We were SO LUCKY to be able to summit Baden-Powell!  We got in to Vincent Gap right at the trail head!  Little did we know that someone in CalTrans made a boo-boo and forgot to close the first gate well before Vincent Gap!  Us and another group were the only ones that got in before we were closed in!  More about that later; SO GLAD we got to hike it as no other way to get there!  That is why I am putting for Road Conditions as “Road Impassable/Closed” esp likely now after Hilary hit.

Left sometime like 4:30 am from my partner's cabin in the Idy area (as we did for Gorgonio; it's shorter than coming from San Diego).  Woke up to…RAIN!!!!!  That was NOT forecast!!!!

By the time we started driving towards the 10, the rain thankfully had stopped.  We had just a couple pockets.  The drive still was VERY long, as B-P is WAAAAAYYYY out west on the back side of the San Gabriels. off CA-2.  I think it took 2 2 1/2 hours to drive; kind of a blur as didn't log it right away because of the site having issues.

We read the hike has 40 switchbacks.  Pshaw!  We did more than those on the trail to San Jacinto!

When we got to the lot, the highway was closed right after Vincent Gap, where we parked to access the trail.  It started lightly raining, but we had good rain jackets (I was so jazzed my weighs-next-to-nothing one was waterproof!).  There was a group of guys doing it too in prep for things like Langley and Whitney and points overseas etc; they were nice.  We let them go ahead even though they were going about our pace just go be able to hike by ourselves.

The trail was LOVELY, especially after all the obstacles on Gorgonio and just the long day!  It was a different trail than I have been on any of the big mountain hikes.  Brownish kind of forest material; nice and moist and soft and smelled WONDERFUL of earth!  The clouds were SO pretty as the sun had just come up!  The rain stopped after about 15 min in and we saw a rainbow!  So, so pretty!  A gift from my husband who died last year in a horrible head-on collision when this young guy came down a hill at 4:30 am and crossed the double yellow line and hit him head on – he was just going to the desert to do his long, all day favorite desert hike.  He was killed instantly; the kid walked away.  I've seen rainbows right after and a lot since; home and hiking; and those were his favorite, favorite thing.  So it was really cool that Steve was saying hi to us!  A wonderful start to the day!

Baden-Powell has the BEST views of ANY mountain I have been on!  It is kind of like its own “solo” mountain, and you get killer views WAY out north and east and as we went higher up we could even see the start of the SIERRA!  We were right around where the 395 splits off from the 15, so we were looking right up it.  The clouds were amazing; the trail was a consistent, fairly efficient grade.  Just one junction halfway up going to the west, and then up higher, the PCT split off downhill, when getting closer to the summit.  Wonderful trail condition throughout and just us and the boys on the mountain!  We found out later why lol!

We had never been there, and came up to some more barren terrain with less trees, so figured nearing the summit.  The trees on the mountain were AMAZINGLY HUGE, SO MAJESTIC, SO SO HEALTHY!!!!  We went further and then saw what looked like a relative to the Devil's Backbone area.  I was not expecting it and was getting kind of pre-panic-atttacky as I had not been on an area like that in awhile and it was a little breezy with still some clouds.  I stayed with Andrea the entire way but when I saw that I asked if I could go ahead so I could just get it done as fast as possible.

The summit and even going up to it you can just see FOREVER in EVERY DIRECTION!  Could see the Saddleback Mountains in Orange County, I think the Gabriels by the Cajon Pass, could see WAY up to the start of the Sierra, just AMAZING!  There was a flag on top, and I used my lunch plastic zip-lock bag to bag the wet register from the earlier rain.  It was in an open container.

Came down; made decent time left late am as were driving back home.  A lovely hike!  So nice did not even count the switchbacks; trees were awesome, trail so nice and soft – NO rocks!  It was Trail Heaven!

And then – of course – our Adventure du Jour started for this, peak #3!

You can't make this stuff up!!!!!!

Andrea was driving and I noticed some people in orange or red looked like were trying to climb the short but steep mountainside on the right.  We were like, “What the eff are they doing????” Then we saw they had ropes.  “Maybe they are doing some kind of rappelling course??” I told Andrea.  She said “Idk maybe.”

Then we saw some stuff on the road.  As we pulled closer, there were a bunch of smaller rocks and few smaller boulders in the road.  What the heck? A rockslide!  Oh no!

So we pull up and stop.  The one (head) guy yells down to us “What are you doing here?  The road's CLOSED!!!”

And we said, “We got here at 5:45 and the gate was open.  There are 2 or 3 other groups who came the same way same time as us still on the mountain.”

The guy made some remark like we were lying but there was no way we could have snuck in.  I told the guy I do CrossFit (I do) and have rocks on our hill and carried our own rocks and small boulders up for the desert landscape and so they would not roll down my hill.  I said we could help clear the road.

The guy said ok but just the small ones, so we cleared 1/2 the road for just enough space for Andrea's car to go through.  The head guy rappelled down and did the few bigger ones; I lifted bigger on my slope but let him be the shining knight for us.

Drove not even 5 min and another (but tan rather than grey) rock fall was underway.  They all were CalTrans crews loosening the unstable rocks before they could fall on cars and such.  This time the guy said stay in our car and he'd do it.   So it was human-caused rockfall.  Looking back, this was Wed before Hilary hit the next weekend.  I wonder if it made any difference!

Then it was clear sailing to the now-closed gate.  The now-closed and now-locked gate.

We were about to turn around and go back to the tan rock guys (closer) when we saw one of the big CalTrans dump trucks with the “snowplow”/”rockplow” attachment coming towards us.  The guy stopped bit before us – the truck was HUGE!  He was the keymaster and unlocked the gate.  We thanked him, and we told all of them when all were like “What on Earth were you thinking?” that the gate was wide open and we assumed the closure was as it was that day right after the Baden-Powell hike parking area (that closure had some of the road fall away in winter; much harder to fix).

We ended up getting home later that afternoon, with lots of tales of adventure on San G, our little hike before the rain on the Ernie Maxwell 5 mi trail in Idyllwild the day after, then Baden-Powell, which now is really one of my favorites, as it is so pretty, despite the kind of (for me) sketch little part up to the true summit!  SO pretty and SO glad we both did this peak for the first time!