The Mt. Wilson Trail (Manzanita Ridge to the End)

(GPS: N 34° 13.355 W 118° 03.755)

Continuing from last time for the final stretch of the trail...

After climbing over the big rock in the middle of the trail, there was not much left to get to Manzanita Ridge. At the ridge the area opens up, and you can see way back down. The trail splits at this point to another area, but I just stayed on the main trail to Mt. Wilson. There is a bench waiting there if one wants to use it, but I kept going. In the following picture, it looks like you can go up on a trail to the left, but the main trail is just going straight.
It was at this point that morning, since I had just elevated above cloud level, that I finally saw the TV transmission towers on Mt. Wilson. It was really cool below, but now that I was above cloud level I started to really feel the sun.
Finally, I reached the old dirt toll road. It was around this point the two trail runners I saw earlier passed me as they were coming back down.
As I was walking on the road, I looked toward the east and saw Mt. Baldy far away in the background of this next picture.
It is at this point I started to encounter more man-made things. The dirt road I was on connects with another dirt road and, because of this, some hikers have been confused here. The hiking trail is not in this picture because it is more off to the right.
There was not too much further to go, but the final stretch of the hike started to wear me down a bit. This is because it was a lot warmer with the sun starting to beat me down. I started to worry a little. Everything that I had planned had worked out, but I did not have enough water for a hot hike going down. I knew the cool cloud cover was going to be gone before I could reach it on the way down. I did finally reach the end and was greeted with this monument:
Basically, the mountain is named after Don Benito Wilson (AKA Benjamin Davis Wilson). He was the one that had the trail built in the 1860's in his pursuit of good lumber. Oddly enough, Wilson is connected to a historical event that will show up in my Ramona series in a month or two.
Some trees block the views up there. The clouds made it look like I was looking into an ocean, and the one "island" in the background is Santiago Peak in the Santa Ana Mountains. What you don't see is that the Tv transmission towers were behind me, but that is not open to the public. And, it turns out there is a public parking lot just behind me too. That is the one thing I left out about this hike: you do not have to hike the trail to get to the top of Mt. Wilson. One can drive paved roads to get up to the parking lot. There were some construction workers doing some work there, and the parts were being flown in via helicopter.

I consider this a really good exercise hike in that it will get you in shape for elevation hiking. It is about 4,600 ft. in about 7 miles. I would consider going back just to hike only part of the trail for this. Most people do not go all the way to the top anyways. Keep in mind though, unless you like going uphill this is not a leisure hike.

Is it scenic? I have read a lot of people say this about this hike, but I feel the same way about this one in the way I feel about most southern California hikes. I do not consider the views along the way that impressive. We are not talking Sierra Nevada hiking here. This is why it is really difficult for me to post these type of hikes unless there is something historically significant about them. There are a lot I do for exercise, but it has been very rare for me to mention them on here because there is really nothing to them. This trail I thought was worth mentioning because of its history, and it was a "deep backcountry hike" for the people hiking it over a century ago. These days the big city is right below.

The Mt. Wilson Trail (Youtube Version)

Don Benito Wilson (Wikipedia article)

Mt. Wilson (Historical article by the Sierra Club)

Music for the video: Incompetech's The Whip Theme (Extended Version)

The Mt. Wilson Trail (Continuing To Orchard Camp)

(GPS: N 34° 11.930 W 118° 03.230)

Continuing from where I left off last time...

After being out in the open until First Water, one starts to encounter a little more tree cover for the middle part of the hike. If the hot sun is out then this is the part that it starts to get nice to get away from it.
Around the half-way point I encountered what is known as Orchard Camp. The following pictures are not that good, but I hope they give you a sense of what is going on at this historic site. Along the way some of the water stream drainage that one encounters is down below. So, there is about a 25 ft. drop here from where I was standing.
Then just to my left was this tree and what looks like the foundations to something.
When the Wilson Trail was being created there was a place built here known as the Halfway House. It was a construction camp made not only for creating and maintaining the trail, but for collecting tree wood from the mountain and brought back down. The Mt. Wilson trail was created with the intention that it would be a source for lumber. Later on two men, George Aiken and George Islip, planted a bunch of chestnut and fruit trees here. This is why it then became known as Orchard Camp. It was around 1890 that the buildings here were turned into a trail resort. It was very popular and, as author John Robinson notes (I link the book below), at the highpoint of 1911 over 40,000 people signed the register here. By 1940 the camp was abandoned.
Apparently, flooding from later years destroyed the buildings that were here and all that you can see these days is the foundations to them.
Since this was not my final goal, I did not spend much time here, but even today looks like it would make a nice picnic area for someone. There are those who do come to this point, eat some snacks, and then turn around. The trail switchbacks with the short U-turn as you go by Orchard Camp.
More switchbacks, more elevation, and continuing back into the canyon I finally noticed the light of the sun. I still had a lot of tree cover, but I was clearly past the elevation the clouds were covering that morning. What I had been told by a friend is that by this point of the hike you know you are very close to Manzanita Ridge when you encounter the huge boulder in the middle of the trail.
What looked to me like part of humanoid face actually took a little work to get around. You definitely want to cross over it to continue on with the trail. It is around this point that the views of the canyon start to open up and the tree cover ends.

The Mt. Wilson Trail (Youtube Version)

John Robinson's Orchard Camp section in Trails of the Angeles

Some old historic pictures of Orchard Camp. These are fun to look at since the area does not seem as overgrown as it does these days. It is hard to imagine sunlight hitting the area that I went to.

The Mt. Wilson Trail (Up to First Water)

(GPS: N34° 10.170 W 118° 02.940)

This begins a series of blogs that I have delayed for some time. When I did this one I was trying to kill two birds with one stone. One reason was to make sure my legs were in hiking shape at the time. The second reason was that the Mt. Wilson trail, and mountain itself, has important historical significance.

One thing I want to point out from the start is that this is one of those hikes that most of the pictures and video you will see were done on the way back down. Normally, I am forced to do this because I usually start hiking early in the morning before dawn. I always try show what can be seen with the best lighting available. However, on the day I did this southern California was going through what is known as "June Gloom" even though I did not do it in June.

Basically, there was a high amount of fog on the trail that morning. I could not see very far in any direction until I passed the cloud level later. It was fun to hike through since I could not see where I was going, but it was nothing worth taking pictures of since there was nothing to show. So, the following pictures are presented in a way that you can actually see what the trail is like, from the bottom to the top, even though it does not really show you what I experienced on the way up that morning.

The gps coordinates take you to the beginning of the Mt. Wilson trail near the historic Lizzie's Trail Inn and the Don Richardson House next to it. The inn was created in 1895 to serve the needs of hikers that used the popular trail during that era. The trail, as we know it, goes back to the mid-1860's. Lizzie's Trail Inn has an interesting history that I will link to below, and it is a museum today. For my purpose, I just parked on the street in front of it and passed by the inn on the left side to begin the trail.

The beginning of the hike passes a residential area. Some slight covering of trees like this, but it does not last for long.After gaining some elevation you can see some of interesting looking houses. Like I said, during the morning I could see none of this because of the fog. This was to my advantage though because the first third of the hike is out in the open where on a hot sunny day it could make one miserable. A nice dam making sure these houses and the rest of the city do not get flooded. After switching back and forth on the trail, gaining elevation, you might be able to see the Santa Anita racetrack. It can barely be seen slightly off to the right in the background. This is the direction the trail was going. It would eventually take me more off to the right side and higher up. Again, I could not see any of this in the morning. It really was kind of spooky, but I loved doing it at the time. Some people say you should be concerned about the drop offs on the trail. Honestly, that was not much of a concern for me on this one due to my own experiences on worse mountain trails. The trail is not that wide though. There was something about this that bothered me about this I knew I might have to face on the way down, but I will mention that later. After 1.5 miles I reached this sign telling me that I was at First Water. One can descend to the right to the stream below here. In fact, just hiking to this point is a workout in itself and people do come here just for this. I bypassed this point and continued. It was around this point that two young athletes ran right by me. Many people do run up and down this trail. I was just slow and steady on this 4,600 ft. elevation hike over 7 miles.

The Mt. Wilson Trail (Youtube Version)

Lizzie's Trail Inn (SanMadreNews.net)
Lizzie's Once Entertained Hikers (San Gabriel Tribune article)