There's been a trailed ridgeline at the North Etiwanda Preserve I've been eyeing ever since I looked at satellite maps of the area and noticed that the ridge goes all the way to the snow line in the mountains. But I've procrastinated in attacking it, because the very first part is so steep, crumbly-looking, and generally outside my comfort zone. But I wanted to make a serious effort, and at the end, either reach my goal - the nearest foothill peak - or else return satisfied that I had given it a good shot.
First, some pleasant pics of the lower Preserve, which I am becoming very familiar with:
Eventually, near the top of the Preserve, there's a trail that cuts through the hills and winds past a dip in the ridegeline where the ridge "trail" can be accessed:
If you can see well enough, the right-hand fork at the bottom of the ridgeline gets a little steep right at the bottom - not exactly ropes-and-crampons steep, but steep enough to make an intermediate hiker think twice. But as you may also see, it levels out quite a bit above that point, so this has been frustrating me for a while now - a 20-foot or so stretch of overly steep, uneven, loose-footing rock and sand standing in the way of a relatively long and benign trail. The left-hand fork, although it levels out much more quickly, begins far more steeply, so that wasn't an option.
I made a number of abortive attempts at first, including the one described in an earlier hiking diary. The surface is basically two deep gullies lined with rocks in a trench, which the center divider being not-very-sturdy rock and dirt with a tendency to chip off. This isn't technically hiking at this point, but some rudimentary climbing - an activity I have no interest in, but rationalized that it was only for a few feet so I could hike on an amazingly scenic trail. Absent a rope or ladder to pull yourself up, or kneepads and gloves to crawl up, there are only two options for ascending upright, and all of them have drawbacks:
1. You can try to walk with your feet in the gullies, using the sides for support and as safety stops if you slip, but because the loose rocks are plentiful in the gullies, you're more likely to slip anyway. Since the gullies are so narrow, you can often only have one foot at a time in them, or else are forced to "walk like an Egyptian" - i.e., one foot in front of the other in a line, further compromising balance. Sometimes you're lucky and can have one foot in a gully and one on exposed rock, but this is not often the case. There are also parts where the gullies simply stop and you suddenly have to strenuously hoist your way out of them up to the level of the center rocks, which carries its own precarious moments.
2. You can try to walk on the center and/or shoulder slopes of the "trail". There are plenty of solidly-embedded rocks and bedrock outcroppings here for periodic stability, as well as tufts of grass that serve as remarkably reliable footsteps on a steep slope due to the depth of their roots. The main drawback to this is that you have no support if you come to a smooth, steep area and the rocks slide out from under you - you could very easily end up sliding down the steep part uncontrollably, and possibly breaking a bone along the way.
I used both of these options at various points in the hike, depending on my judgment of the terrain and what I was capable of handling. But once I was past the hardest part at the very beginning, it was more a question of just choosing the right footsteps, since the other slopes were relatively benign (albeit still far more strenuous than anything on the main trails of the preserve). I was damn glad I didn't see any snakes or big spiders crawling around, because my blood pressure was already high enough from the effort of getting up there. Did see some fire ants, which meant sitting on the ground was out of the question - had to take my breaks standing up. Here some views from various points along the upward trek:
Eventually I had to stop well short of the nearest peak, because the trail's next ascent became so steep that it appeared in parts to involve rock climbing - something I had no intention of trying, and I was already somewhat tired. This is a picture of the part of the trail that seemed too forbidding:
As you can see of the trail approaching that group of rocks, it gets considerably steeper at that point before falling into the shadow of the boulder. Now, I had gotten the hang of short jags of steep ascent followed by longer bits of smooth walking, but looking ahead, this presaged a change in the status quo - from that point onward, it would be nothing but steep the whole way to the next hump of the hill, and I could tell (and hopefully so can you by the zoomed-in photo) that the trail next to the boulder basically turns into a dirt face with some hand and footholds, and not really a surface you can walk on. Again, climbing is just not my thing.
So I turned around, and discovered another important lesson: If you find going up a slope tenuous, going back down will be hair-raising and nerve-wracking. Such it was. Even with the two trekking poles I'd had the foresight to buy - I had only had one before, not realizing that two were even better - stability was always a matter needing careful attention. Every footstep was thought out in advance on the dangerous steep parts. By the time I got back to the top of the very first part, my knees were aching from all the strain, as was my head from all the anxiety. But clearly I wasn't going to walk down the way I'd come up - as hard as coming up was, going back down that way would have been hell. So, referring back to the picture showing the two entrances to the ridgeline trail:
...The one on the left, as I said, is impractical without climbing, so I hadn't used it. But coming back down is another matter. You can stroll leisurely half the way back down that on the other side would have involved nerve-wracking footwork, and only have to worry about the final few feet. I solved the problem thusly: Although the wall is pretty steep, it's still cut into deep gullies (dry gullies consisting only of dry dirt, FYI), so I sat down directly in one of the gullies with my feet on either embankment of it for stability, and slowly slid down in a controlled slide. It went well - better than I'd hoped, actually. So I'm done with this ridgeline - its anxieties outweigh its attractions. Although hopefully somewhere, out there are more manageable examples of the same type of trail.
Oh, and I forgot to mention I bought a hat, and found it tremendously useful. Yesterday I had done a far easier hike in identical weather without a hat and been baked by the Sun. Today, with my new hat, an even harder hike proved downright pleasant most of the time. So that's why people in olden days wore hats! :D