March 16, 2008

• PhotoPost: The Snow Capped San Gabriel Mountains

  

  I've been itching to get out and take some photos but gas is more expensive than ever, and I just had to pay a whopping $669.00 for belt service on my car, which recently passed the 99,500 mile marker on the odometer. Winds whipped away the storms which were predicted on Friday night and Saturday, so Sunday morning dawned clear and brisk, with deep blue skies and lots of fluffy clouds. Mt. Baldy and some of the taller San Gabriels had snow on them, so I decided to take some photos of the mountains, which I haven't featured in a PhotoPost here on Xanga yet.

  

  I didn't want to drive far. I took the Harbor 110 Freeway north to the Artesia 91 Freeway East, then got off on Lakewood Blvd, which becomes Rosemead Blvd and heads to the hills northward. At numerous stoplights, like here in the city of Pico Rivera, I pulled out the camera and shot the snowcapped San Gabriels from inside the car. (Because the car doesn't have a top, I don't have to shoot through the windshield!)

  

  Now, farther north, but still on Rosemead Blvd, in Rosemead, where I attended high school back in the late 60s/ early 70s, the mountain range is getting a bit taller. Because Rosemead Blvd. curves a couple of times, the snow capped peaks are over to the right, and can't be seen in this photo.

  

  Here I'm shooting through a chain link fence to the right of Rosemead Blvd, in order to capture Mt. Baldy in all her early spring grandeur. I took some photos without the chain link, but I like the framing effect evident here. There was not much of a cloud cover when I started out at noon, but the brisk winds blew more and more of them into the valley as I kept going northward.

  

  I liked this giraffe statue in Temple City, so stopped the car to get some shots. I wanted to get him with the mountain range in back of him, but the sign for the business on the corner lot was right behind his neck. This shot is looking West, as he surveys the traffic on Rosemead Blvd.

  

  This is the view of the mountain range in the city of East Pasadena, right before I got on the Foothill 210 Freeway East heading toward Highway 39, which snakes into the foothills and up into the mountains.

  

  I got off the 210 Freeway at Azusa Avenue, Highway 39, and stopped in the city of Azusa to get some shots of these crepe myrtle blossoms. You can see my convertible next to the antique street lamp. There's a neat mural painted on the wall of the building to my car's right, and it will be in the webshots folder when I get all 290 photos online.

  

  I love the tall palm trees along both sides of the road just before Highway 39 starts to climb into the mountains. The clouds were magnificent. Here is just one of about a dozen shots I took on this stretch of road.

  

  Now I'm on the winding two lane road into the San Gabriels. This is a dam on the North Fork of the San Gabriel river, which was pretty full in a lot of areas in the Angeles National Forest.

  

  This is just a shot looking back toward where I've come from, on one of the turnouts. The sky was beginning to fill with more clouds. I started late, at about noon, so it's about 3:30pm when I took this shot.

  

  I pulled out my videocamera and shot some footage of this babbling brook, part of the north fork of the river. There were a couple dozen folks wading in the brook. We all were parked on the winding road. When I finished taking photos, I found a "ticket" on my car. It seems that the Angeles National Forest has parking tickets now, if you don't have a National Parks sticker, which costs $5.00. At least the "ticket" is just the price of the pass, so I just have to mail a check for $5.00 to the National Parks Service.

  

  Sadly, I could only drive about 3000 feet up into the mountains. Here I'm about 2500 feet up, surrounded by 5000 foot peaks. It was a weird experience driving up into the San Gabriels today. I haven't been up in these mountains for about 20 years. I used to drive my Volkswagen up to Mt. Baldy all the time when I lived in Glendora. One great perk to living in Southern California is a close proximity to not only an ocean, but a mountain range as well.

  

  A view of one of the dammed reservoirs on the north fork of the San Gabriel River. We followed the driest season on record with one of the wettest, so there was lots of water in the river, and the reservoirs were all pretty full.

  

  There were lots of burned and charred trees along the roadway, courtesy of the last couple of extreme fire seasons the Southland experienced. I parked the car a few yards beyond this tree and walked back to get a few photos of the cloudscape background with the charred tree in the foreground. This is the best shot.

  

  Another charred tree on the side of the road, backed with the mountain range. I had followed Highway 39 as far as it would take me before they closed the road, then drove along East Fork road to Glendora Mountain Road, and headed back toward the city of Glendora, where I lived while in college. I possibly could have driven up to Mt. Baldy. A sign said the road was open, but it was past 5 p.m. and I wanted to get going on the road home.

  

  Believe it or not, that small clump of buildings in the far distance are the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles. I am still about 500 feet in the foothills, standing on a ridge, to take this photo. I got as high as 3000 feet before I had to turn around and go back down. Since the snow caps are higher up, and farther into the forest, I didn't get any real good shots of "Alpine" type landscapes.

  

  Another dam, this time off of Glendora Mountain Road, right before the two lane highway becomes a city street about five miles distant.

  

  On the road down the mountain, I shot one last look north, and got some photographers taking shots of the same mountain on another turnout. There were lots of photographers armed with good telephoto lenses and expensive cameras. I wish now I had a better telephoto, but that's something to wish for, and maybe I'll get one sooner than later. As the hours wore on, and the clouds became more dense, and the sun began to sink lower into the sky, I headed home, about 50 miles south, back to the beach, where I live.  EDIT: 9:11 p.m. pdt. I just uploaded eight more photos to the "photoblog", including a shot of the mural mentioned above, more peaks, and even a "self portrait" for those of you who like to see me in my photoposts.

  • 11:07 pm
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