The view from Ontario Peak

This is a solid hike up in the Mount Baldy area. Ontario Peak looms over Claremont, and from that town looks like the tallest peak in a circle of very large mountains. It isn't. It just looks that way because it is closer. However, it is a fairly burly hike: 13 miles roundtrip, 4100 feet elevation gain.

Despite the beautiful views, however, Ontario Peak doesn't have the wilderness feel that some of its surrounding sister peaks do (like Thunder Mountain, Cucamonga Peak, Timber Mountain). Ontario Peak rises directly above the road leading above Claremont and through Mount Baldy Village to the bottom of the hike in Icehouse Canyon. While on top of the peak I could hear motorcycles and police sirens 4000 feet below.

Those sounds proved to be prophetic. When I neared the bottom of the hike I came across about 10 firefighters standing under a tree next to the body of an older hiker who had apparently expired from a heart attack. I can only hope he died doing what he loved, and not being dragged on a hike he didn't want to go on. I instantly recalled an article I once read (but regretfully cannot locate on the web) of a hiking club for senior hikers who scale some of the highest peaks in Montana and Wyoming. They lose members of their club during hikes, but are of the philosophy that it is better to die in the outdoors than home in bed. I don't want to be presumptuous about the philosophy of the hiker who died that day, however, nor to ignore the grief that his family is likely suffering.

That was not the only police action on the mountain that weekend. The next day, in a bizarre turn of events, two hikers attacked a local man at his cabin with a sword, nearly severing his arm from his shoulder. The day after that, a man wiped out on his motorcycle and died.

Throw in a couple of power tool accidents, and possibly a meth lab and you have a typical rural police blotter.