Springing Forward

Daylight Savings Time is here, which means its dark again at 6am, just when we were getting used to waking with the sun.

Some of the things happening around our area today:

Over at the Fairplex in Pomona, the second day of the Irish Fair & Music Festival runs from 10am to 6pm . There's authentic traditional Irish music and food (probably overpriced and a little less authentic than the music). General admission is $16, seniors and students are $14, and children under 11 are free.

The festival's website tells us:

2009 Los Angeles County Irish Fair

Celebrating its 7th year, The Irish Fair & Music Festival has become the largest festival of its kind in Southern California. With 9 stages featuring true Irish music from the likes of Gaelic Storm, Skelpin', The Mulligans, Diane the Bard, and many more.

Back again this year, we are featuring the Cripple Creek Cloggers and the McCartan School of Dance. Also this year, Sheepherding Demonstrations, an Irish Dog Show, the largest Irish Import Street in the west, Leprechaun Village, Pipers and the Celtic Arts Center with fine Irish dinning.

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Over on the Scripps College campus, Michael Deane Lampkin conducts the Claremont Concert Orchestra in a program called "A Russian Concert." Sarah Iker, Scripps '09, will be the piano soloist.

The program consists of works by Russian composers: Khachaturian, Masquerade Suite; Prokofiev, March and Scherzo from The Love for Three Oranges; Rachmaninoff, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini; and Shostakovich, Festive Overture in A Major.

The orchestra made of student musicians and is part of the Joint Music Program of Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges.

The concert is in the Garrison Theater and begins at 3pm. Admission is free. Attendees are invited to bring canned goods to donate to the West End Hunger Project: SOVA Center.

Garrison Theater
Scripps College
231 E. 10th Street
Claremont, 91711
(909) 607-3266

Click here for a map.

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If you're hankering for some outdoor activity, you can always head for a hike. The Wilderness Park is close, of course, but there are many other local trails you can try all along the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains.

Not too long ago, when there was a little more snow around, we went up to Mt. Baldy and tromped about near the San Antonio Falls trail. Runoff swelled the falls a bit, so that there was a nice rooster tail fanning out off the lower section.

The walk to the falls is easy, just up a paved road to a vista point. The road doubles back and becomes a fire road that heads on up the hill to the Ski Hut trailhead that eventually takes you to the top of Mt. Baldy. Dan's Hiking Pages has a write up of a July, 2007, hike to the summit. It's about 8.4 fairly strenuous miles with a 3,900-foot elevation gain along the way. If you try this, make sure to take along a good topo map because every year we hear about someone getting lost up there. REI has pretty good maps and books showing the the trails.

When we went up recently, we took some snowshoes and hiking sticks and walked up the fire road a mile or two past the falls. It was great day to be out, with the wind occasionally whistling through the canyon and shaking dustings of still fresh snow from the trees.

We took a break for lunch and didn't see many other people, though at one point we were passed by a group of more intrepid hikers fitted out for winter, complete with crampons and ice axes. The combination of crisp, icy air and a thermos of coffee were certainly refreshing after working up a sweat getting up the grade, and the views were well worth the effort.

We went back later in the week when the snow wasn't quite as fresh, but still were able to catch some breathtaking views and snapped some photos of the scenery.

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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.