u/dizzystar

Think it was lonely, and appreciated seeing a rare human. I didn't have any coffee with me: I would have offered.

Truly, it was hissing and rattling for a solid minute. I couldn't see it through the bushes, and I obviously wasn't go to start searching.

I do appreciate the warning though.

I rarely make it out this far east, and this one sat on my "to do" list for a long while. It was a pretty sloggy hike, but these views and rock scrambling may draw me back one day.

Condor Peak was my original "goal post" when I started getting into mountain hikes. Something about 16 miles, 4k elevation felt impossible to me at that time.

I wanted to make this harder than it needed to be, so I decided to do Trail Canyon with some recon on doing Condor Point one day. Honestly, it's probably better to do Condor Point 😂.

The route I took was TC to Condor Trail, back to the 2, and back to TC. I guess around 25 miles and 5k ele. I didn't record my track.

Sad story alert: My window got smashed in. They took nothing because there was nothing in the car. Man, I wish I caught them.

Anyways, the TC trail past the waterfall was exactly as advertised: a total wasteland of maybe trails, maybe not. Nothing puzzling, honestly, just push through foliage and trust the trail is on the other side. I only had to check my route one time. I never felt unsafe, or felt I would get lost. It's oddly logical, so I wouldn't classify this as bush whacking.

The only concern was finding something unpleasant hiding behind the bushes. The battle results are in:

Yucca Bush ♾️; human 0.

Hydrogen Peroxide and gauze stopped the bleeding right away. Note: get better tape.

Fwiw, hydrogen peroxide is also good for plant allergies. I would get hives all the time before I started treating myself with it. Can't make that claim with poison oak because it doesn't affect me. 🤷

As I got closer to Condor Trail, Caltopo's line turned solid red after going through dotted lines. The trail actually got significantly worse in that area. I suspect people went north of Condor, tried it, and turned around. I don't blame them.

Condor Point looks absolutely menacing. I was in awe.

I also fell in love with those green trees. I don't know what they are, but they looked really cool.

Condor Trail itself is a master class on trail care. Whoever maintains that, huge respect. Trimmed down the Yuccas, and barely any stones on the entire trail. Amazing work.

The entire hike was fairly gentle, honestly, which I'm not a big fan of, and consider it switchback hell. The only steep part was Fox Mountain.

Maybe something for debate: if you skate and slide on your ass going down Fox Mountain, did you really hike it, or is that cheating? 😁

So...

I guess I was hoping for some feeling of "hooray, I did a goal!" But honestly, I felt underwhelmed by it all. I've been on harder hikes, and this didn't really do it for me.

That said, there's zero way I could have done this hike 4 months ago. I simply wouldn't have been capable of the route finding through TC or up Condor Mountain, and I'd probably burn out with the constant, albeit gentle, incline.

All that said, I want to say "thank you" to this sub, who gave me awesome advice, either directly or just from reading here. I would not have made this progress without you all.

I'm still figuring things out, no doubt. I have a few things on my shopping list (after paying for this busted window).

"YoUR'e aLMosT DoNe. ⌛"

"YoUR'e aLMosT DoNe. ⌛"

"YoUR'e aLMosT DoNe. ⌛"

🙄😴

(This happened around MDR, LAX)

I bought these shoes back in January, and I've hiked every week since then. The photos should give a taste of the terrrain I've had to walk over: rocks, dirt, shale, and walking through water.

It's time to give these a proper send off.

I said I would be happy if these things would last 6 months, or about 20 hikes, and it's close enough. The actual shoe has held up well. There are no rips.

I have to bury them because the outsoles are starting to lose their grip. I'm probably okay with one or two more hikes, although my footing won't be as stable as I'd like them to be.

They've done great while climbing over rocks, but perhaps most importantly, when they're wet, they still feel like I'm in dry ground.

I like how quickly they dry out. I never felt like my feet were sitting in a pond.

The actual "barefoot" experience isn't quite what you'd consider barefoot. Yes, I can feel the ground, but not every little stone, just enough to feel what's important, but not so much that it would get annoying. I don't get foot blisters, so I'm not sure if that would be a thing for normal people.

I started looking into other shoes with Vibram soles, but honestly, I didn't like them at all. The Lone Peak 9s... I hated them, and feel free to flame me for that.

After trying a few different shoes at REI, I decided I'm going to stick with what has worked so well for me these past few months. The next pair should be in the mailbox in a week. Totally can't wait.

I haven't been hiking for two weeks, and because of that, today's hike plan was short and easy, just some random thing I found on All Trails called Sunset Ridge Saddle Loop, 4 miles. Got started at 11 so should be done by 1, right?... I ended up finishing at 4:30 because I couldn't stop exploring.

Yes the area is open. According to the dot gov, the only restriction is Millard Camp. It's okay to walk through, but not camp.

The road to the trailhead is closed, so I had to park in the Altadena area, so add another 2 or 3 miles, I guess. The hardest part of this hike was walking up the road, then walking up the access road before getting onto the canyon trails.

The trail is a bike and hike path. I only ran across 3 bikers and 6 hikers.

I found the top of Millard Falls. Really cool area.

Then I found an interesting rock scramble, but I didn't brave more than 50 or so feet. I'd rather approach from the bottom than the top, honestly. I found the bottom part, so that's on my to do list.

The path I took down to Millard Canyon was variation path, which had great views. You can see some burned trees in one photo, but overall, the area is healing nicely.

It was a great and relaxing hike, which I'll have to revisit to see where the other paths will go. I'm seeing these paths go to other places I have on my to-do list.

Millard Canyon is a real gem. I'm pleasantly surprised.

I made a post last week about losing my trails, and I got a lot of awesome feedback that I took to heart. It (sorta) hurt, but it was needed, and for that, I thank everyone.

I took the REI map and compass class. Honestly, it wasn't all that good. For example, they didn't want to teach triangulation in the first class, although they quickly went over it at the end.

Outside Chronicles on YouTube has a great 4 part series that covers everything in better detail. Save the $30.

I printed a map from Caltopo, and used Caltopo on my phone for GPS sanity checks. The route I planned was a variation of Verdugo Peak one would find on All Trails. I picked Brand Park because GPS will be stable, there are many landmarks, and any hike should be reasonably short.

For those not familiar with this route, the trailhead is a concrete ditch. As I made my way to the orange dot, I thought I was on the north trail, when I was really on the south trail. I made a lot of bad targets, obviously, but fixed everything when I saw where I really was on GPS.

The first thing I learned was how unintuitive distances were (to me). My first tracking point was Verdugo Peak, which looked way closer than it is. I also had some idea that distance objects require precision, but it was interesting to see how even 2 degrees of error took my location way off.

Instead of going up Mt Thom, I went up the ridge of Tongva. As I was going towards the ridge, I didn't have anything to aim at, so I just used the compass lanyard to figure out distance.

As I was going up Tongva, I noticed that the spot I was standing before was in view, so that became another spot to aim at. At that point, Mt Thom's antenna came into view, so that was a second point of reference.

I had several goals of this hike:

1- Map and Compass, obviously.

I tested if using one object would be good enough to find my location on a trail, but that's not really true. I suppose on close objects, that can work, but the margin of error on distant objects is too significant to make this idea reliable.

2- Gain an intuition of distances. What does 1/10th of a mile feel like on flat terrain, etc?

3- Understand what the contour lines feel like. It's one thing to see $X feet per line, but that doesn't mean anything without actually being on said path. The precision of the individual lines may be correct, but that doesn't say much about what happens between those lines.

4- Understand landmarks and paths. It's very different (and better) with a bird's eye view of the area.

I made some mistakes:

1- The map I printed had too much bad detail and not enough good detail. The next map will be better.

The rest are "whatevers."

I used the Suunto MC 2. I know this thing is the "gold standard," but honestly, it's cheaply made. The plastic needle constantly gets stuck, swaying much more than the one I was using at REI, the rotating bezel is already weird and uneven to turn, and I don't have a lot of faith that this thing will last long. I'm thinking about returning it and getting something else, but I don't know what.

The hike was less than 10 miles, probably closer to 8. I was out there for 7 hours, doing compass work, distance calculations, etc. I turned this into homework, lol.

In 6,400 deliveries, I don't think I've ever been 100% SR. A little less than a year ago, I dipped down to the low 90s, and slowly grinded my way back up to 97%, where it stayed for several months.

I don't know how all markets work, but for me, a single thumbs down takes about 1000 deliveries to fall off. I only know this because a restaurant rating is rare, and that thumbs down lingers.

This is a long read, but I just wanted to write it out, even if no one reads it. No tl;dr. 😁

I had a good day of hiking turn bad today.

There were a handful of goals for this hike.

The main goal was to try the Garmin 67i I just bought. To say the least, loading custom maps into thing is think is an utter PITA. I ultimately could get a custom Caltopo map onto it, or rather, 15 smaller files that wasn't going to be helpful.

I never wanted to do Mt Wilson, and I still don't, really.

I did find the Jones, Yale, Harvard, Wilson, Zion Loop, but there's a major issue with that loop: you don't actually get to summit Yale or Harvard. I also wanted get to Jones via Bastard Ridge, so I loaded the AT version onto the 67i and decided to go with it, since my variation was minimal anyways.

I didn't really expect to do the whole loop, so I went on this hike with the full knowledge that I may want to bail out. I had several bail outs planned beforehand.

The hike up to Yale was "earn every step." Bastard Ridge was apropos to it's name, then the journey to Yale was brute force with sporadic trails, ending into a steep saddle that, thankfully, had a cable to help with the last half. Whoever did that: thank you.

Mount Yale was more brute force route finding, featuring a 1/4 mile of scrambling. To my surprise, Yale has an ammo jar at it's peak. I never sign, but it was interesting to see it. It had two mini notebooks, which betrays how many people find this place.

So, it all sounds awesome, and yes, it was the perfect balance of risk / reward, pain without it turning into some warped machismo (looking at you, Viper). This hike would be perfect to share with someone else.

So... the title of this is "disaster," and uh, this is my post mortem.

I specifically picked this hike because I wanted something to test the 67i with. If that didn't go as planned, I had my phone as a reliable backup. I lost GPS and nav at Strawberry Mountain, so I wanted something closer to society. I also wanted to learn map building (Caltopo is the best).

The 67i was good for nav. I'm not sure how to do certain things, so I'll have to look that up now that I put it through a real world test. Apparently, you can't toggle away from a map while you're hiking it, which I don't really believe. It totally disappeared and there was no getting it back, so I had to use the phone, which wasn't totally unexpected.

I made some stupid preparation mistakes. I didn't eat breakfast because it's not something I normally do. Please don't ask because it's far too personal. Normally, I choke down a sausage sandwich from JitB before hiking.

I also didn't replenish my dried food. I had enough left to do what hike I did today, but not enough for the full hike. I can't rely on Cosmic Cafe to bail me out of that one. I always take more liquid than I need, so I was okay there.

I also lost my hiking pole, which I didn't notice until I was starting to continue past Yale. I decided to turn around and see if I maybe dropped it next to the ammo jar, but I didn't see it. Considering how this hike was already going, and seeing what was ahead, I wasn't really sure. I decided to chance it, and somehow ended up going down the way I came anyways, so perhaps my subliminal was telling me I was done.

This is where my head went to bad places. I legitimately thought the GPS on the Garmin and my phone dropped out. This is also where I toggled off the map on the 67i and lost it.

My first bail point was nearby. A little while later, I ended up at the Wilson Trail. It was pretty smooth going at first, but my phone wasn't capturing my position very well. I'm taking a bunch of false trails, turning around, and just getting annoyed. The worst part is, All Trails was getting many things wrong. It was crazy to think this obviously popular and well-maintained trail was this inaccurate on that app. I had to just figure out how to get to the path without the app. After that point, the trail has a bunch of metal and wooden steps, ropes, and plenty of signage to direct me back.

It truly did get dangerous at some parts. I just had to take a few minutes to sit down, take a moment, and just think things through. I made it, safely, and didn't have to press SOS.

Mother Nature likely folded her arms, tilted her hips, and gave me the side eye. Thankfully, she gave me a break: no bears or snakes.

Oh, an according to All Trails, I did 24k in elevation gain. 🤣