In a kind-of-big-deal-news-for-hikers story, the Pasadena Star-Newsis reporting that Caltrans is starting a process that would rebuild and reopen a portion of CA-39 that’s been closed for 30 years.
CA-39 is a road you probably haven’t driven very far on. It doesn’t even show up on Google Maps until you’re almost at street view — but it used to be an important north-south route into the Angeles National Forest, traveling from Azusa up the North Fork of the San Gabriel River, skirting big peaks like Mount Islip and South Mount Hawkins before meandering to Crystal Lake Campground and meeting up with the Angeles Crest Highway at Islip Saddle.
The four mile stretch of road south of the Saddle has been closed since ’78, due to fires, mudslides, and erosion, and the area from Crystal Lake down to the East Fork since the 2002 Curve Fire, so I’ve never even set tire on the road yet — and have only seen it from a distance on Kratka Ridge.
The whole area’s kind of a no-cars-land, actually, with the Angeles Crest closed from Islip Saddle to Vincent Gap for 4 years due to landslides, washouts, and an endangered frog (although it’s rumored to reopen this spring).
Now, all of a sudden, Caltrans is investigating the environmental impact of opening the entire road up again, mainly to make it easier for fire departments and rescue crews to access the deeper reaches of the San Gabriels. Opponents are saying an active road in the area would be dangerous to the region’s population of Bighorn Sheep.
… and so begins the Nature Lovers’ Dilemma. Making access easier into the mountains is great — and I sure would like to be able to get into Crystal Lake to tackle Mount Islip instead of having to park on the Angeles Crest and walk along the pavement for a few miles … but that area of the Forest has been so quiet for so long, I’d hate to see it overrun like Runyon, Switzer’s, or Santa Anita Canyon just because it’s become easy to get to. Or, as Edward Abbey warned:
“The fat pink slobs who go roaring over the landscape in these over-sized over-priced over-advertised mechanical mastodons are people too lazy to walk, too ignorant to saddle a horse, too cheap and clumsy to paddle a canoe. Like cattle or sheep, they travel in herds, scared to death of going anywhere alone, and they leave their sign and spoor all over the back country: Coors beer cans, Styrofoam cups, plastic spoons, balls of Kleenex, wads of toilet paper, spent cartridge shells, crushed gopher snakes, smashed sagebrush, broken trees, dead chipmunks, wounded deer, eroded trails, bullet-riddled petroglyphs, spray-painted signatures, vandalized Indian ruins, fouled-up waterholes, polluted springs and smoldering campfires piled with incombustible tinfoil, filter tips, broken bottles. Etc.”
So we know where the Desert Anarchist would probably stand. What about you? Should the 39 be open only to emergency vehicles past Crystal Lake? Or does the prospect of a shorter drive to the trailhead entice your more?
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Boy, I can’t wait for those guys who drive their trucks around the river beds, those dudes who shoot their guns and the people who fill the river with trash and needles to spread to other parts of the park!
I don’t suggest driving up the 39 if you can help it. It’s kind of hell over there.
One could argue that some of the arguments against opening the road are weak; however, I have not heard of one argument for opening the road that doesn’t sound like b.s.
The idea of it being an ‘evacuation route’ is laughable. The ACH is sufficient.
The idea that it will open up people to new areas is false. The ACH goes to Islip Saddle, and the time from La Canada to Islip (~50 min or less) is less than it would be from Asuza to Islip via the 39.
Sure, if people had the money to just throw around, it would be nice. But these days, when people / companies should be learning about spending smartly, the idea is ridiculous.
I will be going to the meeting on the 24′th in Azusa at the Senior Center.
What meeting on the 24th? where did you learn about it (I didn’t see it mentioned in the article)?
Thanks.
> What meeting on the 24th? where did
> you learn about it (I didn’t see it
> mentioned in the article)?
There have been a number of newspaper articles which cover the meeting, details of which can be found at:
http://sangabrielmnts.myfreeforum.org/Highway_39_To_2_past_Crystal_Lake_to_Rebuild_Reopen_about1181.html
The answer to the disgusting abuse of the Angeles National Forest is to add more forest rangers and police. Currently there is not enough funding. More attention needs to be drawn to this issue immediately with great urgency. We need to protect our forests from vandals, poachers, recreationally irresponsible/uneducated and the polluters.
This is not a cultural hurdle but a human hurdle. Until the budget is available to police these offenders, we need to band together and volunteer.
I don’t think it should open all the way up regardless. That particular area is even more erosion heavy than the many wacky sections of the ACH that keep having issues (and thank everything that’s finally open again!) Even in the photo you posted from Kratka ridge, you can see all the rock fall area digging clear patches in the slopes both above and below the road. Everything I’ve ever read about it implies it was pretty much always a terrible idea of a road. That said, I’m psyched for them to reopen it *to* Crystal Lake, so I can finally go see some of that stuff!
I went up 39 many times in the 60′s and 70′s. Beyond Crystal Lake there are several very narrow, sharply curved sections (with breathtaking drop- offs and views) that required drivers to go slow and carefully pass folks coming down. One winter I was rewarded for the effort with a hike around Islip Saddle after an ice storm. Every tree, pine needle, rock and shrub was encased in 1/4 inch of crystal clear ice, and the ground was covered in 6 to 12 inch billows of long feathery ice crystals. The most reasonable solution to reopening 39 to Angeles Crest is a toll road. Ten or twenty dollars toll per car might be enough to justify the effort and expense for repairs, and discourage overuse that often leads to misuse. Passing through the toll booth could require signing liability waivers that make sure that visitors could be held responsible for their own safety and any damage they did. Pull a pine cone off a tree, get arrested. Litter, get arrested. Once the rules are plainly explained, most folks are smart enough to play safely. But if they can not, hey, they signed a waiver!!
I think John’s idea is the best I’ve heard yet. Kudos John
I would like it if I could camp up at Crystal Lake once again. If paying a toll will allow me to take my family camping this close to home i would be willing to pay the 10 or 20 bucks to to show my son how wonderful our local mountains really are. Also if paying a toll will keep out the people who don’t know how to clean up after them selves it would make it that much easier to pay.
I do not think you want people to see 39 as a short cut to Wrightwood, etc. There’s no way I want motor homes and flocks of marginal drivers on that road. I think a gate, just North of Crystal lake again, would be good. If Caltrans wants to rehabilitate 39 enough to be safe for emergency vehicles all the way to highway 2 that’s fine, but no through traffic.
A better use would be to build a parking lot at a point north of the Lake, gate it there and have hiking and biking only, along the stretch from Crystal Lake up to Highway 2, that’s a beautiful stretch. I’m just not sure it’s worth the money right now.
I cycled up the 39 yesterday and made it all the way to Islip saddle (and the last part took quite a bit of work). Lemme tell you, that last part of the road is just terrible!
The road up to Crystal lake is in pretty good shape – I can think if only one spot in need of some work, but they have some machine there now so it seems they are taking care of it.
After Crystal lake, the road is in disarray. Rockfall everywhere. As I was cycling / walking up it, the sheer cliffs to my right were constantly dropping more rocks. I mean they just literally tried to cut this road out of the side of Mt Islip…the way it is constructed, there’s no way they can prevent rockfall. Oh and in two locations 1/2 the road has been eviscerated. That part of the road should never be opened again.
http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=570680
Thanks for the update, Zé!
Supposedly Caltrans will be completed with their highway work this year before Summer begins, or at least before August, and the campgrounds should be re-opened — which means hiking and biking up and down the highway will have to compete with cars again, alas.
I was just up the 39 a few weeks ago, having only lived in the California for a short time I was unaware that the 39 didn’t go through to the 2, but that’s no big deal. I thought maybe they shut it down due to last years station fire. We stopped a 1/2 mile or so before the closed gate to go for a short hike along the river/creek. All I can say is I am extremely disappointed/disgusted at the condition of the area. There were huge piles of trash from peoples picnics, human feces & toilet paper next to the water (about 50 yards from the outhouses), Graffiti on the rocks both in the middle of the river/creek and all over the rock walls & wash, numerous piles of beer cans, plastic bottles, the list could go on and on about how much litter there was. And if you are familiar with the area, there are at least 5 dumpster/trash cans within walking distance to where all this litter was. I’m from Michigan and have never seen the amount of litter and disrespect of nature as I did while going on a maximum 1/2 mile hike. So with that being said, I’d have to say don’t open that remaining stretch of the road to anyone, ever. It will only end up looking like a garbage dump.
Latrobe, I know exactly what you mean and agree with everything, if the highway remained closed, there would be a long section that isn’t covered in shit and garbage and then spray painted.
It’s frustrating. The few remaining USFS people can spend only some of their time collecting litter and trash, hauling it to the highway, and scheduling a truck to pick up the mountain of garbage, and in any given day they’re able to pick up only a small percentage of the garbage in exchange for hard, unpleasant, sweaty work.
To add to the frustration, seasonal hired help has been eliminated, and seasonal people who are trained and paid to collect the garbage safely and get it hauled away properly just don’t exist any more. Hired seasonal help used to be able to get in there and get as much as 30% or so of the garbage hauled out of a section in a given day, returning over 3 or 4 more days to clean out a section of river, then move on. That doesn’t happen any more, there’s no money to hire people trained and willing to do that job.
Volunteers can go through and collect a huge amount of garbage safely, but it has to be coordinated and all the garbage has to be scheduled for collection — and some times even horse and mule volunteers have to be arranged.
It’s annoying. The USFS people *can* do the job, they *can* at least keep up with the beshitting and be-spraypainting if they had enough people. But not only have employees been laid off, seasonal employees banned from being hired, but existing budgets continue to get cut back and back.
So we get trash-strewn waterways, USFS employees and volunteers unable to keep up with the assets that they have.
What’s just as frustrating is that I know some of the USFS employees who spend their own money some times buying supplies they need to scrape off spray paint, chip at painted stones, swamp out toilets. They’re forbidden from doing so, of course, but they have to do it as part of their jobs.
It’s a problem where there are some 22 million to 24 million people who have recreation access to the San Gabriels in those canyons and there’s not enough USFS people or volunteers to keep up.
Did you happen to see a guy wearing a gray felt hat on Saturdays and Sundays picking up garbage along the highway using a “litter picker?” That’s a volunteer, a guy named Alan, and he’s up there every week end collecting trash, doing it because he loves those mountains and he feels a duty to pick up after A-types who trash up the forest.
I wonder if there is any other forest in the United States that provides recreation opportunities for so many people and yet have an annual operating budget the equal to some households.
Any way, my hat’s off in respect to the people who are out there cleaning things up, even if they’re utterly swamped and unable to keep up.
I didn’t even know that the road was closed. I did a lot of camping and hiking in that area with the Boy Scouts. I left the area in 1980 and now I live at the other end interstate 10. Keep the road closed, the necks will tear it up.
I would like to see Highway 39 completed again. I am an amateur radio operator living in the Pasadena area. I will be working the AC100 [Angeles Crest 100 mile foot race from Wrightwood to LaCanada] providing radio communication since many rest stops are out of cellphone range. I will be working at Islip saddle and will have to go clear out to highway 15 and come in from the east [this adds 56 miles each way to my volunteer work and I have to be there at 6 am (get up at 4 am)] Yes I’m only one person and I have seen all the high tech bikers running the road, but it still would be nice.
Bill Brinkley