The day after my car accident, I was scheduled to go hiking. So, of course, I went hiking. It was great! Stupid, but great.
Anyway, Joe and I pulled off a trip to Mt Waterman. Something like 6 miles total, although getting an accurate distance was hard, and 1300′ or so of gain. But, there was a lot more snow than we had been expecting. (ETA: 3 years later, I learned we didn’t make it to the true summit – boo!)
check out the branch in the foreground. a photographer is not me!
There were also some people out planning to enjoy the snow…
Joe didn’t even have boots, just some reasonable sneakers. Neither of us had gaiters or crampons or snowshoes, or hell, even snow baskets for our hiking poles. (Although I did then buy snow baskets right after). But the hiking poles saved the day, basically.
Anyway, at the base of the mountain, there were all these kids and families sledding in these little bowls of snow, and it was all cute and adorable, and then we cut above them on the hillside. We kept following the nominal trail around the mountain, until you make it to a saddle in a ridgeline, where the above ski lift comes in.
This ridge borders the San Gabriel Wilderness Area, which we skirted for much of the rest of the hike.
(you can also see the difference between the north and south sides of the mountain in terms of snow….)
Anyway, so we turned right along Kratka Ridge, along the edge of the wilderness area , and just sort of kept going on uphill (with one almost wrong turn. There was an obvious path forward in the snow, but it was basically caused, far as we could tell, by other people making the same error, and not seeing the switchback).
We didn’t see much in the way of wildlife besides lots of little chipmunk like creatures, but we did see a fair number of animal tracks, as they are obviously smart enough to use trails people have already beaten down.
(hand for scale)
Near the top, the snow was definitely getting thicker, even in the trail area, much more snowshoe territory. Oh well! It was a beautiful day, lovely and sunny, despite all the snow, and we weren’t going to go that far and not make it all the way to the top. We definitely had to break through some actual snow to get to (what we think was) the summit, at 8038′ (mmm, over 8k’)
you can clearly see where we walked…
dorks on the summit, although you can’t really tell where we are
Basically, then, we just headed back down the way we came. We looked at all the snowshoes tracks, where people were just able to walk straight up the mountainside, instead of needing to use the silly switchbacked paths we were stuck with. There were some nice views on the way down. And then we were pretty glad to take off our wet footwear in the car. All in all, a lovely day.
