Awesome Hike, Terrible Parking Pass System

Do I just want to rant endlessly about the ridiculousness of the Big Pines Pass and how poorly it is being handled? Kind of. But I’ll cut it down to the useful info. Mountain High’s website is useless in terms of info about where to get their special Big Pines Pass. One of the places listed that you can buy the pass, Grassy Hollow Visitors Center, actually burned down in 2024. But in a blog post from April of this year they list it as a place you can go. Another place they say you can go is Mountain High’s North Lodge, which was totally closed up with no staff when I went today. So I had to drive all the way down to Wrightwood to go to the market there to get a one day pass. The directions I had to the trail did not take me through Wrightwood so I had to double back twice to go get this pass.  Could I have just payed at the lot with the self pay? Sure, if I knew that was an option and I brought cash because cash is the only way you can pay. Oh and it’s also $10 to self pay as opposed to the $5 for the day pass so they actually charge you double to self pay. Am I still mad about all this and the extra 30 minutes I spent detouring to get this dumb pass? Yes but I am mainly mentioning it on here to help others not go through this mess, especially since the road to Vincent Gap just reopened and now you can finally park at that lot (if you want) to hike Baden-Powell. In case you don’t know they will not honor any other passes like America The Beautiful and tickets for not having the Big Pines Pass are rumored to be $130. The hike was great and its a nice challenge. Not sure it’s worth all the hoops to jump through and a separate pass just for this place but still I’m glad I got to go do it again. According to my AllTrails the hike was 8.11 miles round trip with 2,808 ft of elevation gain.