Mount San Antonio is the highest point in the Sierra Madre, the big flank of peaks that hem in the suburbs of Los Angeles on the north. I grew up in Azusa and later, La Verne, all the while within sight of mighty Mount Baldy, as Mount San Antonio is almost always called. In Azusa we lived within a mile of the foothills, while in La Verne we were a bit further out. I never ventured into them as a kid other than the occasional trip with my folks, cub scouts, soccer team or similar. I certainly never got close to the summit. The lower slopes are a thick carpet of manzanita, nearly impenetrable and not attractive. Why bother hiking when there's so much great stuff on TV? Anyway, 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. The peak actually straddles San Bernardino County as well, but it is not the highest point in San Berdoo County (Mount San Gorgonio is, which I hiked in 2001). 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 west to hike the peak and elicit smiles from little Emma, as best I could.

I left Phoenix at 4 p.m. on Friday, July 21st. It was searingly hot - no surprise. The drive was uneventful until I passed Palm Springs on Interstate-10, coming up the grade into Cabazon (where the dinosaurs from Pee-Wee Herman's Big Adventure movie live). It was dark at this time, and ahead of me on the highway I could see brake lights and swerving of cars in my lane. Finally, I saw the reason why: 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 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. 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 earth, 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 upper 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.

For the hike down I went at a slow pace, arriving back to the ski-runs and buildings about an hour later. The warmth of the day had caused me to go through my water quicker than planned, although I had enough to get me all the way down in the worst case. However, at the ski-run buildings, a worker told us of a well-hidden spigot behind one building where we could fill up, which worked well (a few others were in the same situation as me). I was not looking forward to the dry, dusty road hike to my car. The first little bit below the buildings I had no choice but to follow the road, but when the road crossed the ski-lift again, I debated leaving the road and following a very steep, sketchy trail that ran directly below the ski-lift all the way down. This would cut off maybe two miles of road hiking, but it was not legal ... but it would cut off two miles of road hiking. That was too much to resist so I left the road and hiked down this path, which was very steep and loose and had sections of rubbly rock, and it was ugly and hot and dusty, but it did get me to the bottom in about an hour faster than the road would have. I was back to my truck around 3:30, and it was surprisingly hot even up here in the mountains! Probably low 90s, easily in the hundreds in the valleys below. I was fairly dehydrated so I drove into Mount Baldy the town and found a small diner/bar where I had some cokes and a small meal, taking a relaxed hour to get my energy back. Mount Baldy was in the books, and despite the heat, it was a very pleasurable hike, and I was happy to be successful with it!

I drove back to my brother's place and that night went along with him on a "ride along"; at the time he was a police officer in La Verne and I road shotgun in the front, watching him do his job. Fascinating and very interesting! The next day I made a drive/hike up the Orange County highpoint, Santiago Peak.