Mt. Whitney Training | Hike #2 | Mt. Baden Powell

In case you missed it, this past spring my husband and I were training for Mt. Whitney (which no, we sadly didn’t get a chance to do, thank you fires), which involved lots of Southern California hikes. Our first hike was El Cajon Mountain in San Diego. Next up: Mount Baden Powell in Angeles National Forest. This hike was a good one to ease into the future hikes at elevation that we had planned for training. It also had quite a bit of switchbacks, which if you’ve heard anything about Whitney, you know about the 99 switchbacks. I can imagine this was a good way to mentally prepare for those.

We headed to the mountains early on a Saturday morning to get to the trailhead before it was too late, as we heard that parking can fill up fast on weekends. Plus side of the early start: gorgeous morning light as we started the hike.

This was a fun hike to do! I loved being in the mountains, feeling the impacts of the higher elevation, and enjoying the quietness from a morning hike. We did go earlier in the year and hit a few patches with snow, but overall the trail was clear and easy to follow.

Loved seeing this flag, knowing we were at the summit! As you can tell though, it was quiiite windy, which also made it pretty cold. We were grateful to have our down jackets.

I loved being at the top, seeing the flat landscape stretch out on one side, and the fog socked in on the other side, as you can sort of see from the picture below. It was really interesting to be above it all after driving through some of it on the way to the trailhead.