Hike Date: March 14, 2015
Miles: Approx: 12 miles
Hours: Approx 12.5
Pine Mountain sits slightly below and slightly to the North of Mount Baldy. The truck trail leading up to Guffy Campground is closed in the Winter, making it necessary to hike up the Acorn Trail from Wrightwood to the Pacific Crest Trail, eventually to the Pine Mountain trail.
We met at 5:45 AM, and carpooled up Wrightwood, where we had to squeeze into some very tight street parking on Acorn Drive. Note that the drive changes from a public road to a private street. From what I have read, if you park above the signs (and somehow miss the plethora of signs saying NO PUBLIC PARKING), you will probably get a ticket and towed. Parking is tight, but we managed to squeeze 4 vehicles onto the side of the road legally, and had no issues.
This was a pop up hike for the 52 Hike Challenge, so after I gave my standard introduction, Karla and Philip (creators of the 52 Hike Challenge) talked for a couple of minutes and introduced the excellent gentlemen from Sea to Summit Productions who ended up taking some picture and video of the hike. We had a total of 11 people on this hike, which was a good number as larger groups tend to have more difficulty, especially on these harder hikes.
The hike started out a bit interesting, as we had to walk by a number of signs on Acorn Drive which indicated in no uncertain terms that the folks that own the homes on this drive do not welcome any strangers parking on this street. The paved road drags on for a little while, but eventually you’ll come to a gate with an opening on the side for hikers. Shortly after the gate you’ll see the first signage for the Acorn Trail. It starts out as more of a fireroad, and continues like that for less than a mile, before another signed junction tells you to take a left. Shortly after this left the incline begins.
The Acorn Trail itself is apparently a pretty well-regarded hike within the community of Wrightwood, and with good reason. Just to get to the Pacific Crest Trail, you have roughly 1500 feet of gain across 3 miles, which provides excellent views of the desert far below.
Once we got to the Pacific Crest Trail, the trail was considerably easier for a while, this was kind of the calm before the storm. We enjoyed trekking on the PCT for a bit, and then came the junction with the Pine Mountain trail, which was very steep down for about 800 feet, and then straight up along a ridge. If you do this hike, keep an eye out, this junction is pretty easy to miss, as the signage is below the fire road which the PCT is above. It was in this portion of the hike that it earns its Class II rank, especially in the snow.
As we ascended this ridge, it became very obvious that we weren’t going to have enough time to make our way over to Dawson Peak, as I had originally hoped, at least not if we wanted to beat the sun on the way down.
We basically just had to keep following the ridge up, and after a while, the summit finally came into view. Getting to the summit on Pine Mountain is no joke, but the views are more than worth it:
Benny Haddad from Sea to Summit Productions captured this awesome Gigapixel picture of Baldy, check it out here.
We all got to hang out at the summit and recover from the hike up for a bit. We all had a nice lunch, eventually got around to signing the summit register (thanks to Karla for finding it!). For me personally this was neat as it was my first time seeing Mt. Baldy from the North side. After I hike Iron Mountain, I’ll have seen Baldy from all four sides (now I just need to hike it from all four sides).
The hike back down was just as exciting as the hike back up, as the snow and loose rock was possibly even harder to keep traction on going down than it was on the way up. This meant we certainly weren’t moving very fast, but the views were still amazing.
After hiking back down to the truck trail, we decided to just take the road instead of hiking back up to the PCT. Either route is about the same length, but by staying on the road, you don’t have to scramble back up to the trail, and at the Acorn junction everything is at the same elevation.
The hike back down the Acorn Trail was pretty uneventful, other than that everyone was getting pretty tired. We made it back to the cars just before sundown, which was fantastic as we didn’t all bring proper cold weather gear (which was a bad idea).
After we made it to the cars, we all went to a nice little Mexican place in Wrightwood and had a very well deserved meal.
I wasn’t able to capture a trace of this hike, however a map approximating our hike is available here.
Thanks to everyone who joined me on this adventure! It was an awesome trail, and I am already looking forward to doing it again, except this time bagging Baldy instead of just looking at it.