Mount San Antonio is the highest point in the Sierra Madre, the big wall of peaks north of the suburbs of eastern Los Angeles County. I grew up in Azusa and later, La Verne, all the while within sight of mighty Mount Baldy, as Mount San Antonio is commonly called. In Azusa we lived within a mile of the foothills, while in La Verne we were a bit farther out, about four miles. Despite the proximity, I never ventured into the range as a kid other than the occasional trip with my folks or with the cub scouts, but we certainly never got close to the summit. The lower slopes are a thick carpet of chaparral, nearly impenetrable, and often very hot, dusty and unattractive. With so much quality television to watch, you can understand why I never explored much in the hills. Much later, as a more mature adult, I got interested in the peak as part of the county highpoints project, Mount San Antonio being the highest point in Los Angeles County. It was ironic that I had been living in Arizona for eight years at this point before I got around to hiking San Antonio. My brother and his wife and their new baby Emma live in Cucamonga, so I planned a trip to hike the peak and to elicit smiles from little Emma, as best I could.

I left Phoenix at 4 p.m. on Friday, July 21st. It was searingly hot, which was no surprise. The drive was uneventful until I passed Palm Springs on Interstate-10, coming up the grade into Cabazon. It was dark at this time, and ahead of me on the highway I could see brake lights and cars swerving in my lane. Some moron was standing in traffic! He stood in my lane, not moving; I was about 300 feet away and closing in fast. I leaned on my horn, and he started to run AWAY from me instead of running orthogonally to the shoulder. Worse yet, he began to run in a zig-zag pattern. I braked but didn't lock up as there was moderate traffic all around me, including a big rig in my immediate right (slightly behind me). Finally, and it happened so fast, he made it to the shoulder just as both I and the trucker began evasive maneuvers, the trucker very nearly hitting my right-rear bumper. I came very close to running into and likely killing that person, it's by dumb luck I didn't. After screaming the F-word to myself at the top of my lungs to come down from my adrenaline high, I called 911 and got the CHP to check out the situation. How the hell did I not kill that guy? To this day I have no idea how he evaded me or the others. I arrived at my brother's place around 10 pm. Little Emma put a smile on my face!

The next morning I got a late start, not arriving to the Mount Baldy Ski Area and town until about 9-ish, and delayed when I discovered I needed an Adventure Pass, which I had to double back into town to get. This is a popular hike and the approach road was already chock full of cars so I was forced to park lower, about 3/10 of a mile from the usual parking lot. The trailhead is at 6,100 feet elevation, meaning a gain of nearly 4,000 vertical feet to gain the summit. And it was already getting warm, so I could tell I was in for a big day.

The first leg of the hike follows a service road to gain the top of the Mount Baldy Ski Area. This road meanders in and out of the various folds of the mountains, very roughly paralleling the actual ski run and the ski-lift, which was not running today. I am told that sometimes they run the ski-lift in summer so people can be "ski-lifted" to the top, where they can roam the highlands for the day. But not today. The walk to the upper ski area took a couple hours and was very tedious and unexciting. I was about at 8,000 feet elevation, roughly half way up. I took a break up here amid the buildings.

From the main ski area I went west along some more access roads and smaller ski lifts until I had left the ski area altogether, now hiking along a fine trail up and over the Devil's Backbone, a stretch of trail along the high ridge with impressive drop-offs and sometimes "skinny" traverses across some sections. In truth, the going here was very safe; one would have to make a real effort to go for a fall. The trail was sketchy in places and barely etched into the scree hillsides. Unfortunately, there was not much forest cover and it was quite warm. Along the way the trail bypasses Mount Harwood, the main sub-peak of Baldy to its east.

The going here is a combination of level sections, ups and downs, some steep and some lenient. I made good time, eventually worming my way around Harwood and rounding a bend where I had my first high-up views of Mount Baldy. The final portion is a grunt: a steepish 800-foot hike up open slopes and sketchy trail to the bare summit. I arrived here about 12:20 in the afternoon, noting the large plaque marking the summit. About 20 others were here as well, and I took a pleasurable break off on a side slope to rest, drink and have a bite. The views were stunning, except down into the San Gabriel Valley, where the usual smog and hazy air obscured just about everything down there. After not ever hiking the peak during my growing-up years in SoCal, it felt great to be able to claim this one for myself.

The hike down went well, and I was back to the ski area in about an hour. The heat of the day, even at this high elevation, was really affecting me. Temperatures down below were in the 100s, so I figured mid-80s up here. Warm enough to make a big slow guy like me lag moreso than usual. At the ski buildings, a worker showed us where I could refill my water bottles from a spigot behind one building. This helped a lot, as I was running low. Other people up there also filled their bottles. Evidently I was not the only one suffering.

From the buildings I hiked down the road a short ways, to where it came underneath the ski-lift again. Here, I had a decision to make: I could "stay legal" and walk the service road back to my truck, or I could take my chances and walk the sketchy path directly below the ski-lift. The ski-lift option would mean less mileage, like about two miles less. I decided to go for it. No one would bother me along the actual path. The only place I could get into trouble is down below, if there happened to be a worker there and if he happened to give a damn. Plus, I'm pretty good at playing dumb if need be. It comes naturally to me.

The hike down below the ski-lift went quickly. It's mostly a jumble of rocks, with a scant trail running the whole way. I made good time, but as I descended the heat really picked up, probably in the 90s at the base. No one was there to arrest me, so I walked back to my truck, arriving at 3:30 p.m., a 6.5-hour day. The ski-lift hike had worked well, and had cut off a couple miles and probably a good hour of hiking. As it was, I was really lagging back at my truck, very dehydrated and generally feeling crappy from the heat. I found a little diner in town to have a few drinks and a small meal to recuperate. That helped, and from there I returned into the smoggy basin, to my brother's place in Cucamonga.

That night I went along as a "ride-along", a guest of my brother, a policeman for La Verne. I sat shotgun and rode with him as he made his rounds in town, pulling people over, answering calls, things like that. He even made a felony arrest of a guy who was wanted all over the place. He was pulled over because his vehicle's registration tag had expired. Hell, I wouldn't have noticed. That's why I'm not a cop. It was fascinating!

The next day I had an amusing morning "truck-hiking" to the summit of Santiago Peak, the Orange County highpoint.