We first hiked up the PCT to Mt. Baden-Powell more than a year-and-a-half ago – it was a crisp November day then, and those memories of a tough hike in cool weather were beckoning us to repeat the journey, albeit on a warm Fourth of July Saturday. Baden-Powell’s northeast slope is one of the…
We had planned to hike Waterman Mountain today, but Jane realized she hadn’t brought any socks when we were about halfway to the trailhead. By the time we got back to the cabin, it was in the 80s in Wrightwood and we figured we should do something a little closer to home. We had…
One stretch of the PCT near Wrightwood we had yet to fully explore is the 5-mile section between Guffy Campground and Inspiration Point – we visited some of the area when hiking Frost Peak last year but thought the full out-and-back would make for a nice longish walk that was close enough to home. Plus,…
We could have booked our Palm Desert trip several weeks earlier, but we chose to do it relatively late because we wanted to hike San Jacinto Peak, and we were worried that the higher mountains would still be snowy earlier in the season. Day 3 of our stay in the desert had us rushing…
Day 2 of our Palm Desert trip found us trying to figure out where to hike without killing ourselves in the heat. We had talked about a 7-mile out-and-back to Murray Hill above Palm Springs, but with the forecast in the 100s we knew we’d have to be on the trail before sunrise, and…
We were looking for something short and scenic today – coincidentally, earlier in the week Caltrans had finally opened Hwy 2 west of Vincent Gap (it had been closed because of rockfall since November), so we took off westbound to Buckhorn Campground about forty minutes away. Nestled in the drainage just north of Waterman Mountain,…
Devil’s Punchbowl Natural Area lies south of the town of Pearblossom along Hwy 138 – coming and going from Wrightwood, we’ve driven past the turnoff dozens of times now. The visitor’s center at the park (which is a part of the LA County Parks and Recreation system) is perched on the west side of…
Not to be confused with Pinnacles National Park north of Paso Robles, the Pinnacles (elev. 5,737′) is an HPS-listed summit north of Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino mountains – when in the High Desert area near Hesperia, the peak’s conical shape is an appealing landmark on the southern horizon. We intended to hike here…
We had planned to hike today to The Pinnacles north of Lake Arrowhead, but halfway there decided we may not have time to do all we had hoped for – we chose instead to explore the West Fork of the Mojave River drainage west of Silverwood Lake, about a half hour east of Wrightwood off…
After four months to the day since our last hike, we finally found ourselves a day with nothing else in it. We hadn’t been to Big Bear since passing through last July on our way to Joshua Tree, so we decided to pay the area a visit and hike the 7 roundtrip miles to…