Good Walking Weather

Last week, before the snow really started to melt from the warmer weather, we took a hike up to Johnson's Pasture. Surprisingly, there weren't many people out, even though it was a sunny, weekend day. Snow still topped Ontario and Cucamonga Peaks, and you could see San Gorgornio way off in the hazy eastern blue distance. If you were in the right spot, you could see an even fainter San Jacinto out a little farther east and south.

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

The trek isn't nearly so hard as some make it out to be, even if you start from the Wilderness Park entrance and hike up Burbank or Cobal Canyon. And, while it's true that most of the trees and other plant life aren't natives, it's still a nice walk, and you can even pack some bread and cheese for a picnic. The hills are just starting to green up and ought to look great come spring if we get a decent rainfall these next couple months.



We didn't see much in the way of wildlife. Sometimes you might see deer grazing on the grass in the eucalyptus stand, but we were probably out too late in the day for that. About the wildest life we saw were mountain bikers. Most of them were pretty considerate, but, out of about 20, there were two or three who seemed to be riding way too fast on the downslopes to be sharing the trail with people afoot.

And there was plenty of evidence of bikers going off trail, cutting their own paths straight down hillsides:


It doesn't look too bad at first, but after a full rainy season, those single-track trails start to get pretty eroded. It's a shame the few bikers who choose not to stick to the marked trails don't see just how much damage they can cause.

Those eroded trails can turn into some pretty ugly scars and never grow back right. The city doesn't really have the manpower to patrol or restore the single tracks, so the cuts just assume on a permanent presence, and more and more appear as bikers look for other hills to try. It's a kind of damage that few notice and fewer still want to take ownership of.

But complaints about a few inconsiderate bikers aside, the hiking was still nice: close, not too difficult, and full of great vistas. You could even see downtown Los Angeles way off to west of the Pasture, jutting up along the horizon like a clunky bar graph, just a little too far off and faint for my meager old camera to capture properly. You'll just have to take my word for it and use your imagination.