Trails of the Angeles. John W. Robinson
of Southern California. Tom enthusiastically approved of my project, and a year later, the first edition of Trails of the Angeles appeared.
Over the next three decades, Trails of the Angeles continued to be a favorite of Southern California hikers, much to my gratification. These were years of strenuous work to keep the guidebook up-to-date. Unlike a novel or most works of nonfiction, a guidebook is never completed. Change is constantly taking place, caused by a number of factors: fire, flood, abandoning of old trails and campgrounds, building of new ones, objections from private property owners whose land a road or trail may cross, and new US Forest Service regulations. Underlying many of these issues is the fact that the San Gabriels rise next door to one of the major population centers on the continent, which results in swarms of people using—and often overusing—these mountains.
Still, it was a labor of love on my part. Countless weekends were spent doing what I enjoy the most: tramping over old trails, checking out realigned or new ones, and meeting new friends.
Now, mainly because of advancing age, the time has come to relinquish work on Trails of the Angeles. My successor is a young, energetic hiker I met on the Mount Wilson Trail several years ago, Doug Christiansen of Sierra Madre. Doug is an airline pilot by profession who spends many of his free days rambling over the mountains that rise abruptly above his home. I’ve hiked with Doug many times in the past year and am convinced that he is the right man for the job.
I offer a fond farewell to my many mountain hiking friends of years gone by. May you continue to enjoy walking the footpaths of the splendid mountain country of the San Gabriels.
John W. Robinson
Fullerton, California
January 2005
Preface to the Ninth Edition
“Keeping a guidebook up-to-date is a never-ending job.”
So wrote John W. Robinson many years ago in the preface to an early edition of Trails of the Angeles, and he has repeated the phrase often since. This has never been truer than in the seven years since the last edition was published. A series of natural and man-made disasters, culminating in the devastating 2009 Station Fire, have conspired to confound and frustrate hikers, nature lovers, and all who love the San Gabriel Mountains.
As a result, there have been many changes to the book. Several hikes—so noted in the text—are still off-limits due to the fire; others have only recently been reopened, and the repairing and reworking of trails is ongoing. These trail trips have been retained in the hope and expectation that nature—aided by the efforts of the US Forest Service and dedicated groups of volunteers—will slowly but surely restore what man has come so close to destroying. I have reluctantly removed and replaced four hikes in the book. Gone is the short stroll up Vetter Mountain and its historic lookout; the lookout burned to the ground in the Station Fire. The Bichota Canyon and Allison Gold Mine trails became so overgrown and eroded that these unsafe hikes have been replaced. Lastly, fire damage and persistent access problems at San Sevaine Flats led to the removal of that trail trip from the book.
In their place, I have chosen four excellent new hikes: two in the front range above Duarte and La Verne, a very scenic trail trip on the north side of the range from South Fork Campground to Vincent Gap, and a spectacular and challenging portion of the old North Backbone Trail on the back side of Mount Baldy, recently reintroduced after a multiyear absence from this guide.
Happily, there have been some positive developments in the past few years. Access roads to upper San Gabriel Canyon and Chantry Flat have finally been repaired. And two new wilderness areas were designated in the San Gabriels in 2009, protecting and preserving thousands of acres of vital habitat and watershed.
There is still much to see and explore, and much to enjoy and celebrate, in this fascinating mountain country.
Doug Christiansen
Pasadena, California
May 2013
Marshall Canyon (Hike 91)
Introduction
“There is no exercise so beneficial, physically, mentally, or morally, nothing which gives so much of living for so little cost, as hiking our mountain and hill trails and sleeping under the stars.”
So wrote the late Will Thrall—explorer, historian, author, and protector of the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California.
Thrall’s philosophy certainly applies today, in this age of high-pressure, rapid-paced urban life that engulfs so many Southern Californians. Fortunately, there are mountains practically in the backyard of Los Angeles that offer the harried city dweller a refreshing change of pace. Here, amid forest, chaparral, and stream, you can redeem and revitalize yourself in nature’s unhurried environment. Traveling a wooded trail or scrambling along a rocky hillside, you can find solitude and gain perspective; you will come to discover the true value of wilderness to a civilization that too often places artificial values before real ones.
More than 135 years ago, in 1877, naturalist John Muir sampled the San Gabriels, found them wild and trailless, and described the range as “more rigidly inaccessible … than any other I ever attempted to penetrate.” Great change has come to the San Gabriels since Muir’s excursion. This once-primitive high country that he so vividly described in his classic The Mountains of California is today crisscrossed with paved highways, unpaved side roads, trails, and firebreaks. Yet wilderness is here for anyone who will leave behind pavement and campground to seek it on the numerous footpaths within range.
This guidebook represents a concerted effort to acquaint Southern Californians with the intimate parts of the San Gabriels—the regions away from highways and byways where nature remains relatively undisturbed. One hundred hiking trips take the reader and prospective hiker into almost every nook and cranny of the range. They vary from easy one-hour strolls to all-day and overnight rambles involving many miles of walking and many elevation changes, from excursions to satisfy novice hikers to challenging ones for veteran adventurers. For history buffs, there are tours of the Mount Lowe Railway and the Echo Mountain ruins; for nature lovers, there are samplings of five wilderness areas, forever left to their natural states; for peak baggers, there are routes up almost all of the major summits of the range.
The San Gabriels are laced with trails and fire roads—some well maintained and easy to follow, others nearly forgotten due to erosion and overgrowth. The great majority of trips in this guidebook are on maintained trails and should offer no problems to the hiker. However, the writers have included a handful of cross-country excursions and trailless peak climbs in regions well worth visiting but not served by standard routes. For these trips, directions have been presented in greater detail.
The authors have rewalked, recorded, and researched all trips in this volume, most of them in recent years. Every effort has been made to present the information as accurately and as explicitly as possible. Nevertheless, the prospective hiker should be aware that several factors—some of them unique to the Southern California mountains—may make some of this information out of date in an amazingly short span of time. The first is the rapid growth of chaparral—the rigid, thorny brush that covers 80% of San Gabriel mountain slopes. A trail through this brushy maze, if not continually maintained, can become overgrown and virtually impassable in three years or fewer. Second is fire, the danger of which is extreme during late summer and fall, when the chaparral becomes tinder-dry. Fire denudes hillsides of vegetation, leaving them subject to dirt slippage and rockslides. Third is flood. Winter rainfall is generally moderate in the Southern California mountains (compared to the Sierra Nevada and other northern ranges), but every few years, deluges occur that are particularly destructive to canyon trails. On fire-ravaged hillsides, water erosion can be severe, obliterating large sections of trail. Last is the continual reworking, regrading, and rebuilding of maintained trails by the US Forest Service and volunteer conservation groups. Sometimes part of a trail is redirected along