Tag: national forest

Sequoia National Park & General Sherman

to decompress after a flurry of wedding activity, we embarked on a two-day, 930-mile road trip to take in Sequoia National Park, the General Sherman tree, Monterrey, Highway 1, and a whole lot of California’s
Central Valley.

first stop on our tour: General Sherman at the heart of Sequoia National Park; just a touch farther west than strictly warranted on our route to Monterrey, but certainly worth the trip. when I asked the hubs whether he wanted to see General Sherman, I only had a vague sense of what it was – a great big tree. turns out it’s the largest living tree by volume – not tallest (a Coastal redwood) nor widest (a cypress or baobab) nor oldest (a bristlecone pine) – but still incredibly impressive.

naturalist James Wolverton named the tree after the Civil War general in 1879, more than a decade before the area became a national park. at that time, white settlers seeking to establish a utopian society had begun felling sequoias for trade; thousands of sequoias were taken down before it their tendency to splinter became clear and the logging operation ceased (when the area became a park in 1890).

the military oversaw the park until the early 1900s, when it was turned over to civilian supervision. during the early years of the park, the military spent much of its time cutting access trails and roadways. when the park transferred from the military to civilian control, greater attention was paid to making the park more accessible to the general public. Walter Fry, who originally came to the Sierra Nevadas as a logger (but quickly changed courses when he counted the growth rings on the first sequoia he helped fell and discovered they’d brought down a tree more than 3,200 years old), became the first civilian superintendent. he oversaw the gradual expansion of county roads and the development of a wagon road by the Mount Whitney Power Company.

after the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, the idea of a park-to-park highway system prompted further road improvements in and between Sequoia and General Grant National Parks (now Kings Canyon National Park). the new road – the Generals Highway and built in sections of switchbacks and wedged between giant sequoias in some places – was dedicated in June of 1935 with some 669 cars carrying 2,488 passengers traversing the road from either end, meeting in the middle. during this time, CCC workers also cut a 400-step staircase into the granite dome of Moro Rock, which offers staggering views from the rock of the park and of the Great Western divide (though pollution often obscures views west over the San Joaquin valley).

the improvements suited the burgeoning numbers of tourists and now more than one million visitors take advantage of the park each year.

Mt Baldy

one novelty of being back in southern California are the mountains. so accessible! within an hour you can be in the foothills or climbing one of the tallest peaks in the San Gabriel Mountains and hiking the highest peak in the San Bernardino Mountains even sooner! it’ll make for much more interesting trekking as we prepare for our next big hiking adventure.

last weekend we headed out for the summit of Mt. Baldy (or, officially, Mount San Antonio), the highest peak in Los Angeles county. it’s part of the Transverse Ranges that lie along the San Andreas Fault and was likely bestowed the name of Mount San Antonio in the 1840s by a rancher, after his patron saint. indigenous people in the area had other names for it, but today everyone calls it Mt. Baldy.

early entrepreneurs took advantage of the water resources of the canyons, building a sawmill (which burned down within a few years of construction and was never replaced) and starting an ice-hauling business. the steep walls of the canyon preserved snow on the northface slopes well into the spring. in the late 1850s, one-time mayor of Los Angeles, Damien Marchessault, and a partner built an ice house in the canyon (hence its current name) and started hauling ice down from Icehouse Canyon and selling it door-to-door. they also used it in their ice cream parlor in the city – the only one at the time.

it wasn’t until the late 1870s that prospectors tried their luck at gold mining around Mt. Baldy, without much success. water levels at the mines proved uncertain and people living downstream from the runoff filed suit over pollution of the creeks. more importantly, however, there wasn’t that much ore to be found and in relatively short order recreation overtook mining as a primary activity around Mt. Baldy.

the first successful summit of the mountain occurred via Lytle Creek in 1875 by a group of army surveyors and it wasn’t long before the adventurous took to climbing the mountain for recreation, generally via one of today’s common routes (Mt. Baldy Trail and the Devil’s Backbone – which we took). in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps improved and expanded the Devil’s Backbone Trail, to help stabilize and widen the trail, offering better protection from the occasionally precipitous drops on either side.

the first “resort” went up in 1880 and shortly thereafter the owner of one of the mining support stations (near what is now the village of Mt. Baldy) converted it into a rental resort; by the turn of the century, the latter entertained up to 100 guests per weekend (keeping in mind that at this time the canyon was not yet accessible by automobile). on enterprising mountain guide opened up a “resort” some 80 feet below the summit (really just a set of tents), but after damage from a cooking fire in 1913, it was abandoned.

the shift to recreational use of the canyon resulted in bitter disputes between the camp operators and the San Antonio Water Company, which controlled water rights for the area. the Water Company ultimately wrangled control of the road and closed it off to all comers for several years; eventually, however, they decided to profit from the interest in recreation and bought one of the remaining camps (and hiring the previous owner to run it) and reopened the road with tolls. Camp Baldy, as the Water Company renamed it, became a haven for tipplers during Prohibition, though it was subject to periodic raids (agents only found contraband on one occasion). Foster Curry, whose family was known for running the resorts at Yellowstone, came down to help run the resort with the assistance of a woman he met at Camp Baldy and who later became his wife. under their supervision, the resort grew to include cabins built along the creek, a pool (called “The Plunge), barber and beauty shop, post office, casino, dance pavilion, photography studio and a school.

in 1938, a flood swept through San Antonio and Icehouse Canyons, destroying nearly all of the existing structures, including most of Camp Baldy. the Forest Service (which took over land and leases when the area became a a national forest in 1908) did not permit new structures in Icehouse Canyon, but much of Camp Baldy returned as Mt. Baldy Village, which now includes stores, lodges, fire department, school, and Forest Service information center. the Sierra Club built a lodge near Manker Flats (open to club members) and a ski hut on the Mt. Baldy Trail, near the headwaters of San Antonio Creek and named for the first female president of the Sierra Club (Aurelia Harwood, for whom a peak on the Devil’s Backbone Trail is also named). today, in addition to the numerous hikers in all types of weather, there is also the Mt. Baldy Ski Lifts (which operates the closest ski slopes to Los Angeles, and which runs the lift we rode to get to Baldy Notch on summer weekends). as long as the haze isn’t bad, you can see all the way to Catalina from the top of the peak!

we could only see cities to the north of the mountains; above the haze we could see to the horizon … just nothing on the ground.