Here's some pics of Condor Peak. It is so named as the large vulture the Condor used to live in its rocky crags and fly about it. The bird's wingspan may have been a good 8 feet. One starts in Big Tujunga Canyon at 2000 feet. One has to hike 8.5 miles and up 3400 feet to get to the summit. It's a harder hike in that one has to climb over Fox peak and up and down 3 false summits in order to get to the true summit at 5439 feet above the sea. Yours truly did this in 2002 and was dead tired by the end of the day. But it was fantastic virgin forest, unchanged for 1000s of years. There were a couple of mountain springs along the way. Great views of the Big Tujunga watershed and all the way to Mt Gleason. There's a lot of scrubby oak, canyon oak, sage, sumac, buckwheat, mesquite, yurba santa, big cone spruce along the way. The trail was only 6 inches wide in places as erosion inevitably occurs. This trail continues on in a 25 mile loop...the "trail canyon trail." I tried the other side of it early 2005 but it was completely eroded away with the heavy rains that year. I'm thank ful in that respect for the trail builders that come out and volunteer their hard labor.
Here's the big horn sheep. This nimble animal can jump up steep rocky mountain sides with tremendous agility.
1 comment:
8.5 mile hike with three false summits...wow!!! I am sure you were dead tired. Did you spend the night there? This is very interesting. Are these "trail builders" really opening those trails for other hikers?
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