Snowblind & Sunburned

I would recommend driving east at dawn.

I woke up at ass o clock in the morning, finished assembling the contents of my bag, got dressed, and left at about 6:30 AM Sunday morning. This particular day was foggy, particularly in the SGV that I had to drive through to get to Baldy Village, where the trail in question awaited. I was on the 210 at 7:30 AM, just after the sun rose.

The way to Baldy Village.

My recommendation stems from this: The 210 east bobs and weaves amongst the mountains it's situated amongst. As I drove, the sun burned through the fog layer as I gained altitude, diffusing the morning light amongst those clouds. As the highway dipped back down, the sun was again hidden, and the highway found itself wrapped in morning gloom. It did this a few times. Super fuckin rad.

Anyway, the 210 lets out nearby Baldy Village, which is a cute little mountain town that seems super quaint but probably everyone does meth because there isn't a goddamned thing to do besides hike and remark at how quaint things are. There's one super windy road in, and it goes through a few tunnels of the old 'we threw dynamite at it until it wasn't there' drilling technique.

Cucamonga peak requires an adventure pass. 'Requires' in this instance falls more along the lines of 'we'd prefer it if you got an adventure pass' because I've parked there twice, while making disconcertingly intense eye contact with the park rangers, and nothing has happened. I pay taxes motherfucker, I can walk around this piece of public property if I want.

Cucamonga Peak is accessible via IceHouse Canyon Trail. The trail is well-maintained, dotted with private cabin residences throughout.Amongst these cabins are old ruins of other structures, either destroyed by fire or flood; only the flagstone base remains of many, and only a few walls of that for some others. Throughout this section, I was stalked by a bee. Just one. The trail weaves in and out of several peoples yards, which sucks, because if you got a cabin in the mountains, 'a shitload of people in your grille all the time' seems like the exact opposite thing you'd want.

 Cabin in the woods

The weather forecast was a high of 75 at base camp, with a low of 30. With a delta of 45 degrees, I had to pack both light and heavy, which led to several costume changes on my way up the mountain. As a point of experience, if there's that big of a temperature variation in the forecast, you're essentially doomed to some degree of uncomfortability. Heads up - If you want to be popular on the trails, American Flag leggings are the way to go. Top comment I recieved 'Bro - your tights are sicker than the views' thanks bro, your patriotism has been noted.

 But I kinda don't believe him.

The trail runs next to a creek for a mile, then winds through a rocky field at the base of the mountain. From here, it's a few relentless miles of switchbacks climbing up the face of the mountain, before levelling off into the IceHouse Saddle, where several trails all come together. And still, that single goddamned bee stalked me.

Up until this point, Cucamonga Peak was familiar territory. I had been once before during December, but the weather could best be described as 'rainy bullshit' which turned into 'the goddamned apocalypse'.
 

 Where that small tree trunk to the right of the path is? There used to be a wall of rain there.

As I ascended further.The area beyond Icehouse Saddle is notable because any attempt to actually maintain the trail beyond that landmark is not really apparent. The trail narrows to about 10 inches, and it's not particularly sturdy; Multiple times the trail gave way underfoot, in between slipping on rocks and scree that littered the path.

Regardless, I made it up to the point where I had to turn around last time due to a Poseidon's Fury-style wall of water. Lacking such an obstace, I made my way up the trail. Scree turned to rubble, and rubble turned to football-sized rocks which made up both the trail and the cliffs, the trail only understandable as a strangely-worn set of boulders winding around the cliff.

Cucamonga Peak sits at 8.300 feet, and due to the structure of the surrounding mountains, manages to maintain snowpack throughout the year. This wouldn't be a problem, except that it was warm enough to cause the top layer of snow to melt. And the snow often flowed over onto the already-narrow footpath. So, let's recap.

-Path is narrow, poorly structured.
-Path is covered in snow
-Path has footsteps worn into snow, packed hard to become ice
-Footholds within snow are uneven
-Top layer of ice has melted, making ice slippery
-Path has 70-degree slopes on either side.

 FUUUUCK YOOOOOOOU

After very carefully crossing the slippery uneven narrow rickety bullshit path, the trail wound further into an even shitter path - the trail sloped up 45 degrees, with barely any marker of human activity. There was zero pack on the dirt, which required a hands-and-feet scrabble to ascend. I really wanted to slap whoever engineered this shitty fucking trail because they did a goddamned terrible job of it.

Then I got to the trail, and realized that I had missed a turn, and had just been climbing the mountainside slopes. Whoops. At least the way down would be easier.

After reaching the summit, I hung out with a few other climbers, saw a dog(but did not hang out with the dog) and noticed that the goddamned bee was still orbiting my head like a particularly loud ioun stone that stings you. Took a bunch of photos, ate an entire bag of trail mix, refilled my water, and off I went back down the mountain.

 Face of meth hiking

Going down is always easier, but this was a particularly quick trip, feeling as spry as I did. I essentially ran down most of the hills, dodging the olds and the fats in the way because CHOO CHOO MOTHERFUCKER HIKE TRAIN AINT GOT NO BRAKES. That is until I got to a few craggy sections. Or that section where the trail gave way and I ate shit really hard. Hit the brakes then. BUT THEN CHOO CHOO.

All in all, the hike was 12 miles, and gained 4,300 feet of elevation. I started at 8, finished by 3, and was home by 5.

HERE ARE THE THINGS I LEARNED ON THIS HIKE:
-Wear sunscreen. Really. I'm currently cosplaying as a tomato.
-Human piss probably contributes substantially to the water cycle in mountains where there are trails.
-Rangers are actual cops, but way more chill because they aren't held to cop rules of ticketing/fund creation.
-4 liters of water is just enough
-My daypack has limitations as to what it can carry. That limit is not very high in terms of clothing
-I need to get my knife sharpened





Here's some more pictures!

Next up: Mt. Baldy!
items.

Snake? Snake?! SNAAAAAAAKE!

The hills are alive~

With SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKES

A new day has arrived. With the longer summer days approaching, I have re-founded my effort to walk on rocks until I run out of rocks that are at a higher altitude than I am at within the context of the trail I'm on at that particular time, or for the sake of brevity, the WoRUiROoRtaaaHAtiaaWtCotTioatPt campaign.

To kick it off, I decided to engage my old foe, Mt. Wilson. It's the first mountain I climbed last year which ended in failure due to injury, which I eventually summited (and ate a sandwich at the top) with fellow rock-stomper Siobhan, once my conditioning improved. Going into it this time with 0 conditioning, I knew the likelihood of failure was high, but if you don't do a thing because you're going to fail, then science says you're a lil' bitch.

After driving to Sierra Madre, and packing my knife (in case i have to 127 hours myself lol) I began to walk. I had also picked the hottest day of 2015 to climb - The first mile and a half is carved into the mountainside and uncovered, exposed to the relentless solar onslaught of the horrifying sky-fire that loomed o'erhead.

Despite the heat, plenty of people were on the trail, including mountain bikers, at least 2 hippies, and a shitload of snakes. You know how when you were a kid you had that iguana, and he basically just chilled on the heat rock all the time? Well, the mountain is now a heat rock, so the reptilian fauna can disco-slither all over the place and did so with gradual, reptile-grade abandon. I was stopped on my initial ascent by a rattlesnake who was crossing the road. I stopped two bikers from running him over on their way down, and we all had a moment of watching the majesty of nature as the snake realized he was holding up traffic and slithered away to scaley parts unknown.

As I ascended further, I ran into the dual-issue of 1) not having enough oxygen because 1a) I am a remorseless fatass, and 2) the heat wasn't going down as I ascended. If anything, It got worse - as oven-hot winds blew across the opening, withering me like a boner withers at the thought of how they fix priapisms.I was going through a liter of water per hour, and still not pissing clear; my life at this point was a relentlessly sweaty out-of-breath nightmare filled with various insects trying their hardest to inspect my eyes. I have just learned as of this writing that some gnats feed on mucous membrane secretions, including that of eyes. So if a gnat is trying to get into your eyes, he's hungry, and you're looking right into the face of how gross nature can be. Meditate on this.

Multiple times over the course of this trek, I succumbed to the existential angst of the pointlessness of summiting a mountain when there are more mountains than I could ever summit in my lifetime. Alternatively, Muscular fatigue. Regardless, my overall speed was hampered by the fact that anything that looked remotely chair-like was utilized by my ass for sitting purposes. Because of the duration of the hike, a few of these instances turned into mini picnics.

The mountain was brilliant, though - The recent rains had soaked the flora on the mountain so that I genuinely questioned whether someone had fucked with the color saturation settings on my eyes because I dont think anything could be *that* green. Mt. Wilson is a bitch to climb, but it is pretty - cliffs facing out into limestone bluffs, vistas overseeing the entire SGV. It's a rewarding climb.

EVERYTHING THE LIGHT TOUCHES YOU LION-FACED FUCK

Eventually, I got to Manzanita ridge, which was 5.2 miles in, and 3,500 feet up. I walked back in the now-somehow-even-worse heat, whereupon I got my in my car and never turned the A/C off ever.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM THIS HIKE:

1) Cardio is important
2) Nature is gross
3) It's hot pretty much everywhere
4) Sometimes you need more than 4 liters of water which is silly.
5) While the essentials are yknow...essential, you have limited pack space. Evaluate weather and environment vis-a-vis expected essentials.
6) In my morning fumbling, I accidentally grabbed the wrong trail mix type which had banana chips in it. Gross. Pay attention next time.
7) There's no muscle fatigue that a disturbingly high amount of caffiene can't fix.

Declaration of War

This is a hiking blog, I guess. Mostly it’s about how there are rocks, and rocks have been complicit in the following tragedies:

- Pompeii

- Mt. St. Helens

- Guns n' Roses

- Trapped Chilean Miners

- Stone Soup

So ergo, thus, and therefore: 100% rocks can go to hell. However, rocks are heavy and large and there is more rock per unit land than me. So, this isn't a "hiking blog" as it is "war stories from the front of an unending crusade against my igneous foes"

The San Bernardino battlefield has been opened recently, with my co-conspirator Martha. Thus far, I had walked up Mt. Wilson and Cucamonga Peak, both were fabulous display of flora and fauna, but I wanted to check something a bit more strenuous off my list. So, San Jacinto!

I haven't seen Martha since 2008, so the 4 AM car ride up to the San Bernardino Mountains was rapid-fire "hey we know each other but we don't know anything about each other" catching up that happens when you *know* someone, but don't know anything about them anymore.

I really wanted to take a photo of the sun rising, because we were driving right into it ('it' being 'the east' and not 'the sun' because that would mean 'we died' which isn't true unless I am 'a ghost') but couldn’t, because driving a high-explosive-filled fishbowl-missile filled with delicate squishy things inside requires at least a modicum of attention.

We get to the actual mountain area, and it's twisty and turny, bobbing in and around the following

- Big Goddamned Rocks

- Crazyass trees

- Bitchin' views

- mounting excitement for XTREME WALKING.

We get to the parking lot, which is not so much a lot as it a vaguely unforested crater. We get out, both remark how cold it is to our delicate, pampered Californian hypothalimi, put on a coat, and begin walking!

 

Martha!

We're treated to some really great views as we go up some switchbacks right out of the gate. The trail winds through a forest, and is really poorly marked for the first half mile or so - Multiple times we had no idea where we were going until we found a sign with such vaguely useful information as "<-path" or "<-lack of hilarious death"

The path lets out into a road, wherein it joints the PCT and begins in earnest. Going up, you can feel the super-fast elevation gain because you *know* you’re in better shape than this and Jesus Christ are you *really* that out of breath you fat bastard? Oh wait, the trail STARTS at 6,000 feet elevation, and climbs to about 11,000 feet. LA is basically Atlantis in comparison.

We get to a clearing, snap a couple good photos, and then continue upward. The environment continues to get more alpine, and the forest here is SHATTERED - Hunks of trees lay across the path, wood splinters sprayed every which goddamned way as if the trail was engineered by Michael Bay who was told he could only use materials found on the mountain. We climb, shimmy, crawl, and scurry across a variety of obstacles, eventually coming into a large rocky edifice, where we have to do the same goddamned locomotive verbs, but this time it’s hard and cold instead of vaguely squishy and cold.

More climbing! Now it’s snowy! Fuck! Those layers we're wearing are coming in handy. As are my crampons, because holy shit these work boots have fuckall for traction. Also I get to have spikes on my shoes which is basically some supervillain shit. If I strapped crampons to my stompy goth boots, I'm pretty sure the cops get called.

We're at about 9,000 feet and we're taking more and more breaks because we're essentially in the vacuum of space, which is as cold as it is beautiful. Also I can't breathe worth a goddamn. During one such break, we note that

1) Bees are relentless killing machines

2) Bees are suicide commandos

3) Bees lack physical capabilities of experiencing remorse or sadness

4) We are safe from the bees, because bees do not appreciate high-altitude, low-temperature weather that we are currently situated in.

As we remark this, we are accosted by 2 arctic bees.

ARCTIC GODDAMNED BEES.

So we flee as fast as we are able (read: very slowly, uphill) until we find an actual cabin in the actual woods. Unlike spooky story cabin in the woods, this cabin makes absolutely no presumption it is a pleasant place to be. If you found this cabin in the woods, you would stay there for the following reasons

1) You are panicking because you are being attacked by arctic bees, and cannot think clearly

1a) The bees can get into the tiniest crevices and murder you to death

1b) The bees will not stop until you are dead.

2) There is an actual storm on this mountain and you will die from exposure

3) It is night and you will die from tripping over a rock and the mountain will have claimed another life and laugh at you because mountains are assholes.

4) You need a particularly remote and forbidding place to summon whatever infernal horrors you want.

Oh yeah there were supplies like granola bars and vodka and sleeping bags in the cabin. It was cool.

The peak was a thing we got to. Except the trail ended like 100 yards before the peak. To get to the actual peak, you need to climb a fucktillion rocks. So we climbed the fucktillion rocks and almost died because it’s December and hurr durr the rocks are covered in ice because why the fuck wouldn’t they be, the mountain hates humans.

 View from the peak

We get to the summit, and have an impromptu party there. We party until we realize that going down will take a long time so we get started. The trip down is less eventful, except for a few vignettes.

Vignette 1) as we're going back down the mountain, about 2/3rds down, we start getting followed by 2 of the biggest goddamned ravens either of us has ever seen. We affectionately dub them Huginn and Munnin. They follow us all the way to the base of the mountain. Odin's ravens, mythologically speaking, are his eyes and ears; about as foreboding as being watched by a security camera, but instead of a guy who hates his life on the other end, it's an elder deity of a forgotten religion responsible for making the world.

Vignette 2) As we got closer to the base of the mountain, the mountain got very very quiet. We were in very rocky, steep cliff-like areas, which is prime black bear and mountain lion territory. So, combined silence, paranoia, setting sun, and the occasional flock of birds flying away apropos of nothing made for a very spooky return. Also, those two goddamned sentinel ravens.

Vignette 3) In my delirium of hiking for 10 hours, I return to my car finally. In the dusky sunset light, I turn to my left to look at a structure, and besides a downed tree there is a man wearing all black in a hoodie with the hood up, hands in pockets, looking at Martha and I, unmoving. All the hairs on the back of my neck firmly erect, I boogie as fast as possible to the car and leave, before realizing it was a trick of the light - the downed tree cast shadows that helped my imagination create a spooky dude.

Vignette 4) The sunset was fucking amazing. So bummed I ran out of film.

 Ran out of film, not 'my battery died'

Vignette 4a) The drive home in the sunset light, winding through the mountains at high speed while the sky was on fire with reds and oranges: Yes. Do want.

I got home and ate a burrito then passed out. One battle against my gnarly rocky foes won.