My ski poles in the foreground show the dimensions of this guy, who has the height to captain the Cactus Lakers (Photo – Reg Green)

For hundreds of square miles north of where we live, the terrain is the same: a chain of arid mountains cut by valleys so steep-sided and so tightly covered by vegetation that you can’t imagine anyone being able to cover more than a few miles of them on foot.

By Reg Green

Both north and south of it are bustling cities but here no one lives and not many animals either. But the one exception in this wilderness, the Arroyo Seco, the only year-round stream for many miles around, has enough water in it at present that the only way to cross at the weir a couple of miles upstream from JPL is to risk a drenching by balancing precariously on driftwood brought down by the late rains.

Close to the water the plant life, instead of the low parched bushes found almost everywhere else in these mountains, includes big gnarled trees, giant cacti and undergrowth that looks as if it would be more at home in a jungle. A thousand feet up the precipitous canyon walls you can glimpse cars on Angeles Crest Highway. But it might as well be a thousand miles. In the Arroyo you are in a strangely unsettling world. Add to that June gloom and this is not a realtor’s Southern California. It is, however, an invigorating journey for everyone else.

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