EISPIRATEN

Mt Lukens stands as one of the most sprawling and prominent mountains around Los Angeles, and at 5,074 feet, the highest point within the city limits. It is visible to 5-6 million residents on a daily basis, including myself. Mt Lukens holds the special significance of being one of the very few mountains visible from my backyard, and I know there exist thousands of backyards throughout Los Angeles that also feature a view of this antennae-studed mass of granite. By my own personal definition, I consider it the western end of the San Gabriel front range, as it lies to the south of the San Gabriel fault, which 5 million years ago was the active plate boundary between the Pacific and North America until it jumped north to Wrightwood and became the San Andreas. (These days the Tujunga Creek, Clear Creek, Arroyo Secco, West and primary Fork of the San Gabriel River follow that former break in the earth's crust.)

Mt Lukens been on my to-do list for years, and the way I wanted to summit was starting at the Kill 'em Quick trail from Tujunga Creek on the far west end, and following the bumpy ridge that features intriguing bits of rock exposure that are visible from all over the city below. When I saw Jeff mention it was a mountain he wanted to bag as well, I reached out.

First, there was much appreciated shade as we made the steep ascent up 'Kill 'em Quick" trail. Despite the usual alarmist AllTrails reviews, it was an excellently-constructed trail and only mildly overgrown. Jeff told me apparently firefighters in training once timed themselves carrying a chainsaw up it in 30 minutes as part of their training. It took us closer to an hour and we forgot our chainsaws, but it was plenty of a workout.

The ridge greeted us with hot sunshine, and the views of the city below opened wide, lasting all day. The trail became more of an informal ridge scramble but nonetheless continued, and a bit of class 3 climbing (perhaps the most intense of the day) got us to within view of the famed Tujunga Flagpole and its accompanying exposure that is visible from the Crescenta Valley below. What you see in that photo wasn't actually too difficult to climb, and that got us to the narrow pile of ledge with the impressive flagpole itself, placed by a very determined and patriotic individual. The trail now turned south back down the mountain, but we activated pirate-mode and continued instead along the ridge. No trail, but the going wasn't particularly difficult, with gravel between yuccas, buckthorn and various other less-murderous brush allowing us safe passage. Long pants a very good idea but no cutting was necessary.

One north-facing slope held a grove of resilient Douglas or White Firs which had somehow escaped the Station Fire, and continued to hang on despite the no longer hospitable climate of the elevation. One younger specimen grew proudly right on the ridge itself, and was miraculously flush with brand new growth. This remarkable tree Jeff declared his favorite, and I feel similarly.

Alongside the grove we descended sharply into a narrow eroded notch, being careful to not plunge over the north side's edge. The ridge/firebreak continued to meander in the form of a Z winding around a beautiful but terrifying forest of buckthorn covered in spring flowers and buzzing with swarms of honey bees. I remarked the only thing more fun than crawling through buckthorn is crawling through buckthorn full of bees. Full of spring flowers, the plants are as beautiful right now as they are evil. We then had a steep ascent, one of those unrelenting firebreak scrambles where you have to get into a bit of a zen state in order to accomplish, giving us a good 500 feet of gain quickly and putting us within striking distance of the summit. After resting at a metal triangle sign so many of us love, we made the final push to the summit, intersecting with the Haines Canyon and Stone Canyon trails. Haines Canyon was in rough shape but Stones Canyon looked like it had received a lot of love recently. The final bit was a road walk which we covered deliberately, resting in the shade, until reaching the somewhat underwhelming summit, highpoint of the city of angels, covered as it is with numerous antennas.

We were lean and mean on this trip with none of Jeff's trademark grilled cheese - just punctured cans of victory fish and the crunch of granola enjoyed beneath the shade of some sort of giant concrete spindle, sheltered from the mid day sun.

The hike down to Haines Canyon ended up being a road walk, as we were lost in idle chatter and missed the not well-advertised Haines Canyon trail fork. I collected some mother's day wildflowers for my wife, and we admired the grand humpy ridge we had thoroughly conquered stretching before us. We reached the city thousands of feet below, and big bad Lukens was crossed off of both our lists! Thank you Jeff for being an excellent hiking partner during quite a big day.

10.8 Miles
4,458 ft of gain

This was a great San Gabes weekend for me, I decided to shorten the drive on Saturday morning by sacrificing some of my Friday evening. I spent the night at Monte Cristo campground where I tested my new-to-me Tarptent Protrail. It's a palace inside compared to the Notch but that's a different story. I did manage to filter three full bottles of water in the morning before embarking on the road through Big Tujunga. It was nice in the morning as I was above the clouds so I got to see the upper ridges softly glowing in the morning light and then a cloudbank as I neared civilization again. Joining Nate for the drive to our starting point, I remembered to grab the last water bottle but neglected my trekking poles which definitely affected my uphills. As noted, the KEQ trail is obvious although little-used, ending at a prominent ridge with some really nice views of the inner canyon areas.
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The Ridgeline was easy to follow although we were often reminded of our discussion about the crumbly rock in the Gabes, some sections were a bit loose but nothing dangerous. Planning the foot placement was important and we both worked our way up toward the flagpole. Along the way we crossed a couple of benchmarks with a notation I've never seen before: Random Point - hence I will forever call this section Random Ridge.
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Soon after departing the flag we were in unmarked territory and it was actually fun to scan ahead and choose the best route through the low brush and occasional yucca. For the record, I ended up with single-digit stab marks including the four on my hand from a downhill butt-slide. Once we got to the nice pine area we could see that we were in for more up and down as the ruggedness of the terrain was more obvious from this higher elevation.
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A steep downhill brought us to the knife-like edge and then we got a welcome bit of flat walking, while spotting the occasional cairn (different thread on this forum). The biggest challenge here was to find a way through the large buckthorn field below us and Nate managed to locate the perfect route over to the old firebreak. This part was steep and directly into the late morning sun so it was best to keep the head down and the feet moving up.
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Running across the Stone Canyon trail was almost anticlimactic after a couple hours of route finding, although it was nice to have a good tread to walk on for the last half mile or so. It was a relief to achieve the summit, although with all the equipment up there it's not a nice place to visit. It was great to sit under the water tank and cool off, my lack of water had got me a bit overheated on the way up. Plus it's a good day when I can just hang out and chat with a fellow pirate in the presence of pine trees.
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Thanks Nate for planning this and keeping us near the intended route for most of the day.

Well done fellows.

Nice work. Thanks for the reports!

Great hike!

I've not heard of this route before and it looks quite challenging compared to the other trail/road routes. That's a nice detailed map of the route. Nate, do you make your tracks available anywhere? If not, please consider uploading them to peakbagger if you want to make them available to others.

"Random Point" BM is hilarious. Someone working for LA has a sense of humor.

tekewin wrote: ↑Mon May 27, 2024 7:44 am I've not heard of this route before and it looks quite challenging compared to the other trail/road routes. That's a nice detailed map of the route. Nate, do you make your tracks available anywhere? If not, please consider uploading them to peakbagger if you want to make them available to others.

No, not beyond the ever-growing google earth 'My Places' composite living on my computer. This site is the first time I've shared much of anything I do! I appreciate the peakbagger.com resource, so I'll look into contributing.

I thought of you on this one, felt like your kind of thing! Next time!