Forest managers restrict summit approaches after heavy snow and rescue operations — check official alerts before heading into the San Gabriels.
Mount Baldy is close enough to the city that people treat it like a day hike, which is why the latest extended closure matters. When winter turns the ridgelines to ice, the mountain stops being a fairly strenuous stroll and becomes a treacherous mountaineering adventure that can kill the underprepared and the overconfident.
Forest Service signs off on new e-bike branches, restroom-equipped parking and wayfinding. Construction slated for June 2026.
I get inspired the same way I learned to write—by doing it. When I was a kid, I just wrote because nothing was standing between me and a blank page of onion-skin typing paper loaded into a Smith Corona typewriter.
I used to be a writer, and the best thing about it was that there was no expectation; I wrote, and no one expected anything. It was private work—messy drafts, late-night notes, parcels of thought I could toss out or keep without explanation. That freedom is the engine of getting better: you try things that look stupid on the page, you fail fast, and you learn what’s worth rescuing. There’s a calm in knowing nobody’s billing you for your honest mistakes.