Baldy night hike - An SP get-together

Baldy night hike - An SP get-together

Page Type Page Type: Trip Report
Date Date Climbed/Hiked: Oct 20, 2006
Activities Activities: Hiking, Mountaineering
Seasons Season: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter

A night outing up Mt. Baldy

Last Friday (10/20/06) we had a little SP get together for a night hike up Baldy. One of the few moments you can get up there without a soul in sight! With a busy weekend ahead, I really wanted to go for a hike. So I thought, why not go Friday night after work? With the warm Santa Ana desert winds blowing, it looked like it would be the perfect night for it. Fairly warm and no smog!

To my surprise, there were two other souls that consider this kind of activity fun :) ! Mike (gigamike) and Peter (pkfrancev) decided to join me!

I got out of work around 5pm in Anaheim and it took me about 1.5 hours to battle traffic to get to the parking lot at the San Antonio Falls Rd; the trailhead for the ski-hut trail up to Mt. San Antonio (aka Mt. Baldy).

Once at destination, I quickly changed into my hiking clothes and we were on our way around 7pm. It was already dark, so it was definitely a night hike! Nothing that can't be solved by some good headlamps though!
Chilling at the ski-hutChilling at the skihut (8200') along the trail to Mt. Baldy.


I shoved down a subway sandwich early on the hike and was having a pretty hard time getting up to the skihut (about 8200 feet). The night before I had to attend a Bachelor's party involving beer and tequila (need I say more...). For a while I thought I would have a heart attack! By the time we reached the hut I luckily had sweated away most of the previous night. We took a little break near the peace and quiet of the hut. Barely any wind and no noise whatsoever! Absolutely a perfect night!

Continuing beyond the hut, the temperature remained very mild and we could keep hiking in t-shirt all the way to the final ridge leading to the summit; a fleece provided a little more comfort here. We left the hut at
At the summit of Mt. BaldyPeter, myself and Mike on the summit of Mt. Baldy. 11pm Oct 20th 2006. A surprisingly warm night for October!
9pm and agreed we would turn around at 11pm. Made it to the summit around 10:45. Needless to say, nobody around! I couldn't believe all the city lights you see from the summit! It's like a million bees hovering around! Also pretty entertaining to see everybody sit in traffic on the 15 on the way to Vegas :)

We left the summit at 11pm and got to the car at 1am. A relaxing and quiet night up Baldy with some great company. A fun way to meet some other SP'ers!

A recommended outing!


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Deltaoperator17

Deltaoperator17 - Oct 14, 2008 10:02 pm - Voted 10/10

Sounds like fun

I would love to have an Idaho SP'er gig just like this one...


Take Care

Steve

Luciano136

Luciano136 - Oct 21, 2008 9:05 pm - Hasn't voted

Re: Sounds like fun

It was! Can't beat night time for solitude and peace!

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