My dog Cisco and I arrived at the Forsee Creek Trail parking lot (about 7,000 feet) at around 8:30. The turnoff to John's Meadow is a few hundred yards or so from the parking lot, but I somehow missed it (I think I was looking for rattlesnakes) and we continued up the Forsee Creek trail. We negotiated a number of snow patches as we climbed, and as the snow patches got deeper and longer I began to wonder whether I had missed the John's Meadow Trail. I hadn't been on the trail since about 1991, but I remembered it as being a lot less steep than the trail we were on. Finally, about one and a half miles up (roughly 8,000 feet) we encountered a patch of snow that would be simply too much for the beginning OCHBC backpackers to tackle, so we turned around, keeping an eye out as we headed back down for the John's Meadow Trail junction sign.
Eventually we found the sign, of course, and so we headed on up to John's Meadow.
There were only a few small patches of snow on the trail for most of the way. The trail never really gets much higher than 7,300 feet.
A lot of the photos from this hike look crappy because I had my camera on the entire time and as it bounced against my shirt various controls like white balance and auto focus were being reconfigured without my knowledge. I had to Photoshop most of them just to make them look reasonable. Some of them were exposed so badly I couldn't use them at all. Note to self: next time turn the camera off between shots.
There is only one stretch of snow on the John's Meadow Trail I think anyone will have any trouble with. It's long and exposed, with a steep drop (though there are some trees about thirty feet down the slope, so no one will be falling very far), plus you have to get over that downed snag.
I watched a troop of backpacking Boy Scouts, including a middle aged female adult leader with an articulated knee brace, negotiate it, so it can't be that bad. I decided next week's trip is a go.
There are about five or six downed snags blocking the trail. It is really sad to see the damage the bark beetles have been doing to the trees.
A few week's ago, Hikin' Jim mentioned the avalanche that swept through John's Meadow in 2005. The damage it left behind is almost unbelievable, three years later:
John's Meadow trail camp is much as I remember it, all these years later:
On the way down the trail, I noticed there was a fire burning in the San Gabriel Mountains, maybe in Cajon Canyon:
So what was supposed to be a seven-mile hike ended up as about a ten mile hike.
More photos here.
