In the extra-wet rainy season of 2004-2005, a rockslide heavily damaged sections of the historic dirt road used to haul the Mount Wilson Telescope to the summit. For the past five years, crews have been hard at work stabilizing and reinforcing the route, and it looks like the entire road will be fully re-opened within the next few weeks, according to the Pasadena Star-News.
The locked gate on Pinecrest Drive is currently open to hikers and mountain bikers, and only a small section of the road near the bridge crossing Eaton Canyon is still being worked on.
The Old Mount Wilson Toll Road is a fairly steep, 3.75 9 mile (one-way) winding route to the Mount Wilson tower farm, observatory, and visitor’s center.
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Hey Guys, this is excellent news. I also agree that this is one of the best hiking blogs I have ever visited. Keep up the great work!
This is indeed great news, and ModernHiker is a daily read for me. Thanks! A nit to pick, though. Unless I misunderstood where you’re measuring from, the Mount Wilson toll road is more like 8 or 9 miles than 3.75, one way.
aha! I’ve always been curious on what they were working on in Eaton Canyon. Thanks for the new hike idea!
PS – James, Casey is the Jack Bauer of hiking. He can make a 9 mile trek in just 3.75 miles.
Thanks for the kind words and Bauer comparisons — yes, I was off on the distance of the Toll Road. I was writing from somewhere without access to my maps, and was going off the Star-News’s numbers … which were very, very wrong. The distance is indeed 9 miles one way, not 3.75. I wonder where they got the numbers!
Maybe they just put down the distance to Henninger Flats? That seems about 3.75 miles or so doesn’t it?
I (like many others) used to do this hike all the time, but the damage to the “Toll Road” was so severe, I thought that it would not be open again in my lifetime. So this is indeed wondrous news. View are fairly spectacular past Henninger, and there are also some interesting side trips one can take — e.g., into the Mt. Lowe trail system.
By the way, whatever happened to the Altadena Crest Trail project? That trail (a real trail rather than a fire road) starts in the other direction at the beginning of the Toll Road. A year ago — more, actually — I attended a hearing in Altadena on plans to restore it, alternate routes back to the Mt. Lowe/Millard area, etc. I put my name on a list to be notified of subsequent hearings, but then — nothing happened. It seemed to me that many people at that hearing were older local homeowners who were not sympathetic to hikers. Does anyone know what happened?
It is good news that they are reopening the trail finally. The Toll Road is the easiest access to the front range of the San Gabriel Mountains. It is also one of the really good mountain bike trails.
To answer Lendall’s question about the Altadena Crest Trail. When the toll road was closed by the slide, the gate on Pinecrest Drive was permanently locked and I think the then limited access to the Altadena Crest Trail made it fall into disrepair and disuse. The homeowners near Pinecrest Drive are still a formidable force against trail access.
There is an article about the trail reopening in the LA Times online:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mount-wilson21-2009aug21,0,3180327.story
My blog about the Toll Road with current trail information is at:
http://mtwilsontollroad.swcamborne.com/
Is this the road that Albert Einstein used to get to Mt. Wilson when he was in town???