Big Cienega Trail from Crystal Lake

We've done this trail in one direction or another many times. Today we started from Crystal Lake and worked our way up to the ridge toward Mt. Islip.  The last time we came this way, the start of the trail was quite difficult to follow, but newly clipped vegetation points to some recent handiwork by our friends over at the San Gabriel Mountains Trailbuilders.

Once, on the way down the ridge, we happened upon more than a dozen big horn sheep, when of course we had no camera. They were more surprised to see us than we were to see them, and their calm, slow gait erupted into a run. Every time we hike this trail we pause near the same spot in the hopes of seeing them again. Today there's nothing but a last little bit of snow.

The Trailbuilders

Blessed again with some unseasonably warm and sunny weather, we returned to the Windy Gap Trail around Crystal Lake in the Angeles National Forest this weekend.  We came across several volunteers of the San Gabriel Mountains Trailbuilders doing yeoman's work.

These volunteers are the unsung heroes of the local trails: They improve and maintain trails by building bridges and retaining walls, posting signs and mile markers, and keeping the trails cleared of debris. In some cases the debris is a massive dead tree that has fallen across the trail (a "deadfall"), or rocks and boulders that have been shed from the crumbly mountains above. In other cases it's a large and sometimes unfriendly plant that can block a hiker's path. On this day, there were groups removing the deadfalls toward the top of the trail, and groups removing rocks from a slide in the middle of it.

The trails around Crystal Lake have been plagued by deadfalls resulting from the huge Curve Fire in 2002. A tree that burns in a forest fire may leave a dead trunk that remains standing for many years, until it rots to the point of collapse and finally, inexorably, topples over. When a mammoth trunk falls across a trail, a hiker has to choose whether to climb over or under the tree, if possible, or if not, to depart the trail to make a detour around it. Either way, it makes a trail harder and more time-consuming to follow. The Trailbuilders remove each deadfall by tagging it and and eventually returning to dispatch it by chainsaw. The only remaining deadfalls now on the Windy Gap Trail are a few near the very top of the trail.

Rocks are another issue. They fall constantly on the trails as the weather freezes, thaws and deteriorates a mountain throughout the year until parts of it break off and roll on down the canyons. Sometimes the accumulation of rocks simply makes a trail a rough and tricky prospect to cross. But a rock slide can obliterate a trail's retaining walls, or obstruct it so badly a detour can't be made around it.

On our way up the trail, large rocks were being removed by hand from a portion that crossed a retaining wall; on our way back down, the trail had been cleared (see photo below). So many rocks had fallen down the canyon that the retaining wall is barely visible.

Keeping the trails clear and usable might seem like a thankless task, but as hikers, trust us, it's anything but.