Moments in Dirt and Ink

Los Padres National Forest Locate the trail head. We drove to the end of Paradise Road to stop by Red Rock for a little hiking. It turned out to be very short, indeed. We only went a little way up the river before returning. I stopped by the rock that attracts many people and sketched before we left again. The top of the large red rock in the river. Red layers of rock with a bit of salt or lime. Green mountain sides surround the red rocks. A sketch of the big, red rocks of the river. Afterward, we stopped by Nojoqui Falls since it had rained recently, but were disappointed with the flow that didn't seem to have improved with the rain. ©2008,2012 Valerie Norton Posted 16 September 2012

Open air sketches for the month. The city poking out of the haze while hiking up the old toll road . Antennas on the mountain top . Top: south view.  Bottom: northwest view.  From near the top . Some of the turtles on campus.

from Lake Poway, nearish La Jolla Locate the trailhead. I only drove to La Jolla, so can't say how to get there, but Lake Poway is on the map. It's a short trail, but can get hot so we meant to head off quite early. We did manage to get around to going downhill before it started to feel particularly hot. They've certainly put together a lot of trails for a place that hadn't had a trail until 1980, but there's usually trail signs, too. Not quite the first view of ocean along the trail. I'm told this wasn't particularly visible until fire came through a few years ago. There were a few funky shaped bits of pink granite around. It seemed to be turning into shells, in a way, in places. Besides this one, the top features a wave of stone everyone but me was taking photos of. The local pink granite, a rock that isn't as much harder than the local sandstone as expected.

Angeles National Forest Locate the trailhead. The old way to Henninger Flats is to start at the bottom of the Mt. Wilson Toll Road and walk up. The road has a gate on it that is only open sunrise to sunset but now hasn't been open for years because a large section of the road, visible from the gate, has been removed by a landslide. With the traffic of people who go up the mountain from around here, it might be expected to have a good trail bed again, but it does not. Since the gate never opens, one must start in at some other location or trespass. If the sunrise to sunset time limit is no problem, then the Eaton Canyon lot is a good starting spot. If not, between the two is a small dirt lot along Altadena Dr. Either way, the reason there hasn't been a good trail bed made by the passage of people is because there's another way up using the Eaton Canyon trail directly across the riverbed. From the lot on Altadena, one may have to go east a little to get to it. ...

Outside sketches of the month. Apartment in downtown Pasadena. Colorado and Wilson, Pasadena. (From my photo.) Old fireproof warehouse for the long gone trains. (From my photo.) A tree and hitching post by the campground .

Angeles National Forest Locate the trailhead. A handy map to the trailhead found at the end of the road which is not, according to the map, where the trail starts. Grizzly Flat is a short way up the north end of the Dark Canyon trail. The south end starts in Oakwilde, about 4 miles up Arroyo Seco starting near JPL. It is marked with one of those flat, brown stick signs, but rather than simply saying "trail" as they normally do, it is well marked with promises that the trail further on through Dark Canyon is unmaintained and likely to take your life if you try to travel along it. The north end, in contrast, starts about a mile along Big Tujunga, which is reportedly difficult to pass in high water, and doesn't really have a trail along it from the road. It is true that the route is difficult to determine among all the choices for the first section along the creek, but it is easy to find as it heads upward away from the water. From there is is well maintained t...

Los Padres National Forest Locate the trailhead. Going down Paradise road to Red Rock, there is a fork in the road at lower Rancho Oso where the left side goes up to Upper Rancho Oso. Mom and I took a small hike up this trail to see what was on it. Turns out, there's a lot of people with dirt bikes on it since they are allowed on the fire road that makes up the first part of the trail. However, within the first mile of the road, there's a trail going off to the left. This one does not allow any vehicles, off road or otherwise, and the sounds of bikes vanished as we proceeded down it. The trail was quite delightful. There was a spot along it where the cliff had eroded into a big bowl and the sounds of the creek were amplified so that as you approached it, you weren't sure if there wasn't more water coming down off the side until you could see. As we approached, some hikers were standing in it talking and their rumbling amplified voices were carried quite far...

Los Padres National Forest Locate the trailhead. When everyone else went on down the mountain, I went further up it to see if I could get to the peak. The road did not actually go there although it was rather obscured by other details on the forest map. There was a trailhead instead. A short way down the trail splits one side heading off to one side of the mountain, the other to the other side of the mountain and a usage trail splitting the difference heading up the mountain. I met a man walking along with his kids that looked like they weren't more than five coming down the usage trail. He said that the trail started off quite steep but got quite flat above. Although I didn't actually see little footprints all the way up, it was pretty good for a usage trail. It was especially good for a usage trail that travels along a ridge passing about four false peaks. It looked like a lot of people don't actually get all the way up to the peak. There was a wide, fla...