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…
Saddleback Butte is a prominent landmark in the desert east of Lancaster, its twin summits and namesake saddle recognizable from viewpoints throughout the Antelope Valley. We had first talked about hiking to the 3,651′ summit last spring when the area’s wildflowers were on full display, but other things took precedence and, before we knew…
We had yet to explore the area of the Angeles crest between Throop Peak on the east and Mt. Islip on the west, the interval being a south-and-west-trending ridge that includes Mt. Hawkins, elev. 8,850′. Really just a bump along the ridgeline, the peak’s position at the juncture of the ridge’s change of direction…
We’ve driven on Hwy 2 many times past the turnoff to the Grassy Hollow visitor center, but we’ve always had other places to get to and have never stopped in to check it out. With the grandbabies with us in Wrightwood for the second weekend in a row, we decided to pay Grassy Hollow…
We had intended to hike Mt. Williamson as the second of a two-day exploration of the area around Islip Saddle, but our dog, Frances, got sick the night of our Mt. Islip walk and we had to postpone the next day’s trip as a result. The intervening weekends have been full of events and…
Chelsea, Pedro, and the boys came up to Wrightwood on Friday night, planning to go to Joshua Tree NP the following day to do Chelsea’s pregnancy photo shoot with our favorite photographer, Holly Carlyle (we got to know Holly five years ago when she shot Chelsea and Pedro’s wedding, and she’s been a veritable…