HPS peakbagging Fun Around Mt. Baldy

I set out on the morning of Saturday July 30th with grandiose plans. I wanted to bag 10 HPS peaks in a big loop of the San Antonio Canyon Area in one day. I had recently returned to the country from Thailand and needed to get my ass in shape for the upcoming Sierra Challenge I hoped to participate in. So I arrived at the Manker Flat trailhead just before 6AM and was on the trail shortly after six. I made very good time up the initial 4000 feet to Baldy, passing multiple groups of weekend warriors like myself, and arriving at the summit right at 8AM. I stopped for a quick breakfast of trail-food, and headed east towards Mt. Harwood and the Devils Backbone. Mt. Harwood barely qualifies as a separate peak, and shouldn’t be an HPS peak in my opinion, but I still walked the extra 5 minutes out of the way to tag it. I couldn’t find a register here, but took a quick picture of the unusually large snow pack remaining on the north slope of Harwood. My day continued down the Devil’s Backbone, a pleasant section of the trail that straddles a ridgeline for a short section. This section is not nearly as exciting as it sounds in the summer, but from what I can imagine, it must be a rush in the wintertime. I continued past the Baldy notch, and reached Thunder Mountain, the first peak of the “Three T’s”. Here I snapped a quick picture of Baldy from the side of one of the ski lift towers. I cut down the southeast ridge of Thunder mountain to avoid the extra quarter mile the trail added. I was to the top of Telegraph Peak by 10:35AM, which is the most impressive of the three T’s. I headed on down to the Icehouse saddle stopping to tag Timber mountain along the way. This was the point I had talked myself into heading down the previous summer when I had tried for this loop, but having done some hiking with Bob Burd and Matthew Holliman since then, I had begun to develop a taste for hurting myself. I started up the trail to Cucamonga Peak, and passed a descending group of hikers who told me I looked like crap. I told them thank you politely, thought about dropping some rocks on them as they headed down, but decided to keep going. On the summit I was pleased to find one of the best views in the San Gabriels. The only thing hampering the view was the fabled LA metropolitan area smog. I decided to take a quick nap on the summit, since I looked so good. I woke up refreshed, and jaunted on down to Etiwanda Peak, getting there around 2:45PM. After a brief search for a register, which I couldn’t find, I headed back down to the notch between Cucamonga Peak and Bighorn Peak. I decided to take the ridge straight up from this point instead of walking all the way around the peak simply to use the trail. I reached the summit in about 20 minutes, I was moving at a decent pace, but definitely slowing down. I sat down on a log to sign the register and looked up to see a bighorn sheep grazing not more then 30 feet away from me. I cursed myself for not bringing my digital camera, as I had just used the last photo on my disposable camera. The beautiful male ram looked at me and took a couple of steps closer as he ate. I was getting more and more worried about his fearlessness as he had a set of horns on him that would have messed me up. But after about 15 minutes of watching him, he slowly moved east down the ridge. I was laughing to myself about the irony of seeing a Bighorn Sheep on Bighorn Peak as I headed down the ridge towards Ontario Peak. I figured nobody would believe me, but luckily jjcate saw it as well the same day, as you can see in his summit log entry. I reached Ontario Peak by about 4:30PM, quickly signed the register and headed down Falling Rock Canyon to bag Sugarloaf Peak as my 10th and final HPS peak of the day. I miss read the instructions of the HPS route and followed the actual creek in Falling Rock Canyon rather than the ridge to the west. This made for a long miserable descent and the added elevation to tag Sugarloaf on the way out was not pleasant. I reached Sugarloaf Peak around 6PM, did a quick search for the register, couldn’t find it and decided to head home. I reached the Icehouse trailhead just a bit after 7PM, and was fortunate enough to find a kind soul to drive me up to my car at Manker Flats. It was a long day, 13 hours, 22 miles and nearly 8000ft. of elevation gain. But it was one of the more satisfying HPS days I have had, as I wasn’t going back and forth from car to trail between peaks. And plus, I worked off some of that Thai beer.