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Baldy Peaks 50Km                                                Angeles National Forest                                          Southern  California                                            August 10, 2002                                                  by Linda Hurd

To My Friends and Family:   I looked forward to Baldy Peaks 50km all summer.  It is so much fun to visit a place with hills, and one with mountains is even better.  Baldy Peaks was originally intended to be a litmus test for the climbing and descending I would have later at RioDel Lago100 in September.  A second reason I looked forward to this race is that  the Transverse Range was one of two remaining geological regions of California that I had not yet visited on foot.  After Baldy Peaks race, I returned to San Diego to visit with a friend who I use to work with  in the Houston-area where I now live.. My last visit to the Los Angeles area had been in the mid-1980's when a group of my friends and I drove south from Sacramento to the Redondo Beach area.

Photo 1: The day before the race I flew into San Diego airport.  Driving north towards Los Angeles suburbs  on Interstate 15 looking towards Angeles National Forest , I saw suspicious peaks poking up through the smog-fog layer in the background... Could one of these be Mt Baldy I wondered?  I drove  a short segment on I-10, the same I-10 that runs through Houston !

Photo 2: The view of these peaks  improved as I turned on  to Mt Baldy Road just north of Claremont.

Friday evening I had reservations at the historic Mt Baldy Lodge in Baldy Village, about 1 mile from where the race would start the next morning.   While there was still sunlight, I drove up to Ice House Canyon parking lot to see where the race would start and to purchase a Day Adventure Pass .

Photo 3:   My cabin at Mt. Baldy Lodge.

Concerned about a potential shortage of parking at Ice House Canyon, I left the lodge at 5am Saturday morning to drive to the race start. It was dark.  I spent some time talking to Joe Dana,  the person whose car was parked next to mine. He had driven to Los Angeles  from Arizona on Thursday, and had spent part of Friday exploring parts of the course. This was also his first time to do Baldy Peaks 50km. I  met Doug Spencer before the race started.  Doug is a good friend of one of my running friends in Houston , and he  will be my pacer next month at RioDel Lago100. I did not take any photos before the start of the race because there was not adequate daylight for the disposable camera I was using. At 5:30am the "packet pick-up " table opened.  After a briefing from Mr. Trail Safety during  which runners were told that Baldy Peaks is a "Tough Love Ultra" ,  the race started  prompty at 6am.  Ice House Canyon sits at about 5000 ft, and the first mile or so of the course was downhill on an asphalt road to Baldy Village at 4200 ft.  At this point we entered a single track trail and began the first ascent to Mt Baldy Summit (at 10,064 ft).

Baldy Peaks 50k is 32.14 miles in length.  The course consists of climbing  up to Mt. Baldy Summit twice  and then climbing Mt Thunder once, entailing a total of ~10,200 feet of ascending and 10,200 ft of descending ( A Course Map.).  I started taking photos about a mile after the first aid station (Bear Flats).  BearFlats aidstation was a water-only aid station.. the volunteers had to hike all of the water into that aidstation.

Photo 4: This photo was taken after the first aid station (Bear Flats), during the first ascent up to Mt Baldy.

Photo 5: This photo was taken looking back towards the canyon that we had  been climbing out of.

Photo 6: We had made more progress in the ascent, and were now at a higher elevation (but not yet to Mt Baldy).  This photo was taken looking back , and the valley in the background is Los Angeles and its suburbs. Based on what I remember from my California Geology class at Sierra College in 1987,  the San Gabriels are part of the Transverse Range: the only east-west mountain range in Califorina. The Transverse Range exists because of the  E-W bend in the San Andreas Fault . This range  is sometimes called the "Rootless Mountain" range and is not very stable.  Its  geology is borrowed from the surrounding regions: the Coastal Range, the Sierra Nevada (my favorite), Great Valley, Mojave Desert and Penninsula Range.  Now that I have visited the Transverse Range on foot, the only remaining geological region in California I have not explored is the Sulton Trough, which  contains the Anzu-Borega Desert.

Photo 7: A photo of the Runners behind me (lower left corner) ... the terrain is beginning to change, there are  fewer trees and bushes.  This is one of my favorite photos from the race. With scenery like this, what is there not to like about this sport?

Photo 8: Some sections of the course were very rocky. Many times throughout the race, I was happy I chose to wear my Montrail Vitesse trail shoes. (nfi).

Photo 9:  Another nice view  which demonstrates we have climbed higher in elevation, but have not yet reached the summit of MT Baldy. (..note the "white-stripe" feature along the ridge in background, this is the same feature that is visble in photo 4.. maybe it is a road? not sure.)

Photo 11  : Traversing through the "Land of the Giant Pine Cones" was interesting.  I had taken a Forest Science class in the mid-80's, and based on my sketchy memory of this class I think these pine trees might be  Jeffrey pines given the size of the cones.. I also saw some manzanita bushes, one of my favorite plants in northern California. The manzanitas here seemed only to grown in certain sections/elevations.  Perhaps the soil conditions are a factor in this area.

Photo  10: The ground plants are becoming more sparse. One wonders how trees can survive here. I thought a lot about the plants in this section.  There were some interesting scents and aromas from the plants (various types of sagebrush?)  in the lower portion of the climb.. including one plant  with a  very bitter pungent smell.

Photo  12-14:   This series of photos were taken in the last mile of the first ascent to Mt Baldy summit.  The trail surface was fairly smooth in this section, and was runnable. The middle photo (#11) shows the sudden drop-off along both sides of trail;  this was also the case for  a section of trail used to descend Mt Baldy..   The runner that I am approaching  was one of the runners that would play leapfrog with me throughout the race. I would pass him on the ascents and he would pass me on the descents.

Photos 15-16: Photos taken of me on Mt. Baldy summit after the first ascent.  I reached the summit the first time in 2:52.  The elevation of Mt. Baldy is 10,064 feet.   A "surprise" water-only aidstation was on the summit, and I had both water bottles topped-off.

The first 1 mile of the descent from Mt Baldy summit was my least favorite part of the course..... the initial descent was hairy and  nerve wracking  because of the footing and the steepness.  It was not  a place to stumble and fall down.    We used this trail on the backside of Mt. Baldy both times to descend from the summit down to Notch aid-station. My main goal was to treat Baldy Peaks 50k as a training run and to  stay healthy for RDL-100 in September. Because of a problem I had had with my left leg-knee in mid-July, I was very cautious and slow on the downhill sections of the course in an effort to protect the leg-knee. . Fortunately the leg never gave me any problems during Baldy Peaks.

Go to  Page 2 of Baldy Peaks Photos