Checking out three small mountains on a short overnight trip to the San Bernardino NF north of Lake Arrowhead.
On day one we drove to the bottom of Mount Marie-Louise and scrambled to the top. It was only a 1.6-mile hike with barely 600 ft gain, but the rock-hopping and bush-whacking (some sections were somewhat overgrown) made for a longer than expected trip. On the way down we saw a tree with hundreds of little holes filled with one acorn each. Apparently this is an Acorn Woodpecker granary. I don’t recall every seeing something like this.
Next we drove over to the trailhead for The Pinnacles hike. This hike was a little longer and had more elevation gain (3.8 miles and 980 ft gain), but it also had a trail. With a trail it also was more popular and we met a number of people along the way and on the top.
We were done with the hikes for the day and decided to drive closer to the starting point for the next days hike. So we continued on Hwy 173 to the intersection with forest road 3N34 and took that to the east. Since this area is also an OHV (Off-Highway-Vehicle) area all the dirt roads are shaped by by Jeeps, all types of ATV’s, and motorcycles. This means wider vehicles with a longer wheel-base don’t always “fit” the humps and ruts in the road the same as these smaller vehicles and driving these roads is a slow affair. Overall it was a fun drive with just the right amount of “obstacles” to keep our attention. After about an hour and covering just 5 miles we got close to the hike’s starting point. We managed to setup and have dinner just before the sun vanished behind the hills in the temperature immediately started dropping. So after a hot chocolate we crawled into our warm sleeping bags.
The night was cold, probably just around freezing, but we were comfortable. In the morning Srisuda felt some slight back pain and decided to skip the hike to Deer Mountain. So I went off by myself. I hiked down the road a little and then took 3N34D towards Deep Creek. The creek is known to be tricky to cross (see also Jack’s report from last year) so I had brought along sandals just in case. There was so much brush and tree debris on the creek shore that looking for a good crossing spot would have been tedious and potential stepping stones I saw were wet, maybe even with a little ice. So I put on my sandals and just walked through the water. On the other side I found cairns leading up a faint use trail on ridge. The first 4-5 hundred feet were very steep. then it eased up and I followed the cairns all the way to the top. After a 20 min break I started my return journey. On top and on the way down, as I got off-track following some game trail rather then the hiking use trail, I saw dozens of big oil cans. I wonder what those were for.
Back at the truck we packed up and continued our drive on 3N34 up to the intersection with 2N25 which we took out to pavement (Hwy 173). Then we went straight home with just a customary after hike stop at In-n-out.
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