Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail into the San Gabriel Mountains

We had a full day today and couldn't wait to get out on the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs through our campground.  We decided to head south, from the Soledad Canyon along the Santa Clara River, where we're camped, up into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.  Los Angeles lays just on the other side of those mountains.

Every hike begins with a photo at the trailhead:

This particular trail had an obstacle course for us to follow - the first of this kind we'd ever seen.  The PVC pipe construction is meant to keep all manner of vehicles off the trail, while allowing hikers and horses.  Apparently, David qualifies, because he was able to step through it:

It didn't take long for us to climb high above Soledad Canyon, with a view of our RV campground below the Vasquez Rocks.  The Vasquez Rocks are a well known feature in the area, and were named after a notorious criminal and cattle rustler who apparently hid out in the canyons in this area.

In the photo above, you can also see Shambala Preserve, which neighbors our RV campground. Shambala Preserve is an animal sanctuary established in 1972.  It is maintained by the Roar Foundation, founded by actress Tippi Hedren in 1983. Her strong commitment to animal rescue began in 1969 while she was shooting two films in Africa and was introduced to the plight of African lions.  Shambala cares for endangered exotic big cats such as African lions, Siberian tigers and Bengal tigers, leopards, servals, mountain lions, bobcats, plus a lynx, a Florida panther, and a liger. Most of the animals at Shambala were born in captivity, orphans, are no longer wanted at circuses or zoos, or are given up by private owners who could no longer care for them. For example, Shambala became the new home for Michael Jackson’s two Bengal tigers, Sabu and Thriller, after he decided to close his zoo at his Neverland Valley Ranch in Los Olivos, California.

We found more interesting flora and fauna than we expected.  Here's a little lizard, who posed obligingly while David fumbled with his camera:

And - we couldn't believe it - there was even a MUSHROOM on the trail!

A good friend we haven't seen since our hike around Lake Shasta over two years ago:  a manzanita:

Just as in Death Valley, the wildflowers were abloom in the San Gabriel foothills.  The deeper into the hills we hiked, the more we found:

Here's a photo of Kathy on the trail with several hundred of her wildflower friends:

Much of the area has been touched by the regular wildfires that can plague the Angeles National Forest, where we were hiking.  In the 2009 Station Fire, more than 161,000 acres of the forest were burned and quickly spread, fueled by dry brush that had not burned for over 150 years. The fire burned for more than a month and was the worst in Los Angeles County history, charring one-fourth of the forest, displacing wildlife, and destroying 91 homes, cabins and outbuildings and the family-owned Hidden Springs cafe.  Two firefighters died.  The Station Fire threatened the Mount Wilson Observatory atop Mt. Wilson. Several 2012 wildfires also occurred, burning hundreds of acres across the forest-covered mountain range.  Along the length of our hike, the hillsides were strewn with the charred skeletons of bushes and small trees, but enough time has passed that new bushes, trees and small plants have all grown up in their midst, making for an interesting landscape.

Rocks and geology are playing an increasing role in our hikes as we spend more time in the West, where the rocks and strata are more evident.  The San Gabriel Mountains are noted for their granite, which includes lots of quartz and the minerals associated with it, as well as sedimentary layers that looked to us like limestone and sandstone.  We also spotted some layers that clearly were volcanic, as if lava had overflowed some of the strata in these hills.  We also spotted what looked clearly like a sizeable earthquake fault fissure running generally north-to-south near our trail.  The geologic forces at work here over the eons have exposed a variety of interesting rocks and minerals.

David found this foil-like layer of gold metallic material (we're still trying to identify it) --

-- which we observed usually seems to occur as a layer in quartz rocks, as in this example Kathy found:

Kathy is under strict instructions to limit her rock-collecting, since our trailer does have a weight-carrying limit.  But somehow, little rocky hitchhikers always seem to tumble out on the table when we sit down in our home after one of these long hikes.  Then Kathy gets very silent for an hour or so as she patiently cleans the little critters and does Internet research to try to identify them.

Today's hike was about 6.5 miles out-and-back.  Our halfway point was the highest crest in the foothills, from which we could see up and down Soledad Canyon and miles in every direction:

The only higher crest would have been a peak of one of the San Gabriel Mountains, but we thought another 12 round-trip miles of hiking might be further than we had bargained for today.  Instead, we rested on the soft, grassy soil of this hilly peak and munched on turkey wraps while we enjoyed this 360-degree view from our lunch spot, looking north toward Soledad Canyon and south toward the crest of the San Gabriel Mountains.