Montrose Search and Rescue – Little Girl’s Parents Disappear Down an Ice Chute Our San Gabriel Mountains are treacherous enough with their steep mountainsides of slippery broken granite but in the winter, a whole new range of dangers introduces iteslf. A very deadly one is the phenomenon of “ice chutes.” After each of our […]
Montrose Search and Rescue – Little Girl’s Parents Disappear Down an Ice Chute Our San Gabriel Mountains are treacherous enough with their steep mountainsides of slippery broken granite but in the winter, a whole new range of dangers introduces iteslf. A very deadly one is the phenomenon of “ice chutes.” After each of our […]
Rockhaven Sanitarium’s 95th Birthday – Realizing A Dream in Verdugo City In January 1923, a young nurse named Agnes Richards came to the Crescenta Valley following a dream. She dreamed of a sanctuary for women with mental illness. She had worked her way up in some of the toughest mental hospitals around, from a […]
Montrose Search and Rescue – Saving Nearly 600 People Trapped on Mt. Wilson It was a gorgeous Easter Sunday in April 1965. Snow covered the San Gabriel Mountains but the springtime sun pushed the temps into the 70s. Scores of motorists made the drive up Angeles Crest Highway, turning onto the narrow twisting road that […]
Montrose Search and Rescue – Lost Women Hikers Kept Their Wits Longtime friends Nancy and Vicki were young, just out of their teens, when they planned an overly ambitious hike one Saturday in January 1988. Their day hike was to be from Trail Canyon in Big Tujunga to the top of Condor Peak, looping back […]
Montrose Search and Rescue – Plane Down in Dunsmore Canyon On a very foggy morning in June 1969, three 13-year-old boys set out on a hike up Dunsmore Canyon. At the same time at Van Nuys Airport, four young college students, one of them an inexperienced pilot, climbed into a single engine plane for a […]
Canyon Name Origins – Arroyo Seco Continuing eastward, we find one last canyon, and it’s a big one. The Arroyo Seco begins almost at Mount Wilson, twists its way through the San Gabriel Mountains, and exits the mountains to form a natural eastern border of La Cañada. It continues south through Pasadena and Eagle Rock […]
Canyon Name Origins – Winery Canyon, Hay Canyon, Gould Canyon Winery Canyon – This small, dry canyon is immediately above the old Hall Ranch property. No roads reach it, but it can be seen from the intersection of Alta Canyada and Hacienda. The canyon is named for the Hall Ranch winery, which operated out of […]
Canyon Name Origins – Snover Canyon, Webber Canyon, Hall-Beckley Canyon Snover Canyon – This small canyon is visible if one drives to the end of Canalda Drive off Ocean View. It’s an oak-wooded dry canyon with a tiny trail running a little way up it. It runs down the mountain from east to west but, […]
Canyon Name Origins – Sutton Canyon, Mullally Canyon Two large canyons feed into Pickens Canyon from the east side, and both have histories involving logging. The uppermost canyon is Sutton Canyon. It’s visible looking across Pickens Canyon from Briggs Terrace at the intersection of Manzanita and Canyonside. Sadly, we don’t know the origin of its […]