I first became aware of what would become Mt Maxon a few years ago when taking the family up Gold Canyon. Mt Maxon, a towering peak on the dark side of Mt Lukens, was bathed in winter green and looked like a scene out of Southeast Asia to me at the time. That hike was a transportive one, particularly Gold Canyon flush with water, but despite myself having a great time it was terribly difficult for my wife and actually led me to finding this website. viewtopic.php?p=66751#p66751
Mt Maxon has an elevation point on the USGS - 3590 - but there is no indication anywhere that anyone has ever summited, and studying the area topography, there is no mystery why - it is rugged, unforgiving country. But it was time to change that. This target would be too high-risk for me to attempt alone, so I was fortunate with late notice to assemble an A-list team with Dima and Mathew, and I knew that if it could be done, we would do it.
Along the Big Tujunga where it follows the San Gabriel fault is a rugged stretch of the Front County. This hike in many ways is the other tectonic half of last year’s Josephine Ridge expedition, separated by the 4 miles of the fault’s offset, and the rock was indeed the same granodioritic plutonic melange. viewtopic.php?p=71566#p71566
After leaving cars at Wildwood, we set off from the abandoned picnic area at Delta Flat. Why the Forest Service decided to close down this picnic area years ago I couldn’t tell you, but with how popular Wildwood is just up the river, perhaps they should reconsider.
Delta Canyon is a long, wide and luxurious carpet of gravel and cobbles. It stretches far up into the maze of nooks and crannies of the western end of Mt Lukens, and makes for lovely travel. We leisurely made our way up, catching one another up on bike race travails, dating travails, career travails, and various San Gabriel news and rumors. I saw a couple footprints in the sand, but otherwise this is a lovely undiscovered canyon right along the fringe of Los Angeles.
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As we progressed the surrounding terrain became more rugged.
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Eventually we arrived at the spot where I had determined we needed to leave the comforts of the wash and begin the fun stuff in order to avoid getting cliff-ed out, but Mathew wanted to continue a bit further to investigate that cliff, suspecting the potential of a waterfall. His intuition was right - water appeared at the surface, and within minutes we were in a beautiful open bowl with a creek of modest flow but following a spectacular course cascading down a good 50-foot ledge. Great call! I even had a convenient fallen log to sit on for quiet reflection in this church of stone and water.
This waterfall was a find - anyone else know about it? Not difficult to get to.
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And now the fun was to begin. First climbing up out of Delta Canyon, finding some nice openings in the brush to take advantage of, following game trails:
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We came to the rim of the adjacent canyon, and needed to stop and consider carefully our options.
The topography is rugged and complex around here. Lots of cliffs and crumbling slopes obscured by thick brush in a maze of rough little canyons. The navigation necessary to avoid wasting a lot of time with dead-ends that could get dangerous very quickly needs to be precise and thoughtful. Knowing this, the night before I had planned a few different options, with backup plans for the backup plans, and weighed the pros and cons of each. Ultimately I decided short-term pain dropping into a mini-ravine and scrambling out of it to make a straight shot for the summit would give us the highest probability of success. Continuing up the way we were going looked a lot more appealing in the moment, but there were cruxes waiting above with that circuitous route that I wasn’t entirely confident about. Best to hit the cruxes now, and if they turn us around then re-evaluate instead of hitting our cruxes further up where the options became even more limited.
This little canyon did not want to go down easily. There was no good route - just a serpentine one that didn’t get you cliff-ed out. And with how thick the brush was, you can’t see the cliffs before you are at them.
You can see how we had to weave our way around the blue and black - slopes of those angles I find are generally unnavigable in the Gabes, where the rock is always crumbling. Because of the brush we couldn’t actually see these cliffy-slopes, we just had to put a lot of trust into CalTopo’s slope angle shading to find little pockets of red.
And this lead us to our path to the summit. Believe it or not, going up this thing was the easiest way to summit Mt Maxon:
The first bit was the hardest, and brought back Josephine ridge memories. “grab green” was repeated over and over again in my head - in these circumstances the brush is your best friend, giving you your only secure holds on the crumbling slope, that is, as long as it is alive, aka green. I grabbed as much green as I could wherever I could find. Gloves I find are a must for this - Mathew and Dima’s hands did not return unscathed.
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After much carefully grabbing and pulling and climbing, we emerged at the summit of Mt Maxon and victory was ours!
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No evidence of humans at the summit, including any sort of benchmark. I’m calling this a first ascent, and I welcome anyone to challenge that claim! We celebrated with some jalapeño cheese bagels sitting on beautifully exposed gneissic ledge overlooking stone Canyon - where Maxon's dream of trail restoration had been realized.
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We could have dropped down to Stone Canyon from here - I had a steep but doable option down some scree fields - but the crux-ridge leading to Mt Lukens was calling my name, and I wanted to see if it was passable.
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The going was pretty good on an extremely narrow pathway of shattered granodiorite.
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Then we came upon a wall of shrub oak and brush that had grown in a thicket right on the ridge top, with cliffs on all sides. It was either through, or grow wings.
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For us poor bipedal terrestrials, it was through. At one point I was entangled in the brush like a fly caught in a spider web, and looked down to realize there was actually precipice beneath me, and I could see down a crumbling ledge. But I couldn’t fall even if I wanted to, because my body was suspended in a mess of branches. Welcome to the San Gabriel backcountry….
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Things didn’t seem to look any better up ahead, so we declared we had our fill of the ridge and backtracked to descend down a screen field that the slope angle shading suggested would not lead to any cliffs. I have limited experience with scree fields, so I took it pretty cautiously, while Dima seemed more comfortable surfing. Towards the bottom I started trying the surfing technique, and it was pretty fun!
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A mess of blowdowns and poison oak later, we connected with the Stone Canyon wash and the going got a lot easier. There was more potential for waterfalls up a feeder canyon, so Matthew lead us to a couple lovely ones. The lower one was more reachable than a higher one, and at this point I was content with the lower.
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The stone canyon wash was lovely. Dima complained it was too easy and wanted to call in a SAR rescue copter to airlift him out "because of boredom”
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We connected with Matt Maxon’s Stone Canyon Trail for the last little bit back to Wildwood, hopping boulders and branches across the Tujunga amidst the river revelers. A late lunch at Tommy’s Burgers in Tujunga followed, where Mathew gave them his phone number, address and social security number to join their rewards program.
I never met Matt Maxon, but from what I’ve heard and read from his trip reports he seems like just the sort of guy to I’d like to go on adventures with in the backcountry. On Sunday I kinda felt like I did!
4.69 miles, 2914 gain.
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I’ve added “Mt Maxon” to open street map in the memory of our San Gabriel brush warfare comrade.
Mt Maxon - a first ascent
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Nate U
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Nate U
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Matthew
- Supercaff
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Well put and well written Nate! Super excited we named the peak after Matt. The hike was epic and I recommend everyone here hikes up there but definitely know it was very loose and sharp. We all somehow didn't get poison oak rashes even though we were sharing "intimate contact" with it. Lots of blood was shed and thorns were brought back home in our skin but it was an experience that was all worth it.
stoke is high
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Nate U
- Posts: 655
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I have a little poison oak on the top of my left hand, and behind my right knee! Sure would have been worse if I hadn't been completely covered...
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tekewin
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Nice one!
Nate wins the Novel prize for planning. Amazing route finding using the slope shaded terrain. I used it once in Caltopo on a desert peak and it was very helpful, and changed my route. I don't always remember to check.
Nate wins the Novel prize for planning. Amazing route finding using the slope shaded terrain. I used it once in Caltopo on a desert peak and it was very helpful, and changed my route. I don't always remember to check.
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AW~
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The waterfall has been noted in canyoneering. Matt and group was first descent...Epsilon (West fork - Delta canyon) Matt also listed the East fork-Delta canyon, named Bruin Highway.
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Sean
- Cucamonga
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Thanks for the report and photos. Willie and I scrambled up Stone Canyon for fun on September 1, 2015. We took the tributary and made it to the ridge but ran out of time and had to leave before bagging 3590. We were just goofing around as usual, but now I'm glad we didn't bag it so you could have claim to it. Are you adding it to Peakbagger?
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