Mt. Baldy's North Backbone Trail is not a place to be in a thunderstorm. From start to finish it seems you are either on the crest of a ridge, or on or near the summit of a peak.

The photo above is of a spiral lightning scar on a Jeffrey Pine on the trail at the summit of peaklet marked 8555 on the USGS Mount San Antonio quad. The scar appears to be fresh, and could be from a strike that occurred this Summer. Perhaps the most remarkable thing, given the tree's prominent location, is that it hasn't been struck and scarred before.

The photographs are from Sunday's North Backbone Trail Revisited hike and run. A photograph of another Jeffrey pine that was struck by lightning can be found in the post Three Points - Mt. Waterman Loop.

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Wind-swept Jeffrey Pine and Wave Clouds

I was cold -- but not cold enough to do anything about it. I was chugging up the final steep step on Mt. Baldy's exposed northern flank and didn't want to stop. Strong winds were gusting out of the northeast, and the effective temperature had to be in the thirties. Mountain wave clouds paralleled the San Gabriels, stretching in a line from southwest of Mt. Baldy to beyond Mt. Williamson.

Lodgepole Pine and Distorted Mountain Wave Cloud

As I drove under the ski lift on the narrow dirt road, I wondered if I was in the right place. I had turned off of Angeles Crest Highway a few minutes before, and hoped I was still on Blue Ridge Road. My intended destination was an isolated turnout that serves as the trailhead for the North Backbone Trail. This classic trail follows a roller-coastering ridgeline to Mt. Baldy's broad 10,064' summit. Bouncing along the dirt road, I surveyed the sky. The forecast had been for partly cloudy skies, but the morning had dawned overcast and crimson red, and now there was talk of rain. Autumn in the mountains is like that.

Vibrant green with lustrous leaves in the Spring, Poison Oak (Toxicodendron diversilobum) generally becomes less vivid with age, eventually turning red in the late Summer and Fall. The red color is due to anthocyanin pigments in the plant's sap that become unmasked as the leaf loses chlorophyll.

Brown seed stalks of Curly Dock (Rumex crispus) amid dried grasses and mustard on Laskey Mesa in Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve (formerly Ahmanson Ranch).

Curly dock is a non-native invasive weed from Eurasia. The Cal-IPC Invasive Plant Inventory describes its impact as limited.

From a run at Ahmanson on September 13, 2006.

Sylvan Hairstreak (Satyrium sylvinus) on California Goldenrod (Solidago californica) at Sage Ranch Park.

A Southern Pacific Rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus helleri) at Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve (formerly Ahmanson Ranch).

Photograph of Foxtail Pine from the Cottonwood - New Army Pass Loop September 2, 2006.

The climb up the glacially sculpted canyon hadn't been too bad. How could it be on a day like this? Winds were light, and the temperature was refreshingly cool – perfect for running in shorts and a lightweight long-sleeve top. As I had worked up the Rock Creek trail, marmots, fat for the Winter, had whistled warnings of my approach and then waddled for cover. Amicable clouds embellished the high mountain sky, and sun-chased shadows quietly set the pace.

In late September 2005, the Topanga Fire burned many thousands of acres in the Simi Hills. One of the side effects of the fire was to reveal the extent of the refuse that was in the creek bed that runs east-west between Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory and Sage Ranch.

My plan had been to run out the Misha Mokwa Trail to the Backbone Trail, and then head west towards Sycamore Canyon. I needed to be back in the Valley before noon, so about an hour out I would head back. Running past Echo Cliffs, I tried to pick out some of the steep climbing routes, and contemplated delicately perched Balance Rock.

A bracket fungus (prob. Laetiporus gilbertsonii) on a burned eucalyptus in the Simi Hills.