Ice Canyon Saddle Hike

The city of Long Beach is loosely bordered on the west and east by highways: the 710 on the west and the 605 on the east, both drawn on the red-and-blue Interstate signage. This past shared off day took us along the entirety of the San Gabriel River Freeway, as the 605 was known before the numbering scheme was completed. We traveled all the way from the marina on Long Beach's eastern side to the Foothill Freeway (I-210), at the base of the jagged mountain range that rings the LA area and houses the Angeles National Forest. The total drive on the 605 was less than 27 miles.

From the Pacific Ocean to a towering mountain range in less than 27 miles...



Corrie had been informed of a nice hike in the Mount Baldy camp from some of her new coworkers. They had hiked all of their gear in and camped for a long weekend. We didn't quite have that kind of time-frame, so we had decided to hike to the initial terminus, check it out, and turn around and hike out. That hike is the Ice Canyon hike, all the way to the Saddle, where two ridges come together and form a saddle point. The camping area is in and around the vicinity of the Saddle, and from there are a handful of other trails leading off into the Angeles Forest and up to Mt Baldy and Ontario Peak, two of the peaks on opposing hills that have created the Saddle.

Sounds great.

The trek is 4.6 miles, one way, starting at 1100 feet and climbing to 7200 feet.

So...Corrie and I, while not in very good shape, are also very good at starting these kinds of reckless adventures ill-equipped. I joke, and remember our hike to Lassen's peak in 2004: wearing Chuck Taylor's, we only brought about a liter of water and a half a pack of smokes, we eventually had to (slightly) raid one of the remaining glaciers for some liquid (I was rationing the water early on that walk).

By the Lassen hike's standard we were equipped for Everest this time. We had five water bottles--full; we had lots of fruit that we'd bought moments before leaving Long Beach at a farmer's market; and we had sunscreen.

It was a grueling two and a half hour hike up, with us many times contemplating whether we could actually finish. There were so many Japanese tourists, with their professional walking sticks and full sun-coverage outfits, that made us feel unprepared and added to our crisis of confidence. At one point Corrie's knee started acting up, and while on a break I asked how it was. She said it was fine, but that this time she needed a break because her legs were tired.

Legs? Tired? I think I said almost just like that. "I could curl up in a ball and go to sleep right here on these rocks," I huffed, so serious that as I said that I could feel my eyelids getting heavy. We had a quick and hearty laugh following that, and moved on.

At what seemed like the third day of the hike we asked a rare white guy if we were close. "To the saddle?" he said in a balloon-popping way. Later, we came to a sign that said "Ice Canyon Saddle: .6 mi". Our bodies were sure we'd walked fifty, but I tried to frame it like, "Only 3000 more feet honey..." Corrie responded, "Yay, only a thousand more steps!"

Three-thousand feet didn't sound like so much, but those last thousand steps sounded like a lot, and felt like more.

At the Ice Canyon Saddle we finished off our plums and cherries, our saved prize from the walk up, and finished our fourth water bottle, reserving just one for the (literal) run down.

Almost every part of my lower body hurts now; feet, ankles, knees, calves and thighs and hips...

Are we the only yahoos who're over-confident enough to say: 9 mile hike? Sure, why not, we can totally do that. We've got water this time...

Here are some pictures:

This is a waterfall in the early stages of the hike, before the 2 miles of sun-blasted swicthbacking takes you a thousand more feet up in elevation, while the walk is still shady and wooded...



Along the trail you can see sights like this. I'm pretty sure that's the hill-form for Ontario Peak on the right. The farther up you get as the hike progresses, you end up eventually far above this particular rock formation.



Here's me horsing around with some timber. There were spots all over the trail that had been blocked by a felled tree, only to have the Forestry Service (I imagine) come in and chainsaw a trail-wide chunk of trunk out.

OR

The sweaty pink man saves the day!



There were a series of what looked like stone-mason homesteads in different levels of ruin and decay. (You know how I like ruins.)



Here's Corrie after framing and snapping a shot with our Holga camera I posted about a few days back. She finished another whole roll out at this excursion, and since we haven't gotten back our other shots yet, we're still ignorant to either how cool or how lame the photos are.



We were thinking of making a full few days out of it next time. From the Saddle it's only .2 miles up to Kelly Camp, a camping ground off to the right (east). Kelly Camp serves as a launching pad for hikes to Ontario Peak, and another peak behind Ontario (in relation to the ocean). On clear days I imagine that from Ontario peak you'd have to be able to see the Pacific.