Buckhorn: May, 2016

(Remember that you can click on the photos to see a slideshow, and then hit "escape" to get back to the text. Also, a note on the photo credits: as always, both Felice and I took these shots, and many of my shots resulted from her suggestions.  I do the photo editing using Lightroom; my goal is to reproduce just what we saw, as faithfully as possible.)

On a whim (the only way to travel!), we spent a few days in the Angeles National Forest at Buckhorn Campground.  It was close to home, and the weather was cool, so why not?

May 22:  It took us two hours to get from home to the campground, which is at around 6500 feet.  It really felt like the Eastern Sierra, even though we were a little more than 30 air miles from downtown LA:

We had time that afternoon for a short hike on the Burkhart Trail, down to some little waterfalls not far from the campground:

May 23:  We hiked the Mt. Islip trail, which climbs about 1500 feet in roughly 3 miles.  In cool weather, this was a very pleasant and well-graded hike, following the Pacific Crest Trail for much of the way.  The snow had just melted, and those very strange "snow plants" (sarcodes sanguinea) were popping up here and there:

Here is an action-packed video, showing how that photo was taken, with the fog swirling around behind me:

There was a ruined hut just below the summit of Mt. Islip:

The peak was surrounded by a layer of clouds:

This is a 30 second time exposure, showing the clouds flowing from west to east through Islip Saddle.  Mt. Pinos, about 80 miles away, is on the horizon:

On the way back down, we passed through a field of western wallflowers:

May 24:  We hiked from the campground down the Burkhart Trail to Cooper Falls.  The lupine were blooming along the sunny hillsides:

This is a close-up looking down on a lupine blossom -- a very intricate structure:

As we passed through a talus slope, we spotted a medium-sized rattlesnake right by the trail, enjoying the warm sunshine – I would estimate that he was about 2 inches thick and about 4 feet long:

In order to get down to the waterfall, we had to clamber down a cliff using a rope -- this photo makes it look harder than it really was: