Last weekend (February 5 to be precise), six of us scampered up the mostly off-trail Sugarloaf Ridge route to the summit of Ontario Peak in the San Gabriels. The route involves hiking for about 15 minutes up the popular Icehouse Canyon Trail, stepping off trail and scrambling up Falling Rock Canyon for an hour or so, swimming up the scree slope to Sugarloaf Saddle, negotiating Sugarloaf Ridge for a couple hours, and finally intersecting the beaten path for a few minutes to the craggy top. If I recall correctly, it took about 6.5 hours, including a descent of the friendly, albeit icy, trail.
Patrick swimming up the scree slope to Sugarloaf Saddle.
Not much snow in early February on the north side of Ontario Peak.
Tracie and Norma near the top of Sugarloaf Ridge with a snow-free Baldy Bowl in the background. This is February?
The gang (Norma, Tracie, Phil, Patrick, and Dave) on the trail back to Icehouse Saddle.
On June 4, Ty Sutherland, Lee Tintary, and I groveled up a trail-less ridge on Ontario Peak that I call Falling Fir Ridge. We left Icehouse Canyon parking lot before 6AM and plopped down on top of Peak 8688 at around 10:30AM. The route involves some loose class 2-3 at the bottom to gain the ridge and another spot of class 3 midway up. I was surprised by how little snow was left on this north-facing terrain.
On January 22, Patrick Moran and I climbed an obscure canyon on the northwest side of Ontario Peak to the summit. The unnamed canyon is between Cherry Canyon and Kerkhoff Canyon. I call it “Ollestad Canyon” to honor the sole survivor of a 1979 plane crash that occurred in its upper reaches.
At 5:15 AM, we left my car half a mile above Baldy Village and began negotiating the rather unpleasant, trail-less approach to the canyon by headlamp.
A memorable part of the approach.
Entering the canyon about two hours later, I was astonished to see how much less snow there was compared to last spring. Continuous snow coverage didn’t begin until the central rock buttress at around 6700 feet.
Mostly dry below the central buttress.
It begins . . .
At the bottom of an avalanche tongue (seen above) to the right of the central buttress, we donned helmets, crampons, and ice axes, and got quite chilly in the process. From there, we ascended roughly 2000 vertical feet of 35-45 degree consolidated snow, staying in the shade the whole time. We were constantly panning around for plane debris, but saw none.
In the thick of things.
At 11:00 AM, two tired climbers were relieved to set foot on the summit. We had ascended almost 4500 vertical feet (including ups and downs at the bottom) in under six hours.
Goode Canyon leading to West Baldy on the left. San Antonio Canyon leading to Baldy Bowl and Mt. Baldy on the right.
The South Couloir on Telegraph Peak.
In order to keep things exciting, we decided to descend a canyon neither of us had done in its entirety: Falling Rock Canyon. It took 3.5 hours to descend, with only two short breaks. The hard and icy snow in the canyon, which lasted until around 7000 feet, necessitated crampons. At around 6800 feet, we encountered an impressive waterfall that was skirted with some difficulty on the canyon’s west side. The ground on this detour was extremely loose, requiring one of us to wait while the other descended. At around 6300 feet, we encountered another waterfall that was easily circumvented on the west side. This waterfall is at the bottom of the scree slope that leads up to the Saddle between Sugarloaf Peak and Ontario Peak. The lower section of Falling Rock Canyon was completely snow-free and, as always, tedious. A third waterfall near the bottom of the canyon was skirted on the east side.
Patrick enthusiastic about (1) successfully circumventing the precipice, and (2) discovering this awesome waterfall (which is the upper waterfall).
The middle waterfall below Sugarloaf Saddle.
We saw nobody all day until we merged with the Icehouse Canyon Trail for the final half mile to Patrick’s car. Then we saw a lot of people. The usual battle to stay awake on the drive home was more gruesome than usual, because of doctor’s orders to avoid caffeine.
For my previous trip reports on Ollestad Canyon, see here and here.
On October 9, I climbed my first mountain in over four months (thanks primarily to injuring my back and being distracted with music). It was great to get back to the Cucamonga Wilderness, especially with some early season snow on the ground.
Snow on the north side of Ontario Peak
Patrick Moran and I opted for an obscure ridge on Ontario Peak -- namely, Falling Fir Ridge (which I have written about here and here). The ridge rises over 3,000 vertical feet between Fir Draw and Falling Rock Canyon, and involves some loose class 3 scrambling. We hiked into the aptly named Icehouse Canyon at around 6:30 AM and were on the summit of Peak 8688 (a subsidiary peak of Ontario Peak) before 10:00. We then enjoyed a leisurely stroll down the trail.
Patrick on Falling Fir Ridge, with Sugarloaf Peak in the background. Note the shady character in the foreground.
Patrick on the summit of Peak 8688 with Baldy Bowl in the background. Patrick's fancy digital camera is somewhere near the bottom of the bowl.
Me on the summit of Peak 8688, with the true summit of Ontario Peak in the background. Patrick took this photo on my camera, because his camera is somewhere near the bottom of Baldy Bowl.
After climbing the right branch of "Ollestad Canyon" on Ontario Peak last week, Norman Ollestad remarked that the plane crashed in the left branch. This revelation, coupled with fantastic local snow conditions, compelled three of us to head up again five days later.
The Ollestad Memorial Route on Ontario Peak. Photo by Miguel Forjan (March 5, 2010).
If the buckthorn that complicates access to Ollestad Canyon had eyes, it would have seen three headlamps approaching in the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday, March 17. Those headlamps were strapped snugly around the heads of Dave Gillanders, Norma Ryan, and Sam Page (that's me). Inside two of those heads swirled memories of battling the buckthorn five days prior, along with the secret knowledge, won by trial and error, of how to avoid most of it.
After about two hours on loose scree (which involved ascending, traversing, descending, and more ascending) and a manageable amount of thrashing through brush, we plopped down for a rest. At this point, roughly 5800 feet, the slick, hard snow was unavoidable, so donning crampons seemed sensible.
While Norma and I were fiddling with our crampons, Dave unexpectedly announced, "I'm bailing." Dave had injured his calf on our climb two weeks ago, strained it further on our climb last week, couldn't resist coming on this climb, and was consequently suffering. After a prolonged silence, during which time I quietly contemplated how this news would impact my immediate future, a discussion ensued about the logistics of Dave's solo descent. The main points of discussion were loose scree (especially the descending, traversing, ascending, and descending thereof), Dave's civilian shoes and clothing (which were in Norma's car a mile east of the trailhead), and Dave's car (which was parked miles west of the trailhead). I offered Dave the key to my car, which was parked at the trailhead (though it's not really a trailhead, because there is no trail). Dave paused for a few moments and looked pensive. Then he exclaimed, "Fu(;k it", and all was well with the world again.
Were it not for Dave screaming words that rhyme with "shuck" and "fit" every fifteen minutes for the rest of the day, I would have blithely forgotten about his calf injury. Even so, it was easy to forget about Dave's persistent agony, because immediately after each profanity-laced outburst, he apologized so profusely that it felt as if we, not him, were the ones suffering. But enough about Dave's young cow . . .
With crampons under foot, we climbed hard, icy, 30-40 degree snow for about 800 vertical feet to the base of the central buttress that divides the left and right branches of Ollestad Canyon. During this stretch, my left crampon repeatedly loosened, especially when it was on the downhill foot. I stopped three times to tighten and re-adjust the crampon to no avail and began worrying about how it would fare on the anticipated 50 degree terrain above.
From the central buttress, we ascended the wide couloir on the left for another 800 vertical feet of hard, icy, 40 degree snow.
During this stretch, my heart raced as I panned around for signs of the plane crash, thinking it was nearby. About halfway up, a rock outcropping on the right caught my eye. It seemed to resemble aerial footage I had seen of the crash site. In a fit of enthusiasm, I began literally running up the slope, until it occurred to me that such shenanigans could themselves produce an accident. Gazing at snowy crags and gnarled trees, I imagined the young, battered Norman Ollestad picking his way down this very slope, with the pilot and his father dead above, and Sandra somewhere below after she slipped and plummeted out of sight. But alas, I could see no signs of the plane crash, and the reality of the long, icy slope reasserted itself.
Video of the left branch of "Ollestad Canyon".
At its top, the wide couloir narrowed into a finger of snow which extended 1000 vertical feet to lower-angled ground below the summit. The climbing in this long, final chute was the most exhilarating of the day. The chute became progressively narrower and icier, and eventually steepened to around 50 degrees. In the steepest, iciest section, I was no longer able to side-step and was forced to front-point. Here my aluminum crampons exhibited another disconcerting weakness: they tended to slide out from under me when I front-pointed. Norma had her own difficulties in this section, as she was unable to plunge the shaft of her ice axe through the ice for secure self-belays. An unarrested fall in this section could have led to a slide of over 2600 vertical feet.
Norma in the crux section.
Exiting from the shadows of the chute, we were struck by the hot rays of the sun, which made for a slow, sweaty plod to the summit.
After lounging around on top for close to an hour, during which time Norma had a rum and Coke (it was St. Patrick's Day after all), we began a series of glissades all the way down to Icehouse Canyon. I was pleased to descend the 500 vertical feet from Sugarloaf Saddle to Falling Rock Canyon in one continuous slide that took no more than 30 seconds. The bottom few hundred feet of Falling Rock Canyon had melted out considerably in the last five days, including several stretches of hazardous undermined snow.
All in all, we ascended about 4400 vertical feet, including 3000 vertical feet of continuous snow climbing. The ascent took 6 hours and the descent 2.5 hours. Now, compare all that with Baldy Bowl. Climbing Baldy Bowl entails under 4000 vertical feet of elevation gain, with only about 1800 vertical feet of continuous snow climbing from the ski hut. That said, whereas our route on Ontario Peak is bounded by trees, Baldy Bowl is mostly devoid of trees, which lends it more of an alpine, big mountain feel. And, of course, Baldy Bowl has something else going for it: a friendly road and trail leads from the parking lot to its base. But for those of us who prefer to get off the beaten path, opportunities still abound.
The Ollestad Memorial Route (yellow) shown on a GoogleEarth image.
Since reading Crazy for the Storm this past fall, I have wanted to climb the drainage on Ontario Peak that I think was the site of the storied plane crash. After surviving the crash, Norman Ollestad was forced to make a harrowing descent of the steep, icy drainage down which the only other survivor plummeted 2000 feet to her death. A recent photo of the snow-filled drainage rekindled my enthusiasm for the climb.
Our route on Ontario Peak. Photo by Miguel Forjan (March 5, 2010).
Ontario Peak (8693 feet) is located in the San Gabriel Mountains of southern California, not far from the popular Mt. San Antonio (a.k.a. Mt. Baldy). The drainage I am talking about extends for over 3000 vertical feet on the northwest side of Ontario Peak between Cherry Canyon and Kerkhoff Canyon. I have never seen this drainage named on any map, so I'll tentatively call it Ollestad Canyon. To complicate matters further, a large rock buttress divides the canyon into two main branches that I will (again, tentatively) call the left and right branches of Ollestad Canyon.
The fact that I could find no information about climbing Ollestad Canyon made it more appealing. Another interesting fact is that access to the bottom of the canyon is blocked by private property and dense brush. I overcame the private property obstacle by asking for and receiving permission from the owners to cross their property. The owner's remarks about practically impenetrable buckthorn did not discourage me. I would just have to see that for myself. Patrick Moran was similarly intrigued, as was Dave Gillanders, who could not pass up the opportunity even though he was nursing an injury sustained on our last outing.
So it was that at 4:15AM this past Friday (March 12), I was driving toward the San Gabriel Mountains on roads I have come to know so well. After missing an exit and spending about ten minutes backtracking, I continued on my way asking introspective questions like, "Why am I such an idiot?"
At around 6:00AM, the three of us set off from a parking lot near Chapman Ranch. Within one minute we were in dense brush and retracing our steps. It was a small taste of what was to come. In order to preserve the pioneering spirit and adventurous froth of uncertainty involved in the approach to Ollestad Canyon, I will provide no specific details. But I will offer this photo of the approach, which should provide a vivid sense of what can be expected:
The approach to Ollestad Canyon.
After an approach of about two hours – an approach which entailed optimistically following game trails to dead-ends in thick brush, turning around, yelling "how is it over there?", scrambling up crumbly rock while thrashing through branches, cursing, turning around again, yelling "how does it look?", bloodletting in the buckthorn, slipping suddenly on slick roots and falling violently onto the same, cursing more loudly and creatively, yelling "hey, where are you guys?", flopping sideways on loose talus and sliding painfully downhill – we arrived at the bottom of Ollestad Canyon.
A jubilant Patrick after the worst of the bushwacking.
After a few hundred vertical feet of scree, we found ourselves on deep, consolidated snow. For the next 1200 vertical feet, we climbed 35-40 degree snow to the toe of the buttress dividing the left and right branches. Just below the rocks we swapped trekking poles for ice axes and strapped on crampons. A reminder to don helmets came in the form of a softball-sized rock that whizzed by Patrick at around 100 mph.
Looking up at the central buttress. We went right.
While Dave and Patrick started up the right branch, which had been polished to a glassy sheen by an avalanche, I struggled with an annoying problem. One of the fingers of insulation in my glove had become inside out. Consequently, I could not get my glove on. For ten increasingly irritating minutes, I tried to force the hidden finger of insulation back into position, but couldn't. Desperate, I pulled the entire insulation liner out to have a look. Quickly realizing that this wouldn't help, I began stuffing the mass back into the outer shell of the glove. Of course, now I couldn't get any of the fingers of insulation back into their respective slots. A brief but vigorous temper tantrum ensued in which gloves were hurled at the ground and curses were shouted. Recalling that I had packed extra gloves, I regained composure and began catching up to Dave and Patrick.
The avalanche path just right of the central buttress.
From the bottom of the buttress, we climbed unconsolidated, 40-45 degree snow for about 800 vertical feet until the right branch forked into two chutes.
While Patrick veered left, Dave and I climbed the narrow chute on the right which was bound intermittently by rock walls. We climbed that chute, which steepened to around 50 degrees, for about 1000 vertical feet to the ridge crest.
The beginning of the final chute.
Dave on the final chute.
Dave topping out on the final chute.
The ridge crest was then followed for nearly half a mile to the summit of Ontario Peak. It took us seven hours to reach the summit from the parking lot. Patrick, who had taken a more direct line, had been waiting on the summit for an hour.
Patrick on the summit.
From the summit we descended the Sugarloaf Ridge route, availing ourselves of the many glissading opportunities. The snow was in perfect condition all the way down to the bottom of Falling Rock Canyon. Our descent took two hours. With the exception of a desperate and humiliating pee in the parking lot of a random condominium complex off of route 5, my drive home was uneventful.
Ollestad Canyon must be one of the best snow climbs in the San Gabriel Mountains. The climb involves over 3000 vertical feet of continuous snow climbing at a steadily increasing angle from 35 to 50 degrees. After adding in the approach and ridge traverse, the total elevation gain from car to summit is about 4500 vertical feet. And though the approach to the canyon is relatively challenging, it has the merit of ensuring solitude.
Still reading Crazy for the Storm, primarily about a plane crash on Ontario Peak, I couldn't resist the urge to get back on that mountain for the second time in a week. But which route should I take? I wasn't about to go groveling in Falling Rock Canyon again, and the standard trail was not even worth considering. So I turned my head slightly to the left of Falling Rock Canyon and found an unnamed ridge for which no information was available on the internet. Satellite imagery indicated some precipitous sections that looked questionable. It was perfect.
Arriving at the Icehouse Canyon parking lot before dawn, I noticed that something didn't look right high up on Mt. Baldy. After a regrettable experience in the dark public restroom, I focused more closely on Mt. Baldy and came to the conclusion that the upper slopes were covered in the first snow of the season. Hmmm. Would Ontario Peak be covered in snow? I looked at my sneakers.
At about 6:00 AM, I started hiking up Icehouse Canyon. I turned right into Fir Draw, which I followed for only about 100 yards before turning right and ascending a scree slope to gain the steep, sharp ridgeline. I then followed the ridgeline straight up to Peak 8688, just east of the main summit of Ontario Peak. I summitted at 9:00 AM after roughly 3,700 feet of elevation gain. By 11:15 AM, I was comfortably seated in the public restroom back at the parking lot.
Looking down at the lower third of the ridge.
Looking up at the middle third of the ridge.
Looking down at the crux of the ridge (about halfway up).
Mt. Baldy viewed from the upper section of the ridge.
Wasteland below the summit of Ontario Peak.
View from the summit of Peak 8688.
This ridge is excellent. I think it is better than Sugarloaf Ridge and possibly even Register Ridge. The crux of the route is the 3rd class, 20-foot, narrow gully pictured above, which is surmounted by repeated stemming on mostly secure rock. There is also some rock scrambling lower on the ridge which probably rises to 3rd class as well.
A ridge this good needs a name. Two names that immediately came to mind were "The Sam Page Victory Ridge" and the "Sam Page Conquered This Ridge". However, upon reflection, I came to the opinion that these names are rather imperialistic, and perhaps even a bit self-aggrandizing. You are of course entitled to your own opinion. Regardless, I have tentatively settled on the name of "Falling Fir Ridge" for the following reasons. First, the ridge is in between Falling Rock Canyon and Fir Draw. Second, as depicted in the image above, there are many fallen trees at the top of the ridge. The name would be perfect were the fallen trees fir trees, but Wifey PhD thinks that they are pine trees, which she insists are not fir trees. Well, as Steven Wright says: "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"
