April 30, 2016
Time to embrace the Saddleback hike up Holy Jim Trail. I had been dreading this hike for a long time. Last year we hiked up the Joplin trail to the top of Modjeska Peak which is the back hump of the saddle or the second tallest peak of the San Gabriel Mountains, Santiago Peak being the highest. The Joplin trail seemed to be straight up for 7.5 miles and nearly took all day to do. Saddleback mountain was about the same but it didn’t seem as steep as the Joplin trail. We got to the top in a little less than 3 hours, which was quite fast.
When we first started to hike the trail we threw on some ponchos due to some light rain and it continued most of the trail up. We didn’t see any sun until we got to the second part of the Holy Jim Trail after you reach the road. We probably had only 20 minutes of sunlight pass over until we started our descent. The top was quite cold and our clothes had been soaked because of the rain on the way up so we were quite chilly at the top. My shirt was drenched in sweat and water and made me freezing. Fortunately for me, I brought a light sweater to change into and was feeling better from with that.
The hike up Saddleback was similar to going up Los Pinos but adding another 1000 feet and a couple more miles. It still felt like we flew to the top quite quickly and then the descent was long and never seemed to end. I kept thinking how fun it would be to ride down it on my bike. Even going up it didn’t seem like it would be that bad, after all we did have some bikers pass us on the way up and the way down going both directions.
We started about 7:45am and got back to the car around 2:45ish pm. It was quite a long day but it was worth the workout. See some of our pics below.
