Hike San Gabriel Peak 12/26, ski Mt. High 12/27, pics 1/4

Tony Crocker

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I wanted to get up the Angeles Crest and do some hikes near the Station Fire perimeter, particularly at Mt. Waterman. But the road was closed until Nov. 30 and Waterman's first snow was Dec. 7, probably a lot of ice now, not appropriate for the casual hike. So I drove up the Mt. Wilson Road to Eaton Saddle and hiked the old Mt. Lowe Road through the tunnel to Markham Saddle.
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Vegetation along the Mt. Wilson Road looks surprisingly normal, starting almost at the Red Box turnoff.
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Markham Saddle was at the burn boundary; most everything west of there was trashed. Samantha did not come with me from there to San Gabriel Peak. The trail had several slides to cross and the footing of ash was almost like fine sand in many places and even some boulders were charred.
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San Gabriel Peak at 6,100 is the highest point on the front section of the mountains. Just a trace of snow from Dec. 7 near the top.
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The next range of mountains to the north, the boundary of the Tujunga drainage, are completely burnt to the ground. In this view north the Station Fire burned as far as you can see.
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The Station Fire burned over the top of San Gabriel Peak from the west but did not advance down the north or east sides. This view east shows nearby trees that with scorched leaves. Farther on the Mt. Wilson side of the upper West Fork San Gabriel drainage was saved while other side burned.
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A zoom view in the same direction of Mt. Baldy. You can see the eastern boundary of the Station Fire in the San Gabriel Wilderness.
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Just NW of San Gabriel Peak the communications towers on Mt. Disappointment were preserved. A larger group of towers on Mt. Lukens above La Crescenta were overrun and destroyed.
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Here's the hazy view SW down the Arroyo Seco drainage toward the fire's origin above La Canada.
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I decided to go for Mt. High skiing Sunday. They reported 95% of West and 70% of East open. I expected better snow at Big Bear but did not relish the drive home from there at the end of a 3 day weekend. I also had not been to Mt. High since February 2001 and was curious to see what if anything might have changed.

I arrived at East and boarded the first lift at 8:15. East is a good place to rack vertical; I had my first 20K day at the old Holiday Hill Dec 23, 1978. Now the lift is high speed and I had 7 runs and 11,300 before 10AM. Olympic and most of the center runs down the canyon are not open yet. The groomers were in good shape, nearly of Big Bear caliber early in the morning with little traffic.
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Just a very few avoidable hardpack spots. The only ungroomed I tried there was Colt 45 (far center of picture), hard subsurface and some vegetation poking through.
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I went to the car to retrieve my new rock skis before heading to West. These were Al Solish's Atomic R10's, maybe 10 years old. The tail of one ski split and he was going to throw them away, but I got Garry Klassen to put a couple of screws in them so I now have a "Baldy ski" that is not a 1990's skinny antique. After 3 more runs on East I skied down the beginner area (view with Mt. Baden-Powell in background), then skated and walked the trail over to West, arriving 11AM.
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No surprise the thundering hordes were there, as shown at top unloading here.
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The crowds were concentrated on the popular runs (Chisholm, Borderline) with park features. The blues at West are as thick with features as Bear Mt., and like Bear the clientele is 90+% snowboarders.
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But the steeper black trails are fairly empty. Notice the contrast between the trail in the background to the congestion here on Conquest.
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Some of the blacks were half or more hardpack, but surfaces were better than I would have expected a decade ago considering that it rained a full day 2 weeks ago and there's only been about 6 inches natural since then. It has been cold, they should be making snow most nights with what water supply they have. Gunslinger had been widened substantially since my last visit and was completely groomed, along with two branches from it. There were no snow guns along these runs, but that area gets a lot of drifted snow, both natural and manmade.
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They groomed Inferno Ridge after the early December storm too, but it was marked closed due to a lot of bare spots at the top. I took 2 runs there anyway, and with the thin cover and very firm surface a lot of the easterners would have felt right at home.
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The Express lift at the bottom of West was about a 10 minute line, but there was no wait for the 2 upper mountain doubles, Exhibition and Conquest. I thus ended the day 3:30PM with 30,200, not bad for an opening day of the season on the Sunday after Christmas. So overall a good decision as I was home at 5:30 vs. who knows when if I had gone to Big Bear. I would say in terms of skiable terrain open it's probably 80%/60% at West/East. West has a fair amount of tree skiing which is not skiable yet. West used to have some good mogul skiing, but that may be history on the main trails with the current clientele. With a decent natural base mid-season there could still be some good bump lines in some areas the groomers can't reach.
 
The last picture on Inferno Ridge is 100% natural. The previous one on Gunslinger is likely over half natural. The rest is mostly manmade. 3rd picture down at East shows good contrast of natural and manmade coverage. I did not show the picture of Olympic at the bottom of East. It's steep, about a foot of natural base with a lot of weeds not yet covered.

Mt. High might be the closest SoCal analogy to Hunter. Our version of "Vinny's and Joey's" are mostly Asian and Hispanic youth on snowboards, congesting a few of the most popular runs with park features. If they venture by mistake onto anything with much pitch you'll see the SoCal heelslide in action. I was too slow to get a good picture of one couple doing that for 300+ vertical while I was riding the Exhibition chair. If 70+% of the mountains are open there are enough uncongested runs to make a daytrip worthwhile.
 
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