Quick Stats: 7.8 Miles & 4,311′ gain via Register Ridge from Manker Flat.
With Frankie now fully committed to my crazy June adventure (Dubbed “Shepherd Pass 14er Trip”), she rightfully brought up that she needs to start training for it. So we decided that choosing a target above 10,000′ would be a good idea. We also decided choosing a harder route to that summit above 10,000′ would be a good idea. We also decided doing so with loaded packs would be a good idea.
Enter our adventure to Mount San Antonio; AKA “Mount Baldy.” Frankie already had a backpacking adventure planned, so she just got her pack ready a day earlier; I always have my daypack weighted to between 30 and 35 lbs. (every hike is a training hike!); and we decided Register Ridge would be a really fun route up. Who knows? Maybe we’d even hit Mount Harwood along the way.
Se got an alpine start from Manker Flat, which is actually a newer sort of thing for Frankie– as a thru hiker she tends to follow the sun to the rhythm of her day, so using a headlamp as much as we already have is different for her. It’s not long before you get to Register Ridge from the road, and then it’s the steepest route up until you reach either the Devil’s Backbone Trail, or the summit of Mount Harwood.
Along the way there’s a giant mass of boulders that makes for some fun 3rd class scrambling on this route; in fact, I first learned about Register Ridge when I was looking for more scrambling opportunities in the San Gabriel Mountains last spring. Of course, this can be completely bypassed on your way up, but where’s the fun in that? We dropped our packs and decided to take a “scramble break” and run a few laps.
It was a lot of fun, and made what could have been just a steep hike into more of an adventure! (Also, I think Frankie and I are going to do wonderfully together on adventures because we both love scrambling so much!) Then it was back to our ascent, making our way up all the way to the Mount Harwood summit. We didn’t really stop since our main objective was Mount Baldy, and we quickly moved onward.
There were some large patches of hard snow along the way, and we were lamenting that we didn’t have snow gear (or at least an ice axe) to go over snow travel and self arrest. . . since these are skills that Frankie currently has no experience doing, and are also skills that she will need to learn! We saw a kid walking up with an ice axe in hand, and I joked to Frankie that we should ask to borrow it. I’m not too bold, but Frankie had no problem striking up a conversation where we learned his name (Thank you for the ice axe Oscar!), that he was doing Mount Whitney via the main trail in late May, and then we proceeded to have a brief impromptu self arrest clinic.
When we got the summit, I noticed a summit sign, which was new for Mount Baldy. I mentioned in the last post how I’m not a huge fan of summit signs, but this one gets a pass:
We spent a bit of time relaxing on the summit before heading down. The Mount Baldy summit is almost always a party given it’s popularity, which made me reflect on my winter summits with Jas– no one there but us, getting buffeted mercilessly by the wind. I love that solitude. I also loved this summit with Frankie. Not much in the way of solitude, but it was our first time above 10,000′ together.
Typically when you take Register Ridge up, you take the Baldy Bowl Trail down to meet the Ski Hut Trail. We like doing things the hard way– actually, I like doing things the hard way, which prompted Frankie to give me the trail name “Hard Way.” Not that I was looking to do something difficult for the sake of the difficulty. . . I just wanted another scramble break! So we made our way back down Register Ridge, only be told by multiple people on the way up that we were crazy.
From there it was more of that steep hike down, dealing with talus and scree until we made our way off of Register Ridge and back to the trail. It was an absolute blast training with Frankie, and getting to do some scrambling on an adventure where I expected none.
