Los Pinetos from the San Fernando Valley
Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2024 3:45 pm
Well, if my searching of the board archives is correct, this route does not have a trip report here yet.
A blessed onshore flow allowed for some early season adventures in my hiking radius last week.
A hike I've had on my to-do list for a long time is the venerable Los Pinetos from the south, bagging the peak ~3300, a bit of a false summit to the south of the antenna-studded true summit. It is a staple of the skyline of the northern San Fernando Valley, and rising honorably to the north whenever I turn right out of my driveway. My view every day:
Of course this means I *have* to bag it, even if I already did the proper Los Pinetos summit as a birthday hike in February 2022.
The overcast conditions and amount of time I had worked out for Thursday morning. A good warmup for bigger and more remote things to be done this winter.
I took the "Los Pinetos Trail" up from Olive View Drive in Sylmar, with a barely-there trailhead. The trail up looked like it received 95% horse traffic, which is typical of most of the northern SFV. I came upon a picnic area that looked like it received a lot more funding than it has use. One of these use miscalculations in park facilities - sometimes there is too little facility for the amount of use, sometimes its too much facility. This was obviously too much facility for 1 or 2 horse riders apt to come through here in a day. Wish I could transplant all of this to somewhere else in the Angeles that really could use it.
The horse hooves PULVERIZE the 10mya Towsley Formation siltstone, so the trail is soft as a pillow, and nearly impossible to ride a bike up. I pushed mine. I took this photo to demonstrate the silt beach I was climbing, and didn't even realize a coyote was looking at me until reviewing the photo after the hike. Those things are good at not being seen even when they are seen.
Eventually gained enough elevation to climb out of the siltstone and into the triassic-jurassic Diorite gneiss plutonic-derived rock that make the San Gabriels what they are, even here at their far western end. The trail conditions firmed right up.
at 2,500 feet I ditched the bike in a drainage and start bushwhacking up to the adjacent ridge, following my intention to go right up the face of what I look at from my street every day. This area last burned in the 2019 Saddle Ridge fire, and is currently thick with this stuff. You have to wade through it, but nothing pokes you. I know I should know the name of it, but I don't. Can anyone help? There are loads of it in the western Gabes.
hauling myself up the ridge, I entered the clouds.
I attained the ~3300 false summit, no benchmark or register or anything, but a good cairn to appreciate. I couldn't look back at my street through the clouds, but I'll take that over sun exposure.
The south-facing slope on the way to the true summit was much brushier, but I had a firebreak to follow. Approaching the antennas, looked like some kind of planting was going on:
And I reached the true Los Pinetos summit.
Now I followed the firebreak along the Santa Clara divide crest down to the always lovely Wilson Canyon Saddle. I've reached that point on now 5 different unique hikes. This will be the last one.
Took the Wilson Canyon Road back down to my bike, and cruised down from there, in the process ripping a giant hole in my pants. Shoutout to these pants - originally purchased when I was 11 years old in 1997 for the formative New Vineyard Mtns bushwhack backpacking trip I did with my father in Maine, they went on to complete hundred and hundreds of hikes across the country. May they rest in technical pant heaven.
7.86 miles, 2,728 feet of gain. I've now done every conceivable hike possible within 11 miles of my home.
A blessed onshore flow allowed for some early season adventures in my hiking radius last week.
A hike I've had on my to-do list for a long time is the venerable Los Pinetos from the south, bagging the peak ~3300, a bit of a false summit to the south of the antenna-studded true summit. It is a staple of the skyline of the northern San Fernando Valley, and rising honorably to the north whenever I turn right out of my driveway. My view every day:
The overcast conditions and amount of time I had worked out for Thursday morning. A good warmup for bigger and more remote things to be done this winter.
I took the "Los Pinetos Trail" up from Olive View Drive in Sylmar, with a barely-there trailhead. The trail up looked like it received 95% horse traffic, which is typical of most of the northern SFV. I came upon a picnic area that looked like it received a lot more funding than it has use. One of these use miscalculations in park facilities - sometimes there is too little facility for the amount of use, sometimes its too much facility. This was obviously too much facility for 1 or 2 horse riders apt to come through here in a day. Wish I could transplant all of this to somewhere else in the Angeles that really could use it.
