Scott says, "You know
what would be great? An
overexposed picture of
me in my funny hat."
Your wish is my command...
Packing up after refreshing
ourselves at the Mill Creek
Ranger Station water fountain.
You know what's really fun?
setting your pack on your
platypus hose so all the water
runs out and soaks everything.
Try it, you'll like it.
As we begin our climb up Mt.
Gleason, we are treated to a
view of the fog shrouded Sierra
Pelona as the sun sets.
Hey, Scott, wait up! Let's
find a spot to camp before
it's too dark!
Hiking in the San Gabriels has been different than the other mountains we have come through so far. In the other mountains ranges, you ascended into the mountains, basically hiked along the crest for a time and then descended.
Not so here.
John Muir said that the San Gabriels were "more rigidly inaccessible than any I ever attempted to penetrate." (See, I'm not the only whiner- he just had a more refined way of putting it)
Anyway, the way you are forced to hike in these mountains goes like this: you ascend to the crest and walk along for a bit. Suddenly, your traverse ends and you are staring down into a deep canyon with no alternative but to descend and hike back up the other side into the next set of mountains and repeat this process all over again.
Highway 2 winds its way through these mountains and occasionally, lacking another alternative, is forced to go through tunnels. The trail crosses the highway a number of times and each and every time has involved a steep descent to the highway, so whenever the guidebook says "you then descend to Highway 2, we let out a collective groan. (I don't know if the phrase "collective groan" works as well when there are just 2 people, but we are very loud, so it seems to work ok.)
After our last ascent away from the highway, we climbed a peak and were stopped, eating lunch in the shade. We were sitting near a road leading to a remote campground that was just up the hill, but appeared to be deserted. We were enjoying our solitude when suddenly a SUV came up over the hill and ascended out of view and into the campground. We then listened to all the activity, which led us to ponder a possible new commercial for Isuzu, (or whichever company makes the commercial where the SUV drives over rough roads and comes to a stop right next to a pristine lake-the one that makes Sierra Club members pull out their hair.) After observing these folks, it seems that a more effective commercial might be that after the car comes to a stop, have one person get out and yell obscenities while another person beats out 'shave and a haircut' 10 or more times on the horn. I think this approach may have a lot of people saying to themselves, "Why that's just how it is!" and might sell a lot more vehicles.
We continued on, hiking past a Forest Service station with a water fountain which allowed us an opportunity for another makeshift bath and camped on the trail yet again.