Mounting Whitney 2: Mounting Liebre's Sunny Hell

Yes, time to kick it up a notch. Echo Mountain was a warmup, a crowded trail that just barely stretched above Altadena. It’s time to Mount Liebre via a trail in the NorthWest of the Angeles Forest, rising to about 5k, yes, with endless views of desert. According to my guidebook it was a nice shady trail, lined with thick trees, yes, very beautiful and scenic.

Goddamn these guidebooks. The problem with such a book is that it provides great reference doesn’t automatically get updated when the hillside is ravaged by fire and the shady trail becomes a scorching windy death march, as happened all the way back in 2005, so we start among the chaparral and brush and burnt trees of the desert and it didn't get much shadier.

But still, go back, before that, yes, when Bec and Andy and I get there and can’t tell which trail to go down. Some old grit sitting in her pickup truck, nice enough, sure, also doesn’t know in spite of her Pacific Crest Trail shirt and her presence with the crews working on the trail above. We’re confused with the terms northbound and southbound but soon we figure out that southbound means the north trail or, in layman’s terms, the ONE TO THE RIGHT. Why these trailbooks refuse to refer to things in standard English I don’t know but I suspect there’s a feeling of superiority inherent in the hearts of such writers. I see a couple hiking it and ask them the same question and the woman says she doesn’t know, she’s just come here all her life but doesn’t know what it’s called. Nobody is helpful, it appears, and I'm feeling truly out of my element.

And before that, while driving down unmarked backcountry roads, the land that time forgot, yes, we didn’t start until a good hour after we’d originally planned.

Anyway we slowly switchback up as the sun burns down on us, Bec and I didn’t bring any sun lotion, checklist stupidity. We begin to see the expanse of the horizon unfurling, to see lakes below us, hills and plateaus and mountains off to the North. 

Partway up a crew of men are working in the blazing sun with hardhats and chainsaws keeping it clear for all of us weekenders. We thank them, I want to be them, throw off the shackles of my job to sweat and cut down trees and enjoy nature away from computers. 

We push on as the trail straightens, up some steps the trailfolk made, into a first thicket of trees and everybody collapses. The dogs lap the water with the thirst of demons, Bronco near-dead and Stevie wide-eyed and little Ceci struggling to get a lick but nervous and jittery. Ceci's a new addition and seemingly does the best here, even if she's smaller than the massive pine cones that line the trail.

Up a bit further we catch regular patches of pine tree shade but those are sparse. Bronco throws up. Steve starts refusing to go out of the shady patches. Eventually Bronco is wobbling, looks horrible, and Bec volunteers to wait with him in some shade as Andy and Stevie and I go for the summit. We break through the trees, into a long strip without any shade that becomes a fire road. Stevie refuses to walk in the sun and I carry him out of the shaded parts, carry him 50 yards at a time. We pass a patch of snow and I pack it around Stevie’s feet, give him some to lick before forcing him the rest of the way.

Finally Andy and I see the couple from the start, say it’s just around the bend. There's occasional shade, mostly just dead trees, Smokey the Bear's nemesis and then a fence and old worn trail signs and a last run down a dirt fire road, getting close, about to peer beyond the edge, into the void, the money shot. Finally. God bless.

We arrive sunburnt, dirty, tired, Andy and me, take some pictures and head down, getting back to the snowpatch just around the time Bec gets there. We let the dogs rest on the snow and I pack some in my Camelback and we take a brief break for waters and Clif bars as Becca pushes forward to see the view by herself. Then a fast descent.

Stevie explodes out of his ass, a foul orange concoction like an epic Quentin Tarantino diarrhea scene.

All the dogs are fighting now, they just want to rest in the shade. We’re 2 hours later than I’d thought we’d be. The trail crew said they hoped the dogs were carrying their own weight but in fact the damn mutts were holding us back. So it goes. 

I let Stevie off leash and he runs up into a thick wooded area and I have to run after him, Stage III shoulder sprain and all. 

By the time we’re back to the car we’re dehydrated, red from sun, our dogs are near death, and we’re out of water. The views were so-so and the nature was all but gone, sacrificed in the 2005 fire. This hike left me disheartened and nearly killed my malamute. Still, at least it was training. And the legs felt strong, like I could’ve gone on forever. We’ll see.