May 04 2009
Hiking Mt Baldy
After a gap of about a month without skiing, hiking or diving i decided it was time to get active again. This weekend i planned out to be really crazy, my goal was to be 100 ft below and 10,000 ft above the sea level.
I got on Great Escape friday night hoping that Saturday would be a nice day out to Catalina and will be able to get 4 dives in at Farnsworth Bank. Unfortunately the weather gods were not in a good mood and the boat didn’t go out to Catalina. It happened to be a good thing for me otherwise this blog could have been about a rescue on Mt Baldy trail ;).
The trail we were going to take is one of the toughest hikes in San Gabriels, its 12.8 miles round trip with an elevation gain of 5804 feet. It comes out to be a small matter of 907ft/mile :). A good description of the trail can be found here.
Saturday night i went to Circus,a club on Santa Monica Blvd, attending a meetup event with LA Trance group, I have been wanting to hang out with them for a while but never got chance to do so. I really liked the venue and it was fun. I just had one drink before walking back home around 2ish. Would have loved to stay longer but couldn’t afford to do so with the big hike coming up.
I woke up at about 6.45 am and then drove to Craig’s place where we would be meeting with Paul and carpool together to get to the trail head. We all met up and started driving at about 7.50 or so, the drive was going to be less than an hour and the there wasn’t any traffic on the way.
We were getting little concerned seeing the mountains covered in clouds, it could have been very well possible that it was snowing on baldy, i wasn’t too pleased by that idea. The thought of going home and sleeping till 5 in evening was appealing too but it was something i had done on saturday, didn’t want another planned thing to go kaput. Luckily as we started driving towards Mt Baldy village we were getting above the clouds and the sun was also out so the trek was definitely on 
We met up with the rest of the group and there were 15 of us. After trying to figure out where everyone would park and stuff, we started the hike at about 9.45 or so. I wanted to record the entire hike using the Motion X gps app for the iPhone so i waited to set it in action and from that point onwards i lagged the group.
As soon as the hike started i knew it wasn’t going to be easy for me and 15 mins into the hike i realized that wearing my hiking shoes instead of usual sandals was not a good idea at all. I walked slowly at my own pace behind the group, Stein our leader caught up with me , he wanted to make sure that i was doing ok. I assured him that i would be fine at my steady slow pace and after a while i caught up with others at the bear flats area. I checked my iPhone to make sure the app was recording data but it was also sucking up the battery and i figured it wasn’t going to last the entire duration of the hike. Next time i am going to put the phone in airplane mode and then see how this app performs. Hiking fast would also be a good idea but lets not go there yet ;).
Beautiful View of Canyon.
The most difficult section of the hike started at this point and so did the blisters on back of my leg. The good thing was that they weren’t too bad so i could continue at my own pace and not come to a crawl. It was a very slow ascent, i was also stopping to take pictures once in a while. This section was a gradual climb along the hill and after that we started ascending along the ridge line. Stein was helping people who were having some difficulty and he caught up with me after a while.
Along the ridge section i asked him how much time more and he said it would be couple of hours more for sure. It was a constant struggle within myself to make me continue. I must have thought of turning back atleast dozen times and had to push myself every time. I knew i just had to keep on going and it would be fine. I made it to the top of the ridge but it didn’t end there and we had to continue further along another connecting ridge.
Nope that is not the Summit.
I could see a peak in distance and i asked one returning hiker if that was it and he said that Mt Baldy wasn’t even visible from where i was. Sigh, i just kept on going and caught up with a few people and at this point we had to traverse through some snow fields. I was lil excited by that idea, it justified my decision of hiking in boots and not sandals. This was probably the only section of the hike where there wasn’t any elevation gain, it lasted for about 15 mins or so unfortunately. But for some reason i was really rejuvenated at this point and picked up little pace.
Yay Snow.
We could see another peak in the distance but again as earlier this wasn’t the one and we had to traverse along this peak to get to Mt Baldy. I just chugged along at this point, knowing that it was going to be another half hr max to get to the summit.
Finally after around 5 and half hrs of grueling hike, I made it to the summit at about 2.45. We waited for everyone to arrive at the summit and Stein surprised us with a watermelon. It was a treat to eat that water melon, after such a tiring hike. It tasted soooooo good :). Thanks a ton, you rock.
Refreshed and re-hydrated we started to descent at 3.45. Craig, Paul were going to go fast and so was I. Its hard for me to prevent myself from running while going downhill, I have to run it out or atleast go at a faster pace. It was an ideal thing since we had carpooled together we could get down fast and take off.
We were going at a really good pace and covered almost half the distance in an hour. At this point again i was disappointed that i didn’t hike in my sandals, i started getting blisters on my feet and had to really slow down.
I couldn’t help it, i was just going down slowly at my own speed again. It was a slow painful descent and being tired as well i wasn’t putting all my effort into it and i slipped couple of times. It wasn’t anything major or bad but i had to be careful. Finally after what must have been an awfully slow hour i reached the bear flats area and was thinking that it was going to be another 15 mins to get to the parking lot.
I was so wrong about that, i started descending and then as i looked into the canyon i saw the houses way down and was thinking holy s$%^ i have to hike all the way down there. Slowly but surely i made it down and every step i took in those last 10 mins of walking on that tar road was agonizing. Finally at about 6.15 or so i caught up Craig, Paul and others enjoying beer and food in the nearby restaurant. After half hour of chit chatting, we finally left for LA. I reached my place around 8.30 and soaked into the hot tub as soon as i could. Boy it felt good or what.
After reading this post, i.e. if you weren’t bored and made it all the way to here, you must be asking why the hell i did this hike? Why should/did i put myself is misery and pain? fair enough, I ask myself same question all the time ;).
If you care enough to know the answer i am sure you would know how to contact me or simply put its the same reason people run marathons, participate in iron man triathlons, climb everest all that good stuff.