Category: San Gabriel Trails Project
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Hoyt Mountain
It was Sunday, January 26, 2020. My planned outing for the day started like most new routes: sitting at my computer looking at Open Street Map (which has an amazing amount of trails digitized), trying to find a route that looked interesting enough to do, and researching recent reports on the internet from others that…
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Vetter Mountain
[Featured image: A carpet of clouds near Red Box in the Angeles National Forest.] I did not set out on Sunday to add a new chapter to the San Gabriel Trails Project. I set out to break free from my running malaise, brought on by flat and often repetitive routes that I had been running…
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Three Points to Pacifico Mountain Via the Pacific Crest Trail
It’s been nearly a year since I’ve added a new chapter to the San Gabriel Trails Project. You can ask me why that is, but I would not have an answer for you. There are many miles of high country trails that I have not yet covered, and I haven’t spent much time in the…
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A Night at West Fork
The degree to which I am enamored with the freedom of backpacking is not reflected by the frequency with which I go. For awhile now, I’ve taken an interest in expanding my knowledge-base of the fauna of the San Gabriel Mountains by backpacking into remote campgrounds, preferably on a weekday when no or few people…
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Islip Ridge, Little Jimmy, and Windy Gap
I decided yesterday was a good day to traverse some trails I hadn’t done before, so I grabbed my Angeles High Country map and drove up Highway 39. I sought out a trail the map labeled as the “Islip-Wiwona Trail”. There were no signs where the trailhead should be. The area was overgrown with a…
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Running Charlton Flats to Three Points
My first run of greater than twenty miles in length since the HURT 100 hurt way more than I’d like it to. The plan was to run the Angeles Crest 100 route from Charlton Flats to Three Points and back. Things didn’t entirely go as planned. Despite the ultimate treachery of this run, I was…
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The Cross Town Loop
This 13 mile loop route with 2,854 feet of gain barely qualified for the San Gabriel Trails Project. It does, however, include several miles of trail that are, indeed, within the San Gabriel Mountains. Those several miles of the Cross Town Trail in La Cañada’s trail system are what this loop is named after. The…
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Map: What We’ve Lost
Around 10:30 am yesterday I was driving northeast on Highway 14. The San Gabriel Mountains were on my right. For the better part of a half hour I saw little other than charred hillsides and moon-scaped mountains. My view was a product of the recent Sand Fire, the largest in the San Gabriel Mountains since…
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Ken Burton Trail Reborn
Since I began serious trail running in 2010, two of the closer trails to me in the San Gabriel Mountains were only runnable via out-and-back routes. This changed at the start of May when the Ken Burton Trail, closed since the 2009 Station Fire, reopened due to the diligent work of the Mt. Wilson Bicycling…
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Waterman Mountain and the Morbid Art of Dead Giants
Yesterday was 22 miles in beautiful weather on what I will call the Waterman Mountain Loop. My previous experience on this mountain was limited to birding on the trails on its lower reaches. On this day, I climbed up the trail starting on the northeast side near Buckhorn Day Use Area and took the out-and-back…