Transverse Dreams

😣 another day of this SoCal heat wave 😣 🚨 WAIT 🚨 WHAT 🚨 Mt Baldy summit forecast

NWS radar is even picking up these clouds as stationary thunderstorms. Not clear if any rain is really reaching the ground and there is a real dearth of weather stations in the San Gabriels. Basically if radar isn’t catching it no one knows what’s happening between the front range and the desert.

There’s been some really strange cloud decks over the San Gabriels lately. And despite the high humidity (60 dewpoint) the lapse rate has been high, almost 5! It was 92 in Azusa and 60 at Table Mtn!

One of those sunsets that fades and then comes back, catching the clouds a different way.

There’s been some really strange cloud decks over the San Gabriels lately. And despite the high humidity (60 dewpoint) the lapse rate has been high, almost 5! It was 92 in Azusa and 60 at Table Mtn!

This article is a great example of how science evolves, and how we can still learn from the past. As much as we’ve all dreamed of skiing San Gabriel Peak’s southeast gully, the evidence for glaciation in the San Gabriel Mtns is very weak, and it’s now thought the Gabes escaled Quaternary glaciers.

If there were glaciers or permanent snowfields in the San Gabriels in the Ice Age, it would have been high on Baldy’s NE face. I could be convinced though the development of evidence like cirques and moraines is very poor.

This article is a great example of how science evolves, and how we can still learn from the past. As much as we’ve all dreamed of skiing San Gabriel Peak’s southeast gully, the evidence for glaciation in the San Gabriel Mtns is very weak, and it’s now thought the Gabes escaled Quaternary glaciers.

Still we can learn some things from this paper: Crystal Lake and San Gabriel Peak used to get snow in October, and accumulated a snowpack of several feet in the early 1900s! It’s rare for these elevations to get significant snow these days.

This article is a great example of how science evolves, and how we can still learn from the past. As much as we’ve all dreamed of skiing San Gabriel Peak’s southeast gully, the evidence for glaciation in the San Gabriel Mtns is very weak, and it’s now thought the Gabes escaled Quaternary glaciers.

Operating in 1926, William Miller didn’t have the framework necessary- plate tectonics- to understand the forces at work in the San Gabriels. The San Andreas Fault had only been conceptualized 20 years before, after the 1906 earthquake, and the power of landslides was also not as well understood.

This article is a great example of how science evolves, and how we can still learn from the past. As much as we’ve all dreamed of skiing San Gabriel Peak’s southeast gully, the evidence for glaciation in the San Gabriel Mtns is very weak, and it’s now thought the Gabes escaled Quaternary glaciers.

So what is going on here to create such rugged terrain, and what is pseudo tarn Crystal Lake? The rapid uplift of the San Gabriels over the last 5 million years via compression at thrust faults has resulted in shattered rock masses and rapid erosion.

This article is a great example of how science evolves, and how we can still learn from the past. As much as we’ve all dreamed of skiing San Gabriel Peak’s southeast gully, the evidence for glaciation in the San Gabriel Mtns is very weak, and it’s now thought the Gabes escaled Quaternary glaciers.

This glacier would have had its source at 8000-8500 on the south facing slopes of Islip and west facing slopes of Hawkins - lower than the elevation of Whitney Portal and lower than the lowest glaciated slopes of the South Sierra. It’s alleged foot, at 4000, the floor of Owens Valley!

This article is a great example of how science evolves, and how we can still learn from the past. As much as we’ve all dreamed of skiing San Gabriel Peak’s southeast gully, the evidence for glaciation in the San Gabriel Mtns is very weak, and it’s now thought the Gabes escaled Quaternary glaciers.

Here are a couple of the examples discussed in the article. The most deceptive is Pine Flat, now the site of Crystal Lake campgrounds (first picture). Snowflake = Snowslide Canyon, a great winter descent when it’s in. Second is Eaton Canyon, w a snowflake for the SE gully.

Took advantage of some late season June Gloom to try a new mountain bike outing today - the Colby Trail in Glendora. This was a little more reasonable grade for my skills than Van Tassel Motorway and I made it about 1000’ vertical before I ran out of time. The Glendora volcanics outcrop here!

I made it a little further up Van Tassel Motorway this weekend but it’s so steep, I ended up pushing my bike up a few times because I couldn’t get going. It’s at the outer limits of what’s physically possible with my bike… and my skills.

As if to drive that last point home, at my turnaround point, a much better biker cruised past me going down, with a quick “it’s steep” and then he was gone. In that area I could barely even keep it together going downhill.