In Wrightwood again for the weekend, we decided to try and do two hikes on opposite sides of Islip Saddle, a point 30 minutes west of Wrightwood at which Hwy 2 crosses the Angeles Crest and the PCT west of the Mt. Baden-Powell area. East of the saddle lies its namesake, Mt. Islip, elev….
Having spent a rather lazy Saturday at the cabin, we decided to drive across the mountains on Hwy 2 and eat Father’s Day dinner with Dani at Carter’s restaurant in Pasadena, doing a hike somewhere along the way. Of the literally dozens of options open to us, one that had caught our eye on…
For a couple of weeks now, we had been talking about repeating our hike up Mt. Baden-Powell (9,399′), but adding a trip down the peak’s western ridgeline as well. We had also kicked around the idea of doing the hike in the reverse direction, from west to east. In either case, we’d need to…
At 8,505′, the highest point on Blue Ridge is Wright Mountain, named for the original developer of the Wrightwood community. The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) runs the length of Blue Ridge, and we had hiked a short segment of the PCT on our way to Frost Peak a few weeks earlier. Today’s agenda called…
Our quads and glutes were a little sore following yesterday’s climb up Blue Ridge, so we were in need of something slightly less intense for today’s outing. We settled on Gobblers Knob, a 6,955′ bump on the eastern end of Blue Ridge near Circle Mountain, which would only involve about 3 roundtrip miles of…
The eastern San Gabriels had gotten some snow the previous weekend, but whatever stuck had virtually disappeared by mid-week, and we were anxious to start exploring the area with vigor. Having not done anything at altitude for weeks, we decided to find something that would help us acclimate while still being a good workout….
Having enjoyed the wildflowers so much at the Poppy Reserve last weekend, we were anxious to pay Wind Wolves a visit to see if any color was left up there – well, no such luck. We started up the east side of San Emigdio Canyon, taking the side trail up to Raven’s Landing for…
As we’ve recently driven so many times through the desert on our way to Wrightwood, we’ve been making a list of hikes we can do on the way to and from, and prominent among those is the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve west of Lancaster off Hwy 138. We had been following developing wildflower reports…
Well, it’s taken the better part of two years, but we finally purchased a cabin in Wrightwood. Stormy weather last weekend had made it difficult to even get up here, much less hike, but make it we did in spite of very heavy rain in the desert and about 3″ of wet and slushy snow…
Our first hike of 2014 did not follow the usual format. We’re quite used to doing our own thing, typically by ourselves, but we had noticed that the naturalists at Wind Wolves were leading a series of monthly night hikes that coincided with a full moon. So, we called this week and were told…