“The Bridge to Nowhere” Hike Part 3 (The Halloween Series)

(GPS: N34 16.990 W117 44.810)

Okay, the above gps cords are for where we ended up at the bridge.

There was not much room around here, but I was safe. Again this is looking down from the “Nowhere” side.
Both of these are looking more from the northern side.
Looking at the “Nowhere” side.
This is the mysterious cable car thing overhead that goes over the bridge.
Looking down into the pool.

Looking back to the bridge from the southern side of "nowhere".

The following is just past the bridge into the “Nowhere” side. I followed the trail up a few hundred feet. It came to a point that was steep, but slippery. So, I could have forced the issue to continue, but I had all my camera gear out and did not want to risk things coming down. So, this is really as far as I got. Basically, you can go up further up the canyon to the left. Some backpackers continued on this way.
This is another angle looking down from the bridge. I took this as we were leaving.

Early on I was sort of complaining about the pack of hikers that were slower. Well, they really weren’t a problem. They just were bungee jumpers who were not your typical hikers so they were rather slow at times. They started before us and we passed them. At one point we went up a little too high and had to back track. They were there so we had to pass them again. We saw some while we were heading back as they continued to reach the bridge.

People actually come to the bridge to bungee jump. We wanted to see them do it, but we had already been there almost an hour, and they were still slow setting up. One thing that I encountered here on the way back was people constantly asking me how many miles it would take to get to the end. You could tell many people do not get out walking or hike much. I have never encountered this on any of my other hikes. In fact, some big guys at the trail-head were trying to convince my brother that it was, “a lot harder and further than you thought it was, right?”

He said he was just being agreeable to be polite, but I would have to agree that this hike was really not that hard. We were in an out in about 4 hours. We could have done it quicker too. The only problems are you have to cross water a lot, walk on stones and sand. It is nothing compared to everything else I have written about.

A Google map of the bridge.

Just as a follow up to my first entry. Here is the video that “Cassie” used to show her dead drop at the Bridge. It looks like it was just across the bridge in a bunch of rocks. In fact, I was standing right near where he shot the last part of this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaa5wqXszZM

Had there not been as many people on this hike I think the creepiness factor would have been "higher" walking around in this area. People were out fishing and prospecting(!) along the river. Funny, we never saw any fish. Still a well made bridge out in the middle of nowhere is just strange! Well, this ends my Halloween series. Happy Halloween!

“The Bridge to Nowhere” Hike Part 2 (The Halloween Series)

(GPS: N34 16.260 W117 44.815)

As you can see we continued to cross the river at different points:
We never did see the Swan Canyon part because I forgot to look, but along the walls you can notice different types of veins in the rock. There is a part somewhere along this hike where you can see something that looks like a Swan with the different type of rocks. Here is the best I can do to show the type of rock.
At this point is near where the gps cords are at this riverbed area. We are later in the year so the water is down quite a ways. If you look to the right you see the final ascent on a trail over the canyon.

We ran across a PACK of hikers along the way and I was glad to see some uphill at this point. I knew we would lose them in the uphill since we do that all the time. I’ll explain more about these hikers later. We were still pretty fast, but there were certain areas that we had to slow down because of their slow crossings. It was not that big a deal, but we like to go as fast as possible on these hikes.
This is looking back down the canyon from where we came:
Okay, we finally made it in about 2 hours which is pretty good time. Normally it is supposed to take somewhere from 3 ½ to 4 hours to get there, but I suspect the people that do that are trying to avoid getting wet and are not people that hike high elevations very much. The difference in this hike is it is just crossing the river about 10 times and walking on sand and rocks for about 5 miles. Here is what we came to see after we crossed it to the “Nowhere” side:
This is the Bridge to Nowhere. It was made in 1936. This whole drainage trail we hiked was supposed to be a road that was intended for another way out of Los Angeles into the Palmdale area. The problem was that in 1938 a massive rainstorm hit with 12 inches in less than a day. All the rain buildup led to a major flood in the canyon knocking at all the construction work and road in the canyon. However, the height of this bridge was just enough to avoid being destroyed.

This is still on the “Nowhere” side looking back. This bridge is really out of place here. It is not used for anything because the road was wiped out. Hikers do use the road and the trail does continue on, but to where I am not sure since I did not bother going more than few hundred feet further.
This is looking down.

“The Bridge to Nowhere” Hike Part 1 (The Halloween Series)

(GPS: N 34 14.210 W 117 45.920)

This is a hike I have wanted to do for a long time. It sounds spooky and some unusual things have happened here. This hike is great, but notorious for a few reasons which will come out in the next few entries. What better time of the year than to do this in October. Note: the gps cords above are just for the trail-head; the next two in each entry are further on into the hike until the end.

I wanted to do this hike early in the morning, but unfortunately my brother and I could not get an earlier start than 9:00 am. So, we headed up Azuza Canyon into the mountains on a winding road past two reservoirs. We then crossed the East Ford Road to the Sheep Mountain trail-head.

This side story is a little too complicated to go into here, but over the summer there was something that came out called “Lonelygirl15”. It is still going on about a girl who posts video’s of herself on youtube. It came out it was a fictional story, but one of the videos were filmed down below this picture in the pools.
The video they used of that area:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q_y0HdJ4x8

Interesting enough, a side story of Lonelygirl15 called “Cassieiswatching” also filmed a scene in her video near where we went. Items were left in sort of a geocache/dead drop scavenger hunt. A little more on the creepy side of things…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IcYUifgEfw

From what I could tell I could have found the items rather easily, but I don’t just drop everything and drive out to places to get things like that.

Funny thing is people around the world were really creeped out over all of this because of the “Cassie” videos and the names of the locations like Caves to Nowhere, Tunnel to Nowhere, and Bridge to Nowhere. However, for those who live in Southern California there is nothing to be scared about other than an abundance of rattlesnakes. These areas are not creepy in the way people were thinking since these are rather well traveled areas.

This is only within the first five minutes of the hike. You can see what used to be a bridge that crossed the river here. Notice the connector on the other side. This area marks the first river crossing one must do on this trail.
There are actually many river crossings one must do and as you do them you see many pools of water that look nice for swimming or wading.
Here is another example of the water. Sometimes you encounter water that is a lot faster and deeper. Although we tried to avoid the water it got to the point we did not care too much and would just wade through. I do not think it ever got higher than three feet at areas we crossed. At some points it was higher, but we avoided those.

As we went further back and forth across the river we found another old bridge that had been wiped out:
At some points we were able to avoid water for while. We just followed the canyon
But, in some areas we had to straddle the walls over the water like this.
More to come in my next entry of this interesting, but kind of spooky hike tomorrow.