Hiking Mount Wilson in So Cal
I’m not going to blog about every single hike because I don’t want to write that much 😂, but I will pick some that have good stories… like this one. Hiking is just one of my hobbies and because I travel a lot for work and my amazing friend trains for triathlons, we decided to have a fun personal goal for the both of us. We agreed to tackle the six peaks in Southern California starting with Mount Wilson located in the San Gabriel Mountains. It sits at an elevation of 5,710 feet with a vertical gain of 4,200 feet. The total distance round trip is approximately 14 miles (although we ended up hiking 15.53 miles).
We started early and left my house at 5:30AM. I swear, I am not a morning person, but somehow I’m waking up early. You know those days when basically almost everything that can go wrong, goes wrong? Yep, it was one of those. I had downloaded the map ahead of time, but somehow we weren’t finding the trail head. We found the observatory, but we didn’t realize we could walk through the gate. It was pretty early and there were no people around, so we parked outside the gate near a service road that looked like it would intersect the trail. As we were getting our gear out of my trunk, my car made a noise I had never heard before. It was almost like a chirp. I ignored it and when I went to lock my car, it was unresponsive. I have key-less entry, so my initial thought was perhaps my key fob battery was low. Eventually, I got my car to respond and lock itself as long as I was close to the driver’s side. So, we were finally on our way. I told myself I’d deal with it when we got back.
We hiked down the service road and it merged with the trail as we had expected. Basically the trail started near the top of the mountain, went down, and then back up in a loop to the observation deck which was the end goal and near the car. The weather was perfect – not too hot and not too cold. When we reached a fork in the road, we decided to go counterclockwise by swinging a left. Along the way we met a few hikers. A couple of guys told us we were going the difficult way and that at the end we would be in pain as the last miles gained most of the elevation. They strongly urged us to turn back and go the opposite direction. We said our goodbyes, we looked at the map, and we decided we would be fine so we trekked on. The hike was absolutely gorgeous. We saw the sun rise and the skyline was lit up with beautiful pink and blue colors.
Getting a little off trail is normal especially if there aren’t clearly defined paths, but this adventure in particular, for some reason we got off trail a lot. 😂 However, it was so breathtaking the extra steps were worth it. Portions of the trail you are hiking alongside the river and watching the small natural waterfalls. It was so quiet… well, until we reached about mile 8-9. As we were walking out of a section of the forest it opened up to a larger trail and all of a sudden we were hearing music and seeing tons of people. I had told my friend we must have stumbled upon Santa’s village or some kind of new civilization. It was just awkward having trekked through a beautiful and quiet forest to open up to crowds of people. We realized this was where one popular trail to a waterfall intersected the peaceful one we had been on. We laughed and carried on our way in the sea of people.
We followed the sign and went to see the waterfall. It seemed everyone was going that way, so there was some heavy traffic. We got to the waterfall, took some photos, and continued hiking based on what the map was telling us. Well, as we went around, we realized that things looked quite familiar! We had seriously done a loop back to the waterfall. 🙄 We walked around trying to find the intersecting area to where we needed to be, but couldn’t find it; however, we did see this trail heading straight up from the waterfall that looked like people had used before. So, we hiked up the steep mountain which guided us back on track.
When we got to mile 12 or so, basically the elevation kicked in and it was all switchbacks. I had to take breaks, but it wasn’t as bad as the hikers made it out to be. Don’t get me wrong… I was a little sore the following day, but we accomplished it. Perhaps they thought we were first time hikers. By the time we reached the observation deck the sun was falling and when we walked out it was dark so we used our headlamps.
When we got back to the car, my key once again didn’t work! I was thinking, “You have to be kidding me!” Of course at this time there were no people around, so again I had to move the key closer and with some last prayers it finally unlocked the car. Since then, my key hasn’t misbehaved like that. 😂 My hypothesis is it must have something to do with the towers messing up the frequency. I don’t know, but it is just weird that it only happened there.
Overall, that was a fun and challenging adventure. We laughed so much and we had a lot of time to catch up on girl talk. I loved it. Thanks Peanut and on to the next peak! ❤
