This hike was a bit of a haul. We started at Eaton Canyon, and went Henninger Flats –> Idlehour Trail –> Inspiration Point–> Echo Mountain –> Altadena. This was a total of 13 miles and 4100′ of gain, according to Trip #28 in Trails of the Angeles.
A winter summit of Baldy! In some ways, this was actually easier than doing it as a hike. Anyway, Chris called me up maybe 1-2 days before, and asked if I wanted to go up Baldy. Sure, I said! Sounds like a blast. Of course, I really didn’t know what was intended so much, but it seemed like good times anyway. Christopher had expressed interest, so the two of them had concocted this trip, then Chris had invited me along as bonus. All in all, it was a most gorgeous day to be up on the mountain, with pretty close to perfect weather, fabulous views, and several miles less of walking. You still have to ascend all 3800′ of elevation gain from the Manker Flats lot, but the trip back down loses a lot of that rather quickly.
Nathan and I headed out on a great fall day to go on a hike. Driving straight up Lake Avenue from Pasadena into Altadena, we parked, and kept heading up the hill to Echo Mountain. So far, this was a hike I had done a couple times before. From there, however, after taking a bit of a break and enjoying the view, we kept going up the hill, and took the Castle Canyon Trail up to Inspiration Point. There were some wasps along the way, and the last bit was a bit of a slog, but overall it was a pretty great hike. 9.4 miles RT, with 2800′ of gain. Overall Pics.
I figure I could add in some actual current bits as I write up what ends up being pre-history. Just got back yesterday from a Thanksgiving trip to Los Angeles. Flights out were saved only by Southwest holding the interim flight ( I presume they knew they would be SOL for rebooking many many people onto the next day, the day before Thanksgiving). We had a nice Thanksgivukkah, followed by a lovely engagement party the following evening, joined by very old family friends, family members, and more recent friends to boot. I haven’t seen that many people at the house at one time in ages. That done, here are a couple of hikes from summer 2010!
Night hike up Echo Mountain – August 23, 2010, and a trip up Icehouse Canyon – September 12, 2010
In the first parts of my trip, I left Los Angeles and wound my way north through California, from the Bay Area, up to Lassen Volcanic Park , and then north to Lava Beds National Monument. From there we headed north into Oregon, heading to Crater Lake National Park. After that , Jen had to head back home, and after a farewell at the Klamath Falls Airport, I headed west, continued up the Oregon coastline, and eventually made my way to Portland.
This time right around when I was graduating really felt like a time when I had a lot of chance, desire, and availability to really go outside and check things out. While life had been a bit crazy for the last few months, these were really a chance to just get outside. So, I emailed out to the standard people, and Rashied and Chris were able to come on out with me for a hike. We had to go a bit past some of what was the “general” area I would have gone to, since a lot of the forest was still closed from the Station Fire, but the Angeles Crest Highway was still open, so we were able to head on up to Mt. Hawkins, which is a bit southwest of Islip Saddle. The trip was approximately 9 miles round trip, with 2300′ of gain, but my GPS said there were 3160′ of actual climbing involved.
