Moments in Dirt and Ink

Just one sketch for the month. Our various protections from the rain that was preparing to come down all night .

Shenandoah National Park < day 1 There was torrential rain through the night from not long after we went into the tent to not long before we came out of it in the morning. We'd not been careful enough with the ground cloth and some water had come onto it. My bag was wet, although still too warm for the night. Wet was creeping into everything, but had soaked nothing, so we were doing quite well. Well, almost everything. The new dry bag as bear bag was very successful and food very dry. Also bright orange and easy to spot, not that we've ever lost a bear bag. We put together breakfast letting the instant oatmeal soak for 5 or 10 minutes before gobbling it up. Worked a charm and wasn't so cold out that we missed the heat. Oatmeal's never hot anyway, when having it out in the woods. We packed everything back up. Now the place where the tent was was the one dry spot instead of the one soaked spot. Our campsite for the night, post tenting and delu...

Shenandoah National Park Locate the trailhead. I found myself in Maine and stopped by my sister's place on the way home. Once she realized I'd be there in time for a weekend outing, she decided I could help her retry backpacking. She wanted to see what Shenandoah had to offer to the weekend backpacker, so looked over the suggested hikes they have put together. The only ones that seem a reasonable 2 day length, at least in the beginner section, were listed as "strenuous". We went for one saying it had the highest waterfall in the park along it. It did turn out to have plenty of down for the first day and up the following day. We started off from the road onto the Appalachian Trail, so that's a quarter mile of the AT down. We came to a sign post and started down the long hill past waterfalls and cascades and eventually to look for a camping spot. It is a lush and green place on the east, as the sister loves to mention. These seemed to tur...

Pasadena Front Country Locate the trailhead. Arroyo Seco is open again and the hikethegeek types planned a trip up it, so I joined up with them to see how it is now. The group was quite large, including a few dogs. It took a while for them all to gather and once gathered, they filled the road. Quite a force to be reckoned with. They also weren't moving very fast. We got to the stream and the water was clear again. Hooray! Once entering the forest, just after the Forest Service buildings as we really enter the canyon, the stream no longer comes all the way to the cliff. Instead it has been pushed back to allow a road worth of gravel for walking on. Some of the group wasn't happy with not getting into the stream and went down to it anyway. Everyone else followed, but I stayed high, I'd walked down there last time and it was enough for me. The bottom of the canyon is still very clear of any growth, but there have been efforts to restore the crossings, at l...

Sketches for the month. A small pool by the string of water that is so closely borderedby desert in Allison Gulch . The waterfall up Allison Gulch . Some of the leftover construction from cabins in Fish Creek Canyon . Darling Donna, or so a sign is reported to have once said, flowing into Fish Creek soon. Oblique view of the main attraction up Fish Creek Canyon .

Angeles National Forest Fish Creek Canyon has a quarry at the mouth, making access difficult.  The quarry has a few access days somewhat less than every other Saturday during which they provide parking and shuttles to go up the canyon.  This makes the hike up to the falls about 2 miles.  The shuttles used to allow people up until noon and continued running them back down to 3 PM, but recently this time has been shortened.  There is also a route made to bypass the quarry to get into the canyon from just after the gate to the quarry which adds about 3 miles to the trek up to the falls and which no one seems to have anything good to say about.  Previous years when I have gone, the part of the bypass trail coming down to the canyon looked wide and used.  The first mile of the other side, which I have been on, looked used, but was overgrown once it got to the other side of the canyon wall.  When I went this year (28 May 2011), the access trail down in th...

Azusa Front Country Locate the trailhead. I haven't gone up Fish Creek yet this year and the water around various places is clearly on the high side. The access days seem to be getting on the sparse side. I got up there right around 9 AM. It was particularly busy this time. People could have parked more tightly, but it was getting to be a bit ridiculous to find a space when I got there. A crowd was waiting for the shuttle vans. Once up there, it seemed the brush had encroached a bit more than usual and it was quite a crowd going both up and down to make the trail seem even smaller. I started poking around the old cabin spots, finding more behind the first set. The cabins were really packed in at one time. Although now all that is left is stone and metal and not much of that even. A bed frame sitting in the dead grass and a stove tucked away on its side in the brush.

Angeles National Forest There are all sorts of known gold mines, and likely as many unknown ones, around the local counties.  This is gold country, after all.  Iron Mountain must have been a very attractive place to mine because it is riddled with the things even though it is (and was) a remote and difficult area.  One still finds prospectors when going up the East Fork of the San Gabriel River at the bottom of the mountain.  A lot can be found out about these mines from the local enthusiasts .  Many of the mines around Iron Mountain are included in the "mines we will never see" section .  There is also a section of lost mines of Iron Mountain . Some of the mines in the area are: Allison Mine, which may have two almost usable routes to it, one up the gulch  from the "bridge to nowhere" trail and one along the hillside from the maintained part of the trail out of Heaton Flat Baldora Mine, sometimes claimed to be another name for Widco, but a...