We actually did a group hike! I said we should do a group hike, and much to my surprise, it actually happened. That was kind of cool. Anyway, we went on a Wednesday, which was an awesome day to go hiking, and a bunch of us drove up and did a nice day-hike summit of Strawberry Peak. We went up the “easy” way which still has the last bit being a pretty steep scrabble, but isn’t the class 3 ish stuff that you have going up the other way. The trip was 6.5 mi round trip, with 1500′ of gain total (2300′ climbing and 800′ down, though, so a bit tougher on the legs). This way is included in Trip 37 of the 2nd edition of Trails of the Angeles.
We all mt up on Wednesday morning and drove on u to the Red Box trailhead (the same trailhead I took up to Mt. Lawlor. It was a really beautiful day, great weather, and being a weekday made it really nice and easy to get up there.
The hike was pretty low key. I’d done the beginning before, which saved us all a little bit of trouble at a couple of places that look like they ought to be junctions, but really don’t go anywhere. Right after the beginning, there was a huge downed tree across the trail, and we all had to actually go *through* it. I’m used to having to go over trunks, or around them, but I think this was the first time I really had to go through one. That was kind of awesome; I’d never seen a tree spreading that much foliage across the trail proper.
pushing on through the tree!
We continued on, and got to the junction where one would turn off to go to Mt. Lawlor, or back around the bulk of Strawberry Peak to get to Strawberry Meadow. Instead, we turned up a very steep use trail to the summit, which despite not being the “hard” Class III side was plenty of scramble for me. Steep and not really “trail” so much, and plenty of very sharp plants that one really needed to keep a weather eye out for. But March was pretty much the right weather to do this, much better than my prior effort in mid-summer. As usual, I was one of the very slowest, but that’s ok, I still made it up in reasonably good form. Once we got to the summit, we all sat down and hung out and relaxed. I took the opportunity to search around for a couple of geocaches that were on the summit while people sat and ate their lunch and whanot. We all took some pictures, and then came back down in reasonably good time and form.
on our way down the trail, with mt baldy in the background
I’m glad I finally made it up this trail; I think I would have felt bad if I never had. It’s a fun mountain with some reasonable views, and that last push up the trail is definitely more of a challenge than a lot of the rest of the trails to be found in the San Gabriels.
