A Weekend at Mt. Baldy

On Saturday, Chris and I met up around 5:30am to bag a bunch of peaks in the Mt. Baldy area, including Mt. Baldy itself. There are so many different routes to the summit of Mt. Baldy (aka Mt. San Antonio), and we chose the longest route with the most elevation gain (of course).

This might get boring because you're going to see way too many photos of me on way too many peaks.  Sorry in advance. Okay, let's get started!

It's still dark out!

Peak #1: Mt. Baldy!

I made a friend! (There's a ladybug on my shoulder)

Me and Chris atop Baldy!

Peak #2: West Baldy!

That portion of the trail is called "The Devil's Backbone"

Some sort of solar panel and R2D2's cousin or perhaps a character from MST3K. Actually, Chris says it's weather monitoring equipment.

Peak #3: Mt. Harwood!

In the winter, people ski here. In the not-winter, the ski lift still runs to bring people up to (and down from) an area called the "Baldy Notch" where there is a restaurant and access to trails.

At the Baldy Notch. We stopped at the restaurant and had something to eat and drink and then continued to the "Three T's" -- Thunder Mountain, Telegraph Peak and Timber Mountain.

Peak #4: Thunder Mountain!

Peak #5: Telegraph Peak!

And finally Peak #6: Timber Mountain!

We headed down a trail called "Icehouse Canyon", which was really pretty and brought to mind some of the hikes I've been on on the east coast, particularly up in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. There was lots of water and greenery here! I haven't seen this much of it in Southern California up until now. 

There are ruins of several old stone houses along the way down this trail.

We made it to the bottom and now it's time to camp!

Dinner.

We stayed up late eating and drinking and talking. In the morning, I noticed there were these two cool looking dogs wandering around the campground that didn't seem to belong to anyone. Then, they were gone and I forgot about it. Chris and I were talking a little while later and all of a sudden this shocked look came over his face as he looked past me and said, "Dude, check that out". I turned around to look behind me, and...

One of the dogs was in the distance, carrying a plastic shopping bag full of food which he had clearly stolen from one of the campsites. He's towards the center of the frame next to the tree.

He trotted through the campground to cross the road...

...where he ultimately went behind a huge boulder and dropped the bag off, and then headed off elsewhere. We didn't see him again after this.

I don't know if this is a very funny story to a person who wasn't there, but every time I thought about this, for days afterwards, I couldn't stop laughing. I wish I could have gotten a video because this dog seemed so cool and nonchalant, and was clearly well-versed in the art of stealing campers' food.

The way to know if you've used enough cheese and butter is when the bread looks like this.

People have apparently come to this waterfall to leave "gifts" -- there are oranges and flowers everywhere. It reminds me of China.

I'm looking for a geocache and being really stubborn about it. If you don't know what a geocache is, you have no one to blame but yourself because YOU DIDN'T READ THE POST ABOUT IT ON MY BLOG. You can go back and read about it by clicking here.

The beginning of the Ski Hut Trail. 

Searching for the old gold mine.

Found it (or so we thought). It turns out that we missed the actual thing we were looking for, so we'll have to go back and look again.

The Ski Hut. 

This is where Chris and I planned to stop and head back down. But then we decided to go all the way to the top of Baldy because...well, we were already about halfway there and it didn't feel right to just turn around and head down.

Twice in two days!

Whiskey. My legs are so dirty!

Absolutely breathtaking.

I like doing things that frighten me, and this is one of those things.

By the time we got back to the cars, it was totally dark out. And now for the grand finale:

Yup.