Quirky thoughts from an old man.
In the hills near Pasadena the ancient ones rise early and following in the footsteps of their ancestors scratch their art onto the trails. I was lucky enough to find and photograph this perfect example early one morning last week.
What does it mean? Does the water bottle have any significance? Are they violating any ordinances? Is it pornography? And most importantly: Are grants available to study this phenomenon?
We will continue to research and photograph the dirtoglyphs as they appear.
In October I received a few email answers to my inquiries about progress on repairing the trail. It seems that the city is waiting for the county and the federal government. Roumiana at the Pasadena Department of Water and Power sent me this email on October 11, 2007:
“The repair of Mount Wilson Toll Road is postponed until FEMA approves the construction plan and City of Pasadena (City) and Los Angeles County (County) sign the repair contract. As a primary user of the Toll Road, County will complete the repairs.
Staff tentatively scheduled the work to start in September – October and to end by December 07.
Currently FEMA is approving the repairs; County is reviewing the contract drafted by the City. As soon as the contract is signed and the work approved by FEMA, the repair schedule will be finalized.”
I asked how much money we were asking for and when the application was filed and Roumiana immediately replied: “In 2005 FEMA approved 2 grants for $1.48 million. In April 2007 staff sent the repair plan to FEMA for approval.”
This will not surprise anybody who is following this story but I walked up the trail on Thursday morning to the big slide and the work has not started.
However the county park did get the magician with the bobcat to regrade the Horse Trail. Many kudos to the Eaton Canyon County Park run by Helen Wong. They are the only ones who appear capable of cutting the bureaucratic red tape and keeping the mountains in this area open. They got it done just before the rain and as a result the trail held up well. Without the regrading it was in danger of washing out in several places.
They also have a much larger bulldozer working in the Nature Center area rebuilding the lower trails.
In the past week I received two pieces of mail from elected officials talking about how much they cared about the environment, global warming and our mountains. One was from our State assemblyman and the other was from Congressman Adam Schiff. Putting aside the irony of destroying trees and using energy mailing things about saving the environment I would like to point out that talk is cheap. The Mount Wilson Toll Road has now been closed for three years and everybody in the governments involved talks about fixing it but nothing is being done. And there is talk that we should put the government in charge of our health care system.
Next step send an email to Adam Schiff with a copy to all of the other players and hike on the Horse Trail.
This picture of the slide on the lower part of the Eaton Canyon Toll Road was taken on September 25th, 2007. As you can see no work has started to re-open the road. People are however traversing the slide as you can see from the faint line across the photo connecting the two areas where the slide crosses the remains of the road.
In the bottom of the photo you can see the new barbed wire installed by the City of Pasadena to keep people from entering the National Forest. In an email dated June 2007 Gary T from the City of Pasadena wrote: “The tentative schedule for completion is December 2007.” I suspect that the “tentative” schedule will not be met. In defense of Pasadena’s engineers this is a very difficult problem to solve but some evidence of progress other than more barbed wire would be welcome.
Master of the Universe
Yes that is a picture of me at the top of Mt Wilson. On Friday the 31st of August I climbed to the top of Mount Wilson and back.
It was about 19 miles round trip with an elevation gain of 4750 feet.
The weather was perfect for hiking. I started out at 6am with my usual supplies for a walk to Henninger plus an extra 4 liters of water and some snacks.
Dawn on the trail
I had hiked about an hour above Henninger a few weeks ago and thought that I was within an hour of the summit of Mt Wilson. I was off by an hour or two.
Not there yet
The round trip took about 10 hours and at the end I was tired but still had enough energy to go over to Huntington Hospital and visit Gary D. More on that story later.
This was going to be my first of several full day hikes in preparation for climbing Mt Whitney in September but fate has intervened. Gary D’s illness and the delayed completion of our remodel mean that I have run out of time. I’m going to put my name in the lottery for next year and will keep working on this goal. Stay tuned.
On Sunday 8/26 during my hike I spent a few minutes on the upper slide area widening and lowering the pitch of the emergency trail. It is apparent that I am not the only one doing it
and the trail across the slide is slowly getting more passable. The County is trying to get all of the approvals it needs to actually reopen the toll road in the upper area but who know when that will be. While talking to a trail companion about the lack of progress on repairing the trail she suggested that I write more letters and perhaps get a petition and a web site going. Anything to get the attention of the people who allocate the resources. I probably won’t do any of those things until “Beyond Borders” is launched but I can update the blog and email my current contacts about it.
The Toll Road is still closed and will be for a long time because the lower slide that is in the City of Pasadena is so unstable that it may not be repairable and a new road will have to be built. No apparent progress has been made in surveying the site or beginning repairs.
In this picture you can see a couple of deer walking on the lower slide area. They were actually starting small slides as they walked. In the lower portion of the picture you can see the fragment of the trail that intrepid hikers have carved through the scree. I understand that it is extremely unsafe but the alternative is the Walnut Canyon Trail, also called the Horse Trail but it is very steep and in bad repair.
The Big Slide
On the trail down Yesterday I met an employee of the Nature Center who agreed that the Walnut Canyon trail needs repairs before it starts to rain. If it rains hard this year part of it will wash out so badly that it will be extremely expensive to fix. A few years ago the county park people found the resources to get a brilliant Bobcat operator and within a week he really did a great job of improving the trail. I hope that they can do it again. If you want to see some action on this idea contact Mickey Long at the Eaton Canyon Nature Center. Contact information to follow.
I went on my longest hike of the summer yesterday. And I did pretty well. I left Eaton Canyon at 6am
Sunrise
and hiked up to Henniger Flats with a very nice young lady named, I think, Sheila (I didn’t write it down). On the way up we talked about the slide area and what we could do about it. She inspired me to do more than just work a little bit on the worst spots on the trail. See later entries. At Henniger Flats we got a short tour of the now closed museum by the helpful young ranger. She admired my Panama hat since she is from Ecuador like the hat.
At about 8am I left the Flats and headed up the toll road for another hour to the point where it looked like I was close to Mount Wilson.
Tower view point
I could have made it to the top and back if I had had enough time. It was a smoggy still day.
You can just see Downtown LA
In January of 2006 and again in March 2007 I sent an email to Mike Antonovich asking him to repair the Mt Wilson Toll Road.
I received a reply in a few weeks from Shari A. in the County Supervisors office. The reply referred me to Gary T at the City of Pasadena. This week I found that email again and followed up with Gary. This is his answer:
Mr. Burrow:
We are working with the Los Angeles County Fire Department on the
repairs to the City portion and the County portion of the Mt. Wilson
Toll Road. The City is pursuing funding from the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) and the County will be performing the repairs.
At the moment, we are awaiting confirmation from FEMA with regards to
approval to a change in the original scope of work and the schedule.
The County is pursuing approvals from various agencies for environmental
reviews. Due to the dollar magnitude to repair the City’s portion of
the road, seeking FEMA approval prior to the start of work is crucial
because without funding the repairs become a challenge. The tentative
schedule for completion is December 2007.
I appreciate your offer of assistance. Be assured the City and County
are working diligently to restore the public access to this road.
Gary T.
Thank you Gary. The good news is they are working on it. The bad news is they are waiting for FEMA money before they start and the date is entirely unrealistic. But there seems to be a commitment to reopening the road.
If you care about getting the toll road reopened and you live in Pasadena it would be a good idea to contact your City Councilperson. If you live in the county contact Mike Antonovich’s office
I took a few more pictures of the poison oak on the trail up to Henniger Flats. The pictures I took just a few weeks ago were of the bushes in flower. Now they are covered in green berries:
Some of the leaves are starting to turn the characteristic red color:
But most of them still look deceptively green and lovely.
I warned a painter lady out of a patch of poison oak last week. Be careful out there.
Before there were cars people rode horses and they pooped in the street. Cities employed armies of people to clean up the streets. As horses were replaced the street sweepers faded away and as an unintended consequence dog poop became ubiquitous in urban areas. Campaigns to “curb your dog” and laws to make it happen became common. Finally in the 1970’s in most cities it became statute that the owner of a dog pick up the dogs poop. As a libertarian I support this idea, as a pedestrian I welcome it and as a dog owner I try to follow the new rules.
To make it easier to pick up after your dog, areas with lots of dog walking going on started installing dispensers for dog poop bags. Unfortunately they were much easier to install than to keep stocked. I have often railed about this and used the sight of empty dispensers as evidence of the incompetence of government. I argued that by not requiring dog owners to supply their own bags, creating dependency, and then doing a lousy job of supplying them through the government the dog poop problem was made worse.
I was talking to Lillian about this in Eaton Canyon one beautiful morning last week and she told me of a third choice. At the dog park near her home in La Jolla people restock the dispenser with old plastic grocery sacks. This gives the community a three-for-one benefit; recycling, a cleaner park and the pleasure of helping. This kind of organic, dare I say “holistic”, solution to one of life’s little problems delights me. People left to their own devices will often self organize around solutions that benefit their communities. It also reminded me of a weekly maxim from a few months ago: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi.
Yesterday I left some bags in the empty dispenser in Eaton Canyon. Thanks Lillian for showing me this idea.
