Part 73: Life on Angeles Crest Highway – Natural Power and Unprepared Human Psychology

Published January 29, 2024

Photo of the abandoned ski lift operation on Kratka Ridge in the Angeles National Forest on a clear day by author (GoPro Hero 11 Black).

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

Starting today January 29 through February 9, those traversing the Angeles National Forest from the Los Angeles Basin to the High Desert communities using the usual Angeles Crest Highway to Angeles Forest Highway will need to take an alternate route between 9:00 am – 2:00 pm between Clear Creek Junction and Big Tujunga Canyon Road. So if you’re trying to go to Palmdale, you’ll want to go from Sunland and not La Cañada Flintridge, which is the main commuter route through the rugged San Gabriel Mountains that form the backdrop to the urban cityscape.

For the most part, people in the city don’t go into the forest, it’s incredibly lightly traveled these days at upper elevation along the stretch from Shortcut Saddle to Islip Saddle accessed using Upper Big Tujunga Canyon Road from the Angeles Forest Highway. This winter especially the snowfall has been especially light. Now solo, I traveled up using the detour route to avoid the closed section between Red Box and Shortcut Saddle earlier this month after the first winter storm that we’ve had pass through that left significant snowfall at upper elevations.

This source of water is greatly underappreciated, as is its role in sustaining the ecosystem. After the first storm this month, I went up the Angeles Crest Highway to Mount Waterman and hiked in my uninsulated hiking boots to the summit past the ski operation that never seems to open because there’s only so rarely enough snow without the ability to make it. For those who travel the high country, there’s one thing we know about snowfall, it’s that after the snow begins to melt, the rocks come down onto the roadway over the course of the day and re-accumulate after Caltrans plows them aside the morning.

I was surprised at how few people had come up for what was perhaps the best snow play day of the year, and as I followed the tracks ahead of me, they became fewer and fewer, and my boots became slogged and my socks too, and so that day I was the Mr. Unprepared, that Los Angeles Times journalist Lila Seidman recently wrote about in “Hiking Mt. Baldy is a SoCal rite of passage — but can it be done safely in the snow?” before the Times laid her off along with more than 100 others at the troubled publication. Climbing the dangerous Devil’s Backbone she had encountered the man in only tennis shoes: “’It was so scary,’ Unprepared told me. ‘I was literally crawling.’”

For a moment I had gone off-trail and up to where the lifts on Mount Waterman stop above the much smaller bowl of the mountain, and I could see ice formed along the ledge with a perilous drop below. You don’t need a helmet, crampons and ice axe, and I didn’t even have poles, and so I carefully worked my way back to the main track after realizing my navigational error in the powdery snowscape. I reached the summit and the cold wind whipped in temperatures well below freezing forcing the off the batteries in my GoPro and iPhone. After a brief break in the rocky, forested top of Waterman, I slowly made my way back down past the closed ski operation.

The following weekend I went back up to the High Country, with much less snow, the Winter Wonderland of the weekend before was gone and in its place were more rocks in the road and more melty patches. When meltwater runs off from melting ice on the road and slopes, and as the temperatures drop from daytime to darkness, it can form dangerous patches of black ice along the pavement and particularly the shoulders. I hiked from Islip Saddle to Little Jimmy Springs and back down using the campground roadway and the closed section of ACH to return to the trailhead a the proverbial end of the road.

Coming down the mountain, I first spotted the cars stopped just after Charlton Flats and then the green Ford Mustang off the road and into the bushes and a tree. Passing that and continuing, I would eventually come to near the start of the lower section of Angeles Crest short of Mount Lukens Fire Station to another of the many vehicle accidents that happen. A silver Mazda CX-5 trying to dodge a single large rock approaching a blind turn had swerved, colliding with the interior rock face and flipping over as it skidded down the road. Thankfully no one was injured, and the center console still could receive phone calls even smashed.

We started to clear the car debris, the Los Angeles County Fire and Sheriff’s Departments hadn’t yet arrived, so I left my high beams and blinkers on as I attempted to coordinate people to block traffic in both directions and remove the aforementioned rock and car debris. Doing so drained my battery, so after identifying the rock that had caused the crash. My car wouldn’t start, but thankfully I had jumper cables and a silver Mazda Miata was on hand to give me a jump from his trunk where the rear engine is located. We missed the Sheriff’s Department waving us through before Fire had to do their turnaround to get back down the mountain and on to other emergency business.

The most dangerous part of Angeles Crest Highway by far is the beginning section because it has the greatest vehicle and pedestrian traffic, along with a number of blind curves. This is the section of the “Racetrack” as many call it that I always take the slowest even as I watch whizzing motorcyclists dangerously leaning over the double yellow lines coming around the curves. Plus a reminder to slower traffic to please use the ample turnouts to allow faster traffic behind you to proceed and remove your trash so the Takataka Club doesn’t have to, and to safely document and report illegal dumping to LASD.

I’ve confirmed with Caltrans that at present there are no adoptable sections on Angeles Crest Highway, and if anyone knows anything about “Barnes and Co.” which along with the Takataka Club founded by Valerie Botta and Dion Noravian are the only stakeholders in this program along our grandest highway through the San Gabriel Mountains. Beyond Noravian’s stretch including Newcomb’s and the approach to Mount Waterman the area into the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, there is no stakeholder. So I found myself on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the Eagles Roost Picnic Area picking up rubbish after dark, including numerous sock tags from the parking area and Modelo bottles into the trees.

Yesterday I went up the High Country and as I drove past the Buckhorn Picnic Area along Mount Waterman in the middle of the afternoon, I slowed, and a full grown coyote waltzed across the Angeles Crest Highway in my path stopping only to give me a quick look like it owned the place before continuing along to the sight of a crow feasting upon a smashed squirrel. The High Country certainly features more wildlife and the starkness between the live coyote and the dead squirrel was moderately disconcerting. Continuing to Kratka Ridge for the first time, where many times I’ve driven past the caretakers house, I was sadly unsurprised and perhaps even unprepared for the litter that I encountered.

Kratka Ridge snow play area trash, I’ll be back for you soon, if someone else doesn’t beat me to it first! At sunset, I made a new friend who had come up and simply looked at the Google Map believing that he would be able to drive down Highway 39 through San Gabriel Canyon out of the city. From everything I’ve seen on both planning in regards to this idea to restore the washed out Highway along the flank of Mount Islip, I’m firmly against it. The slope is too unsecured dropping steeply into Bear Creek among the most difficult to access portions of the forest. The quietude of Jarvi Memorial sunset would be diminished, and it would only lead to more motor vehicle accidents.

As to the landslide that’s closed the lower section, that area too is problematic, as I’ve described the current highway is prone to dangerous rockfall. The sound of erosion is different from that of wind driven rockfall, it sounds like rain instead of the thuds that you can hear at Jarvi on a windy night coming off Mount Williamson. Could it be tunneled through? Unlikely, doing so would only likely cause further destabilization in addition to having an even greater cost, so the best bet is for Caltrans to keep doing what they’re doing, but even if they were to open it, the cost of keeping it open would still be similar.

Every tunnel needs an entrance, and if that area is unsecured, the tunnel becomes useless. To see this effect in the forest perhaps the best example is the Mueller Tunnel accessible along Mount Lowe Roadway and now usable only as a hiking path, at both ends the roadbed as washed away over time leaving it nearly impassable for vehicles beyond the gate. Additionally, in even longer subterranean tunnels like that proposed for the bullet train somewhere in the Western Part of the Forest, I’ve heard through Tujunga the issues of water and fire remain, along with the problem of how you evacuate people.

Rescue operations in the Angeles National Forest can be exceedingly dangerous to conduct, our local Search and Rescue Teams, which operate under the Sheriff’s Department are highly trained but they won’t always find you. Especially if no one reports you missing!

As national news coverage recently highlighted along Mount Baldy Road, once you’re over the side, the only people really looking for you are hikers. Four nights and five days she spent over the side, a miraculous survival, but one that could have been fully avoided, and Baldy is far less remote than the High Country of the Angeles Crest.

I’m saddened to report that we have one missing person in the Angeles National Forest. Last seen on January 5 at 4:49 pm, Zachary Crehan, aged 35, standing 5 foot and 9 inches at 190 lbs with brown hair and blue eyes is missing “near a Mount Wilson hiking trail and there is concern for his well-being.” Those with tips are encouraged to contact the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau or you can dial 1-800-222-8477 to remain anonymous. Crehan is pictured wearing black rim glasses. This weekend the Montrose Search and Rescue Team continued searching with the assistance of the Special Enforcement Bureau Rescue 5 helicopter in the Mount Lowe Area.

On Sunday, I had passed them on my way around to use the detour route, let us hope that Crehan is somehow well and that if not his body is recovered for his family. The big bird had landed at the Pines Picnic Area, the entrance was blocked off, my head turn and I focused back to the roadway hitting the gas pedal sparingly as my White Honda Civic EX worked its way up high into the mountains. I met a nice couple at Charlton Flats, pointed out the tucked away Stony Ridge Observatory behind them as a nice add-on to Vetter Mountain, and greeted the man and woman changing their tire at Kratka Ridge after I finished my hike.

The man had been able to change the flat on his own, my help was not needed, I still greeted them kindly. If the culture of the mountains offers one thing, it’s both solitude, and stories yes, but also human kindness. Finally, last but not least, no street vending along Angeles Crest Highway, at least without a permit according to Caltrans, which I believe costs $400 and is categorized as an “encroachment permit to allow vending” that can be issued to “cities and counties” but not to nonprofits, and only in “connection with special events” within their jurisdiction, meaning maybe, Los Angeles County? The permits can also be granted to “community-based nonprofit corporations” with such sponsorship.

So not quite a “hard no” on getting a taco truck up there sometime, but clearly I’m going to have work the County Supervisors, and come up with some big plans otherwise it’s dead on arrival. I’m not encouraging anyone to go reengage on that front, but if you’re wondering why you don’t see such activity happening, that’s the reason, and Angeles National Forest similarly prohibits such activities within their paved spaces at trailheads. So if you’re planning to traverse our mountains, reminder that it’s highly suggested to have a full gasoline tank, food/water, extra warmth and a GPS communication device like the popular Garmin Mini inReach for example, might just save your life.

No one wants bad things to happen in the San Gabriels. The danger of the Racetrack is part of the aura, that Sunday Funday magic when everyone comes out with their squads and pulls up to the turnout, and maybe some even do donuts, both loved and scorned, and similarly illegal. Not all the condemnation in the world could stop it even as the highway is patrolled. The clash between rules and regulations, and the desire of some many to break free from the constraints of our urban conquest; the power of civilization, meeting clearly with the forces of nature.

Coming down last night out of the High Country, I stopped to look at the rising moon, having not seen another vehicle in hours, while looking at the stars through the clouds. Two vehicles passed me, working their way steadily into the night for what might be the most magical night drive in all of California. The lights of the Los Angeles Basin shining below, and after my usual time at Georges Gap in the top corner of the parking area, I worked my way slowly down the curves into so-called civilization.

Link: Hiking Mt. Baldy is a SoCal rite of passage — but can it be done safely in the snow?

Link: Man who went missing near Mount Wilson trail was not an avid hiker, brother says

Link: Mount Waterman Ski Lifts

Link: Landmark 717 Webpage

Link: Taktaka Club Instagram

Link: Angeles Crest Highway Facebook

Link: Caltrans Adopt-A-Highway Program

Link: Angeles National Forest

Please support my work with your subscription or for direct aid use Venmo

Zachary Ellison is an Independent Journalist and Whistleblower in the Los Angeles area. Zach was most recently employed by the University of Southern California, Office of the Provost from October 2015 to August 2022 as an Executive Secretary and Administrative Assistant supporting the Vice Provost for Academic Operations and the Vice Provost and Senior Advisor to the Provost among others. Zach holds a Master’s in Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Policy and Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. While a student at USC, he worked for the USC Good Neighbors Campaign including on their newsletter distributed university-wide. Zach completed his B.A. in History at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon and was a writer, editor, and photographer for the Pasadena High School Chronicle. He was Barack Obama’s one-millionth online campaign contributor in 2008. Zach is a former AmeriCorps intern for Hawaii State Parks and worked for the City of Manhattan Beach Parks and Recreation. He is a trained civil process server, and enjoys weekends in the great outdoors.