It was great to get back to my Six-Pack of Peaks hikes! At the start of all the COVID19 “stuff” in early March, I was sitting at 10 Peaks completed, with the remaining 8 all covered in snow. I was heading out to REI to purchase the necessary winter mountaineering gear on the day they shut down! Slowly, through research and mail-order, I finally acquired the necessary equipment only to find that access to the trails was restricted! I switched gears and started working on a 100 Peak Challenge in San Diego County and continued to hike daily until I basically ran out of open trails.

My plan for this week was to complete two peaks on my 6POP list, I had picked Mount Baden-Powell for Monday and Sawmill for Tuesday. I think plans are made to be changed LOL, due to a variety of traffic-related issues I scrapped Mount Baden-Powell and pushed on to the trailhead for Sawmill Mountain. I hit the trail around 1 pm, but I figured that even completing the 3-peak challenge of Mt. Pinos, Sawmill, and Grouse mountains, would be doable for an afternoon hike. It was a beautiful day, a little cool and breezy, the parking lot was virtually empty and I ended up only seeing a few people on the trail. After about 6.5 hours of driving and time in traffic, it REALLY felt good to get out and walk.

This was number 11 on my list and number 5 on the list of Alternate Peaks (Baden-Powell being the only one left on that list) I had planned to go back to Mount Baden-Powell on Tuesday, but the data I could get on road closures wasn't too promising. I opted to put that one on hold and planned to complete Cucamonga and Ontario Peaks on Tuesday (which I ultimately did…see those reports) 🙂