The normally sleepy Arroyo Seco stream that runs by the JPL Lab in Northwest Pasadena/La Canada is bursting with water after last week’s storms. I went there the weekend before the storms and it was nowhere near this size. For a comparison, during that weekend I saw a parent let his two sons walk their bikes across the stream in the area pictured below. It looked totally safe. Now, they would be swept away

Here is a comparison of what the stream looks like in autumn. I hadn’t started going there by last fall, but I imagine it was even drier.

Eric Spillman, at the KTLA news blog, spotted a post on a online forum about the wettest place in Los Angeles. Turns out it is a place called Ophids Camp (also known as Camp Hi-Hill) which is on the downward slope of Mt. Wilson, on the side away from Los Angeles. I believe that from looking at some maps from the Long Beach school district, which uses the camp for outdoor education, I have nailed down the location. From the post:

The camp is a prime site for heavy rain because of its location high on the face of a mountain five miles north of Mt. Wilson. When warm-water storm systems from the Pacific make it above Mt. Wilson’s peak, they react to the cold air and condense, producing extraordinarily heavy rain. It is as if the water is squeezed from the clouds as they lift up and over Mt. Wilson. And guess what is sitting under that location? Opids camp.

Apparently, the poster did his homework: local forecasters all know the place very well:

“They get more rain and snow than anyone else,” said William Patzert, a meteorologist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Among weather geeks, it’s famous.”

I’ll put on my geek hat for a moment a point out that this camp is the wettest place in Los Angeles County that has a rain gauge, and may not actually be the wettest spot.

The Adams Pack Station, which runs a store and a donkey-packing station out of the Chantry Flats area, above Sierra Madre, have been protesting the closure of a road that people use to access the Angeles National Forest. The city of Sierra Madre has closed the road on red flag days in the name of fire safety… I have noticed similar closures on Pasadena trails. We all worry about fire safety, but the question the Adams Pack folks are raising is whether individual cities are the best judge of when an hiking area needs to be closed. My questions below in bold, answered by Greg Sweet, a resident of the area and blogger on the site.

1) Please describe the Chantry Flats community a little bit, and explain how fire closures affect it.

The Chantry Flat/Big Santa Anita Canyon area is much more than a handful of cabin owners and a few Forest Service residents. In fact, the road to Chantry Flat is considered the third busiest entrance into the most heavily used National Forest in the nation. Under normal circumstances, approximately 150,000 citizens per year visit their land by way of Chantry Flat. This is the trailhead for the Gabrielino Trail, a designated National Recreation Trail, and the trailhead for the Silver Moccasin Trail, a 53-mile challenge for thousands of Boy Scouts.

The community is very diverse while somehow staying tight-knit. The cabin owners are comprised of white-collars, blue-collars, and retirees; doctors, lawyers and a judge; teachers, artists and a rocket scientist. There are hundreds of “regulars” that come to hike, bike, fish, camp, photograph, paint, pan for gold, write poetry, sing, meditate… They all interact and get to know each other. It’s a rare occasion to enter The Canyon without seeing a friend. Many folks feel more at home here than in their own neighborhoods. To borrow a line from Gary Portnoy, “sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.”

The closures do not directly affect the cabin owners, they can still pass through the gate. But this is not an exclusive club. Many people rightly and rightfully feel at home here. When the Forest Service created the Gabrielino Trail, the announcement read: “This trail has been created for you – the city dweller – so that you might exchange, for a short time, the hectic scene of your urban life for the rugged beauty and freedom of adventure into the solitary wonderland of nature.” The San Gabriel Mountains are not just a backdrop for the blimp shots of the Rose Parade, they play an important role in the physical and mental health of millions of Angelinos.

2) Is your chief complaint that the city of Sierra Madre is enforcing road closures rather than Forest Service? Or do you feel the road should be open in any circumstances barring an actual wild fire?

I should note that I am the Libertarian of the bunch, in case any such leanings should leak out, but I am here to speak for all of us at The Pack Station. We realize that there may be scenarios in which it would be prudent to close the gate. During the November ’07 fires (Malibu, Santiago, Big Bear etc.) our local firefighters were involved with those efforts. There were no “resources” to help if another fire broke out here. It was understandable, if not agreeable, that the Forest Service would temporarily lock down the Angeles. The Forest was reopened as soon as resources were refreshed and reestablished.

Naturally, the Forest Service has the expertise to decide when open-space fire closures are necessary. Wildland fire suppression has been their focus since the Great Fire of 1910. Sierra Madre should defer to their judgment. Moreover, The Service has the exclusive authority to proclaim such closures. The USDA doesn’t meddle in the zoning laws of Baldwin Avenue. The City has a childish basis for the road closures. They have told us that they “..are not closing The Forest, we are closing our gate.” They are the little brother in the back seat of the car, holding his finger an inch away from his big sister’s arm, and claiming “I’m not touching you.”

3) When did the city begin closing down access on Red Flag Days?

The first time the City of Sierra Madre closed the gate for “fire danger”, that is, the first time they have done so on their own, was the first Red Flag Warning following the November ’07 fires. They have done so every Red Flag since. Each and every time The City closed The Forest since those fires, the Angeles National Forest has been open; and each time they were the only entity to restrict entrance. This is our major concern: that this is a slippery slope argument, that if Sierra Madre is allowed to get away with this, it may become status quo for all surrounding cities.

4) If I’m not mistaken, I recall being turned around at on the road to Chantry Flats several non-Red Flag Days in the past… under what other circumstances has the road been closed?

Yes, there are legitimate occasions for closing the road to Chantry Flat. Sometimes after a heavy rain there are hazardous rockslides on the road. We understand, and observe, that there are many travelers of this road that do not prepare for obstacles. Nobody here wants to see someone get hurt. However we also have an argument that a chance of rain does not a hazard make. The freeways of Los Angeles are never more dangerous than during a slight drizzle after a dry period. But do we close down the freeways? No. How about the Angeles Crest Highway or the roads through Malibu? It can be dangerous to drive during the rain, but no more so on the road to Chantry Flat, and we refer the reader back to our slippery slope concerns.

5) If I had one day in Los Angeles, and I chose to spend it at Chantry Flats, where should I hike? What else should I do?

A fifty-five foot waterfall is quite a respectable attraction, but the real gem of The Canyon is Sturtevant’s Camp. It has been in operation since 1893 and is a fine example of the old resorts of “The Great Hiking Era.” The camp is open to the public for day use, overnight, or extended stays. They offer sleeping cabins, kitchen, hot showers, badminton, croquet, piano room, the second Forest Ranger cabin ever built, and – get this – conversation. All of this is miles from any road and, of course, Adams’ Pack Station can haul your gear and food on donkeys. There is no more wholesome good time in all of Southern California.

Looks like high times for Los Angeles city employees- to encourage them to bike to work Councilman Garcetti has found funds for a full bike storage area, and showers and lockers so they can still look presentable after pedaling into work.

A perusal of local area blogs seems to yield nothing but praise for Garcetti, but frankly, until there are lockers, showers, and a bike storage facility here at the newsroom, I can’t see myself getting that excited. It is a powerful lesson for legislators though: if you want to use public money to make yourself more popular around the office, make sure it has some greater eco-friendly justification.

48 California parks, including SoCal’s Will Rogers, Topanga Canyon, and Mt. San Jacincto state parks are slated to fully or partially close to balance the 2008-09 budget…. the LA Times travel writer, Mary Forgione, asks if this is an Idle threat or serious concern. You decide.

I noticed that Morro Bay’s Montaa de Oro State Park, with its fantastic sand dunes overlooking the Pacific, is on the list of potential closures. It’s bad timing for my family, because my Mom just took the plunge and moved to Morro Bay from New Jersey this week. Welcome to California, Mom! Honestly, as the world’s fifth-largest economy, we really just don’t have the money to keep the parks open.

Here is the list of proposed park closures.

From the San Bernardino Sun, unusual hikes in Southern California. I have hiked only some of these (which are all pretty short), but I can attest that Vasquez Rocks is well worth seeing (here is a list of movies that have scenes that take place there). See photo below.

Perhaps I’ll indulge my own vanity and add my own list of unusual hikes in a future blog post.

I don’t know for sure, but it seems the anecdotal evidence points in favor of hikers being overconfident in feeling assured of a rescue if they carry a cell phone with them.

Though they are essentially GPS devices that monitor people’s location, GPS devices don’t always cut it in the wilderness. Even if you can get reception, the GPS doesn’t provide a spot-on map to exactly where rescuers can find you. People can be very close safety and not even realize it…. the annals of hiking abound with stories of badly lost people who are barely off the trail. It doesn’t necessarily mean searchers can find the hiker, especially in dense forest. Then, if it is foggy, rainy, snowy, etc. it is still hard to spot people.

Plus, you never know when the hiker will decide it is in his best interest to leave the spot where his GPS coordinates placed him… say he gets cut off mid-call from 9-1-1 and is not sure anyone is coming for him. He might convince himself that he still has one last idea on how to find his way back to the trail

Anyway, the case that inspired this post is a lost hiker in San Bernardino… been lost for 11 days now, and the official search has been called off, though some volunteers are still searching. Below is a picture of the rescuers from the San Bernardino Sun.

The hiker, who was apparently experienced, was not more than three miles from the Green Valley Lake Campground in the San Bernardino mountains, when he got lost.

“The experienced outdoorsman called 9-1-1 twice when he became disoriented and lost in heavy fog. During one call, Christy told the dispatcher he had walked about three miles.

Despite having Global Positioning System coordinates that approximate the spot where Christy was, rescuers were unable to pinpoint the location where he became lost. They also did not know whether Christy, who was not carrying food or water, had bushwhacked or walked along a road.”

Not much of a security blanket after all.

I never announced my absence from blogging, since I am not religious about updating every day, but last week I was out of the country, visiting Rome and Tunisia. I don’t want to harp on places that are not within a day’s drive of Los Angeles, but I figured I would share one excellent outdoor destination: Jugurtha’s Table, pictured above.

Jugurtha, a Numidian king lived with his army on top of the mesa for 7 years, and fought the advancing Roman army off for that time (the historical details are interesting, but not brief, check them out here if you want).

The hike is very short, though steep, but it is an amazing sight- a full slate of ruins that you can have all to yourself, as well as 360 panoramic views that extend into neighboring Algeria.

The photo below is of my brother and my sister following me across the mesa which slopes sharply upwards. It is probably at least 300 yards in length, and about 100 wide.

Here is the location on a map.

This is kind of a two-for-one-deal. While working out the bugs on the new web cam directory (look to the right) my online editor Esther and I totally destroyed the blog. In her guilt she got our online gurus to rebuild it with an improved appearance. Score!

The web cam directory on the right is meant to give hikers and other outdoors enthusiasts an easy place to check out what the conditions are in places they want to go. I started with mountain conditions, since they are the most obviously needed (to answer the eternal question of whether there is snow in the mountains or not). However, i quickly realized that people also might like to see whether the beach is sunny what the surf conditions are, or maybe even what the weather is like in other cities in California.