Our 28th wedding anniversary being November 3rd, we wanted to spend the weekend away somewhere, and we initially targeted Wrightwood, a mountain community of 5,000 residents in the eastern San Gabriels. We had made a day visit here a couple of years ago and wanted to look at vacation homes as well as explore the many hiking options the area offers. However, a light snowstorm the previous Tuesday night looked to make us change our plans – we thought about going down to Palm Springs, but in the end decided on Friday morning to take a chance at Wrightwood. So, we arrived in Wrightwood on Friday afternoon, found a little motel room, and bummed around town the rest of the day. We did drive up to Vincent Gap, about 20 minutes west of Wrightwood on Hwy 2 – here, the Pacific Crest Trail crosses the highway from the north and, in four miles, ascends more than 2,800′ up the northeast shoulder of Mt. Baden-Powell, at 9,399′ the highest summit in this area of the San Gabriel mountains. This hike has been on our radar for some time, but we were concerned that the snowfall had made the route impassable, especially since the trail is on the north (shady) side of the mountain – however, the handful of cars in the parking lot indicated that the trail was open, and we decided to take our shot at it the following morning. It was near freezing in Wrightwood early Saturday, so we let the day warm up a bit, arriving at the trailhead about 9:30am, and the temperature was a cool 45 degrees when we set out. We warmed up quickly, though, as the trail climbs at about 900′ per mile in the initial section, a pretty steep clip. We had read that there are more than three dozen switchbacks on this trail, and that count is not exaggerated – the trail alternates regularly between west- and east-trending directions, first climbing up the very steep lower third of the mountain on long switchbacks, then reaching a landing of sorts about halfway up where the grade flattens out a bit. Someone ahead of us – perhaps the previous day – had marked the turn numbers, first in the dirt and then in the snow, which was helpful in gauging our progress up the mountain (we counted 40 in all, 38 below the ridgeline and two more near the summit). Chris’ breakfast burrito wasn’t sitting well, and the combination of altitude, a steep trail, and indigestion slowed his pace considerably (comparing trip stats later, we figured out that Jane spent a total of 45 minutes on the ascent just waiting for Chris to catch up). We encountered patchy snow as expected, more often than not in the shaded and western turns, but it was never more than a few inches deep and did not present a significant problem. Above the landing, however, the slope steepened again and the switchbacks became much shorter – the snowfields became larger as well, and, as we ascended above turn 23, we began to anticipate arriving at the exposed northeast ridge, from which we would finally get the south-facing views that were the objective of the hike. Finally, above turn 38, we crested the ridge – it was breathtaking. To the east were the peaks around Mt. San Antonio, better known as Mt. Baldy, to the south was the eastern half of the enormous San Gabriel River drainage, and to the southwest was the summit of Baden-Powell itself – words can’t describe the immensity of the view, nearly as grand as those found in Yosemite in terms of scale. We made our way west along the ridgeline, continuing up the slope while the PCT curved away toward points further west down the ridge. We paused at the Wally Waldron tree, an ancient limber pine on the crest of the ridge that is thought to be about 1,500 years old – after some photos, we continued up two final switchbacks and through a sizeable snowfield to the summit. The views here were similar to those we had on the ridge, only better – now the panorama opened up to the south and west as well, literally a 360-degree view over a huge area of Southern California. To the west were the peaks of the Angeles and southern Los Padres forests, then the LA basin to the southwest (including the Palos Verdes peninsula and downtown LA), then the Inland Empire and Orange County beyond to the south – the long ridge of Catalina Island was visible over the clouds offshore. To the southeast was the Mt. Baldy area, and we could see through gaps in those peaks the tops of Mt. San Jacinto near Palm Springs and San Gorgonio Peak above the Big Bear area to the east. To the north lay the whole of the Mojave Desert, hemmed in by mountains in an arc stretching from the Tehachapis in the west and the southern Sierras in the north to the Panamints and other desert ranges to the north and east – truly spectacular. We wandered about the summit for about an hour in all, Jane taking photos of the Boy Scout memorial to Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouting movement and the mountain’s namesake, while Chris signed the register. The ridge south of the summit area is gently sloped and, although the east and west sides fall away very steeply, is an easy stroll – we walked down this ridge about a quarter mile looking for a little solitude as the summit was quite crowded with some large groups of hikers there ahead of us. We ended up eating our lunch on a small, flat rock at the ridge’s crest overlooking Mine Gulch, a canyon to the east whose floor lay nearly 5,000′ below us. We thought briefly (very briefly) about continuing south to Ross Mountain, another peak that looked tantalizingly close (really more than 2-1/2 air miles away), but abandoned the idea at the thought of losing more than 2,000′ of elevation that we’d have to gain right back. The large groups were still there when we returned to the summit, but we took a few more photos (including one of the word “God” on the memorial marker that has been defaced by some who seem to acknowledge the validity of the Boy Scout’s associated duties to self, others, and country, yet fail to hold God in the same esteem – they apparently also fail to realize that defacing the monument contradicts whatever respect they may have for others who believe differently) before heading back down the trail. It was about 1pm when we started down, and the descent seemed to go very slowly despite us making much better time than we had going up. We rested only a couple of times, but we both paid the price as our knees and hips felt the full impact of the steep descent by the time we got to the parking area at 3pm. We stopped at an overlook along the highway a couple of miles east of the peak for some final photos before returning to Wrightwood and a well-deserved hot shower. Despite the significant pain and effort involved, this hike instantly became one of our favorites – a fantastic experience on a gloriously beautiful day.