November 18, 2006, Erin, Joe and I went up Mt. Lawlor in the Angeles National Forest (yay San Gabes). I found a listing of the trip in the Hundred Peaks Section of the Angeles Sierra Club Chapter. This was just a lowkey day hike, 6 mi RT (out and back), and 1300′ of gain. This was more or less meant as a test of my hiking ability after going through PT stuff for my knee.
on your…mark
It’s a cute little hike. You start from a trailhead that is most often used to get to the top of Strawberry Peak, although I didn’t succeed the other time I tried (and I went up a different way).
It’s a pretty simple trail, nothing much super, pretty clearly marked, and you go up until you reach this saddle.
hanging at the saddle
As you can tell, there are a lot of trails and goals from that point. And although it wasn’t marked on the base, at least Mt Lawlor is marked at this point. Nice to know that the mountain you are planning on summiting is actually there. In fact, the summit was easily viewable (more or less) from where we were standing.
The ridgeline of lawlor
At this point, the trail turns from nice normal dirty clear cut San Gabriel trail to a use trail, in fact, the sort of use trail you can see in the left of the photo above. That precise use trail, actually. Admittedly, a bit of picking your way around pointy plants and rock piles adds a bit of spice to a hike that otherwise really would just be a boring walkup. We ate lunch on the way up this section, made it to the top, signed the register we found in a canister up there (from the Sierra Club), and then turned around and came back the way we came. Nothing too crazy.
It was nice to get out that day and realize I could actually hike a little bit and not have my knee be dead, etc, etc.
Team at the summit
