5 Peaks Challenge - 1/1/2009

[drhabes]

I wanted to start off the year right by hiking locally with a few friends of mine for the 3rd year in a row. Fortunately I was able find an idea of a hike in the 100 Peaks SoCal section of the Sierra Club which turned out to be a great New Years Day adventure! My goal this year is to knock off 25 peaks of this list and since I'm not getting any younger (closer to 60 now than 50!) I started this year off by grouping a number of peaks together in one hike! Now I know that I certainly won't ever be able to achieve the amazing results of some of you real "trail warriors" (Graham, GigaMike, AlanK, MooseTracks, Rick Kent and Richard P. just to mention a few!) but our adventure on Thursday was great!

Highlights of the trip-

The weather was amazing! No clouds, no wind, warm temps - a real Bluebird day!
My GPS said it was a 10 mile hike but it felt shorter than that.
The real "X" factor of the day was the snow on the North facing slopes - WOW! I knew there would be some but I didn't expect 1 1/2 to 2 foot drifts. It make it REALLY interesting especially going up San Gabriel Peak!
We covered 5 peaks in this order:
Mt. Lowe trailhead: 8:30am
Mt. Lowe: 9:49am
Mt. Markham: 10:50am
San Gabriel Peak: 1:04pm
Mt. Disappointment: 2:07pm
Mt. Deception: 3:15pm
Mt. Wilson Rd.: 4:34pm
We brought two cars so that we could hike in one direction with minimal backtracking (see TOPO map in the pics).
The fly over of the B-2 Spirit for the parade and Rose Bowl was highlight material!
Only major incident was when I decided to try and "skate" the black ice on the access road...dumb idea. I landed on my butt and cracked the back of my head on the ice. Pretty stupid. Needless to say I walked on the snow the rest of the way down!



Here are a few selected pics from our days adventure:













Just another wonderful day in SoCal enjoying the good life!
I would have posted sooner but just now remembered about this great site!


The rest of the pictures are here