Whitaker Peak Attempted via Sharps Canyon

Blue Point on the left with Whitaker Peak center right.

Once in a while those great ideas aren't.

The day preceding this one I'm about to write about was a complete bust. I'd scrambled up a nasty drainage looking for something that eluded me, something I'll be going back for now that I've had a chance to back off and look at it again. Today though, this one was going really well until it abruptly wasn't. I'll explain.

So close...

Whitaker Peak (not to be confused with Whiteacre Peak) can be found along the far western border of the Angeles National Forest, just a few miles northeast of Piru Lake. The traditional way to reach the summit, which also has a lookout and communication towers of the same name just a short distance away, starts from the Templin Highway adjacent to Interstate-5. I haven't been there yet and in looking over the route I noted that the entire way to the summit is simply road miles. Boooor-ing! I started looking around for a potential route to the summit that offered something of a challenge. Peering at the topos and satellite info led me to believe that a narrow slot canyon which takes off from Piru Creek might lend itself to such an idea. Sharps Canyon was worth a go.

First, just getting to the mouth of the canyon required a >6 mile bike ride. If there were sufficient water in the lake then the upper boat ramp would be open and the ride would only have been about 5 miles. Not the case. This lake road is kind of a pain in the ass. It has roughly equal measures of uphill and downhill whichever way one travels. I rolled through the long abandoned Blue Point Campground and pulled off just a short distance from Wheeler Ranch. A short scrum through ceanothus put me in a deep gully, the real start of my day.

This gully soon narrowed to a twisting slot canyon which seldom opened up wider than 25 feet. A small stream of brackish water trickled downstream through increasingly dense stands of willow and nettles. Fortunately for me the nettles weren't flowering just yet. The walls of this gully rose steeply to either side and were predominantly comprised of loose soil and cobbles with occasional bands of shale and poor quality sandstone. There were also portions of the drainage that consisted entirely of spongy mineral and salt deposits. Some parts of the gully narrowed to such a degree that I could almost reach each side of the steep slot with arms spread. In the wider, airier portions of the creek I struggled with thick brush, deadfalls and drift wood. It was within such a scenario that I got the jolt of a lifetime.

I had a tangled up jumble of drift wood to get through. I weighted a couple criss-crossed branches that could support me, stepped up, got my balance, and started plotting the next four or five steps which would get me past the wood pile. You see where this is going. I glanced down to check my footing and caught just a glimmer of movement under the wood heap in front of me. I didn't think anything of it, if anything I thought it was probably a lizard. I put a foot down on the next branches and right then the buzzer went off. I'd just put my weight on some sticks, a precarious perch, under which was a small portion of a large rattlesnake. And he was mad about it. My ankle was roughly a foot from the pointy end of this snake. I jumped but my foot got tangled up in some branches and I went down on the wood pile. I damn near panicked. I scrambled and thrashed off that wood heap as quickly as humanly possible and I'm sure that in better circumstances my antics would have been hilarious to watch. I don't know if that snake struck at me or not and I don't want to know, but I can tell you all that I've had at least six distinct times that by rights I should gotten bit by rattlesnakes. This incident was the closest I ever came. Freaked me the f**k out. 

What one thinks about once the excitement wears off a tad is what the hell would happen in the event of a rattlesnake envenomation. Never mind that I myself am living proof that they don't really want to bite you. What would I do? Here I am in narrow slot, with no cell service, no straightforward way to get out of there, unsure wether my SPOT would even work here never mind how long a real response and rescue would take. Such a situation would totally suck, be exceedingly painful and would likely be life threatening in a very short period of time. What would I do? I don't have an answer for that question. No coherent plan on file. I just do not know. It goes without saying that I hope you and I never have to find out what that situation is like.

California Damsel.

Some distance from that scene the canyon turned into a deep "V" slot. The brush thinned out and I thought I really was getting somewhere even though the nature of this slot had denied me a line of site to the peak from the get go. I entered a hidden garden of blooming wildflowers and bees and butterflies. The air smelled of young sage and green grass. My nerves settled down and I enjoyed a brief breakfast while watching a dozen California Damsels flutter here and there.

From this point on the canyon presented with variations of the same theme. Brush, wood piles, grassy straightaways, short waterfall scrambles, mineral rich earth, forests of nettle and willow, the odd sycamore or oak tree, shale slides, typical Piru stuff. It was in a high section of the drainage, just a mile under the summit that I hit an obstacle I could not bypass. 

Flowering sage. 

Some part of this route were quite pretty.

Entire walls of this canyon were made up of mineral and salt deposits.

In the end it was a twelve foot high waterfall that stopped me cold. I'm not a bad climber so I found this stupid little waterfall to be insulting. The canyon had narrowed to a slot with steep and high vertical shale walls and right in the middle of it was this little waterfall, just five feet wide and dressed in streamers of green algae. I stood there appraising the falls, trying to puzzle out how to get past it. The base material of the falls was neither shale nor sandstone but that same mineral deposit crap in the photo above, the stuff with the consistency of halva (you know, that Middle Eastern confection that you might get a yen for once every eight years or so?). Anyway, I tried six different ways to get up the thing. Water poured off the top, the algae was slick, and everything I clung to or toed off of crumbled beneath me. On my last try I got about eight feet off the ground and while lunging for a desperate knob at the top off the falls my feet just went out and I crashed in a wet and disgusted heap in the puddle beneath the falls. I was kind of scraped up, wet, and my ass hurt. Fine. That's just how it was going to be. I'd been denied. Sporting a rueful grin I put myself together and went back the way I'd come, paying special attention to those wood piles where the rattlers lurk.

Typical of the brushy portions of Sharps.

Juan Jose Fustero (left) and family lived near Rancho Camulos (on what is now Hwy 126). The elder Fustero,, who died June 30, 1921 may have been the last full-blooded Tataviam Indian, though he spoke the language of the neighboring Kitanemuk of the Antelope Valley. Juan is believed to buried under what is now Lake Piru.

A slice of the Piru Backcountry, 03/30/13

A beautiful morning above Lake Piru and Blue Point (front left).

It's good to hear from old hiking mates, and even better to get out and eat some brush with them. Though he and I intermittently communicate, I haven't been out with Nico in almost a full year. We were overdue for teaming on something so I was happy to hear he had a day open and that his idea for the day had the potential to satisfy several long standing questions I've had about the backcountry to the west of Piru Lake.

The bright green lines show our route up the Pothole Trail and our eventual return down Reasoner Canyon.

Nico, high on the the Pothole Trail.

We started walking a bit after 5 in the morning, pounding Piru pavement under a blanket of low clouds and fog. I was a bit surprised at where we were forced to park due to gate closures. We later understood that the lake was so low that the upper boat ramp and the road to it were closed, which added 1.5 miles to what I figured our walk in would entail. Lame. We should have brought bikes, though that damn lake road is pretty steep in places. So after 4.6 miles of muffled and misty pavement plodding we finally encountered the take off for a neglected route called the Pothole Trail.

If not for the pretty clouds this shot would be looking down Reasoner Canyon  onto  Lake Piru.

The Pothole Trail is an old path that ascends west out of Piru Lake, climbing a tough 3 mile ridge before turning north and dropping into Agua Blanca Creek near the Devils Gateway. Agua Blanca Creek and this Pothole route to it are seldom travelled. The trail is named for a pair of grassy depressions just south of Devils Gateway. The first such "vale" is called the Pothole, it is about 5 acres and on the eastern side is a spring (I have no current info on Pothole Spring). Nearby is a smaller but similarly grassy bowl called the Devils Potrero. Nico and I didn't walk down into the potreros so I can't say what that's like, but the potholes/potreros looked pretty much like a place to keep passing through, if you read me.

So getting back to the climb out of the lake, let me tell you that it isn't a giveaway. This Pothole starts climbing very quickly, the terrain being steep and staying that way. Most of the route is overgrown with knee high weeds and brush. The soil is loose and the trail is undefined. It is pretty much a deer trail at this point as it is pretty obvious that very few people use this trail anymore. The low clouds held off the first rays of morning light while we climbed the steep path away from the lake. We'd moved quickly and had ascended above the clouds by sunrise. Looking back down our path we saw a sea of rugged ridges, their valleys deep in shade and hidden by clouds. We watched the first rays hit the small summit called Blue Point. The skyline to the north was dominated by the incomperable Cobblestone Peak. It was a very nice morning for a walk.

Cobblestone Peak and an old OHV sign.

We proceded up the ridge for a further mile until we reached a well marked junction where the Pothole turns north and descends into the potreros. We took a long break here, taking in the views to the north. Nico was hiking well and I was doing alright. It had been an unusually stressful and sleepless week and I judged that I was only at about 75% of normal. After some calories we turned our backs on the Pothole Trail. We had other business in the area.

Nico and I headed south on an ancient jeep road, still climbing. Eventually we ended up wandering westward for a ways, spent a couple hours in the upper parts of a nearby drainage. Saw a lot of interesting rock formations and brush and stuff. We learned quite a bit about that area and yes, I'm being kind of vague about this part of the day.

After a few miles of off-trail, and with no nearby water sources, we decided to turn it around. We returned to the northwest rim of Reasoner Canyon and started down that long grade toward the lake. This was the same overgrown jeep track that eventually meets Pothole trail at it's highest point. This route was long, hot, brushy, and at time difficult to figure out. Twice we thought we'd gotten off route when in fact it was the crazily wide switchbacks that threw us off. In the end we cut those switchbacks pretty easily, but the going was brushy. 

Nico, on the ridge west of Reasoner.

Nico descending through Piru high country.

Soon we dropped into a pretty series of hilltop meadows scattered with old oak trees. A short time later we were back on Piru pavement, just in time for the hottest part of the day. On the walk out we saw just how low the lake is and how little water is coming down Piru Creek. We got a good look back at some of what we'd accomplished, felt pretty good about it. By the time we reached the truck we had banged out 22-23 miles and over 5,000 feet of elevation gain in just 10 hours.

Pleasant meadows above the Lake.

Piru Creek is a trickle.

Cattle and kids on the upper boat dock.

Pothole Trail ascends the endless left leaning skyline.

Piru Creek isn't, and the Lake is a puddle.

Just a warning for those going out this way... Piru is not a nice area, by which I mean that any time you are in the neighborhood of Cobblestone Mountain and Piru Creek one should expect everything to be a little rougher, pricklier, hotter, drier, and buggier than one would normally anticipate. Travel in the area just seems harder than in other parts of the SLP. Also, the snakes are really out now, and so are the ticks. I brushed around three dozen of those creepy parasites off me throughout the day (they give me the willies). And it now appears evident that water (the lack of it) will be a major factor in our backcountry this summer. Plan accordingly.

I had a really nice day, don't feel like I worked too hard despite having started the day with an energy deficit. It was good to hang with Nico again and hear all his tales of what he and other trail burners are getting done in the SLP. Many people are doing extraordinary and athletic things in the Los Padres, whether it's peakbagging, mountain biking, big mileage ultras, or thrashing through the "impassable" old trails. There's lots of people out there doing big things.

Pretty pit-viper

Road miles.