From Palmdale, a day after hiking Mount Baden-Powell, I traveled west on highway N-2, a Los Angeles County highway that runs northwest toward Gorman through a long rift in the hills, through the pretty little towns of Leona Valley and Elizabeth Lake. In time I left the ranch homes behind and entered onto Angeles National Forest lands. My destination was Burnt Peak, the highest summit of a little packet of peaks tucked into northwest Los Angeles County, south of Gorman and north of Lake Castaic. The map calls Burnt and nearby summits ‘Sawmill Mountain’, a somewhat vague name to cover what seems to be a range in name only. In truth these are part of the so-called Transverse Ranges, a superset of peaks, hills and mini-ranges that are formed by the direct result of the famous nearby San Andreas Fault. In fact, the ‘rift in the hills’ I drove though was directly along the fault: the Pacific Plate on my left, moving north imperceptibly slow, and the North American Plate to my right, moving south equally slow. There obviously was the potential for ‘The Big One’ to strike right here, right now. I just played the odds.

My immediate goal was to find Bushnell Summit, a highpoint along the highway from which Forest Road 7N23 went to the south toward Burnt Peak. There is no marker at this point of the road, so the first highpoint along the highway that felt right, I stopped, and luck was with me: it was the right place. I found the forest road marker for the road and started in. The drive up covered just over 3 miles on pretty-good road, and I parked in a large clearing, which ironically was a part of the Pacific Crest Trail. And there was Burnt Peak, a simple summit about 2 air-miles to the south. I could see its various towers easy enough. It was about 9 a.m. when I started my hike. The actual hiking route would cover about 2.9 miles one way.

The trail to the top is a road, gated shut at the clearing, but clearly kept up so that the workers can travel in when needed. For the first mile or so it stayed mostly level, dropping just a little bit, passing around a small hill in the process. Around this hill, roughly halfway in on the hike, the road drops dramatically to a low point, probably a good overall 200-foot decline. At this point Burnt Peak was plainly obvious directly above me to my left, while Little Burnt Peak was to my right; the road wound up through a pass between the two. The rest of the road wiggles and switchbacks up the back side of the peak, where two last hard switchbacks lead to a set of buildings on the top. It had taken me just over an hour to make the walk.

The summit is home to an antenna site for the FAA, presumably one of the many sites used to track the multitude of planes in the sky. The top is graded flat and grass-covered; the main unit looks like a bowling pin standing about 10 feet tall, surrounded by a whole bunch off little apparati. The whole thing is surrounded by a fence, and signs on the fence give the usual warnings about tampering with the antenna and what may happen to you if you do. I most certainly stayed well away from the antennae. The top was overall very flat. It was easy enough to scamper up three feet of hillside, tag the flat top, stay a good 25 feet away from the antenna stuff, and return to the safe side of the fence. Whether I actually did I won’t say. But I did walk the perimeter of the fence. The views to the south were the nicest, where the hills ran off in parallel lines, in decreasing size and lighter hues of blue haze. Once back to the road I started my walk down. There were some workers off on one of the side antenna structures, but I paid them no mind and I doubt they even saw me. The walk back out took a shade over an hour, and the whole journey took me 2.5 hours.

Burnt is an interesting peak, its lone claim to fame being it has sufficiently high prominence to put it on the California list. Another nearby peak, Liebre Mountain, has a summit elevation statistically the same as Burnt’s (it lacks a spot elevation). Some friends of mine made an ad-hoc survey study to compare heights of the two summits and deemed Burnt higher. If it ever comes to pass that Liebre is actually higher, well then, I’ll come back and ‘do’ Liebre, which can be driven to the top. Otherwise, Burnt toils in anonymity, stuck far back in a jumble of peaks not readily obvious from the nearby area.

Back to my truck I felt alright, and I drove back out to the highway and on into Gorman, my plan to visit Frazier Mountain, another prominence leader. Alas, the whole peak was closed to everyone until Memorial Day – two weeks away – due to last year’s fire damage and the need for the workers to cut down some more problem trees lest someone get injured. The nice forest guy at the ranger station filled me in on all this. This also shut me out of nearby Alamo Peak as well. Fortunately Reyes Peak was still open, so I headed down that way. The story continues on Reyes Peak.