views of the canyons and the little-used part of Hwy 39.
Crystal Lake was larger than the last time I saw it in the summer of 1981. Back then a friend and I had a contest throwing rocks across it.
I bet that was an uncomfortable ride back down the mountain for the arguing couple.
Once again a good walk with some good folks. Thanks to all for joining!

Start of the trail, nice shade down here.


Acorns.


Pinyon Ridge, Saddleback poking up above the clouds.


Centroid. I have a bunch of zoomed photos, this shows how far it is from everything.


Sean and Nate cruising up the ridge.


Nearing the summit. Somewhere around here Nate and I talked about how the sky seemed so dark blue.


Celebratory toast.


Summit pose.


Amazing route for this trail, it managed to avoid the shade from every tree. Despite that I really liked this section.


Lake view. One group said they caught a fish!

David R wrote: ↑I'm pretty sure Crystal Lake is on a fault which is what probably created it...

I found a 1938 Master's thesis by John C. Wells. It looks like he was the first to argue for the existence of two faults within the basin. He calls them Crystal Lake Fault and Soldier Creek Fault. As against the prior glaciation theory, he proposed that the basin was formed by structural movements combined with erosion and landslides.

The thesis starts getting juicy on page 22, the "Structure" section.

Sean wrote: ↑

David R wrote: ↑I'm pretty sure Crystal Lake is on a fault which is what probably created it...

I found a 1938 Master's thesis by John C. Wells. It looks like he was the first to argue for the existence of two faults within the basin. He calls them Crystal Lake Fault and Soldier Creek Fault. As against the prior glaciation theory, he proposed that the basin was formed by structural movements combined with erosion and landslides.

The thesis starts getting juicy on page 22, the "Structure" section.

Wells_jc_1938.pdf

I like that map on the second to last page of the thesis. "Old Cabin", "??? Lodge" and "YMCA Hut" caught my eye. Also I had not heard of Alexander Spring before...maybe I just have missed it on newer maps?

HikeUp wrote: ↑ I like that map on the second to last page of the thesis. "Old Cabin", "??? Lodge" and "YMCA Hut" caught my eye. Also I had not heard of Alexander Spring before...maybe I just have missed it on newer maps?

Alexander Spring is on maps. Mrs. Jim Alexander built a hunting cabin up there in 1911. She and the Negley sisters were famous for being great shots.

A bunch of old cabins are discussed in the Summer 1936 edition of Trails Magazine. The "old cabin" at Big Cienega was a hunting lodge called "Campo De Los Pinos." They hunted deer and made jerky. South of Crystal Lake was Wawona Cabin, built by students from Occidental College in 1909. Thrall used a picture of this cabin for his magazine cover.



I haven't found anything solid about the YMCA hut. But given the location it's possible they were supporting the CCC during construction of the park in the 1930s. I believe the CCC did most or all of the old rock work you see for various structures, including the amphitheatre.

dima wrote: ↑Wed Sep 27, 2023 8:07 pm Oh yeah? The topo has it sticking up above the 8000 contour. I'll just set it to an even 8k I guess

Since I was on there looking at Williamson today, I took a peak at what the GIS contours indicate for Neight Thousand, and its right in line for being just a hair under 8000'