Its been quite a while since I've sat down and added something to this blog. School has started, and my internship is continuing at least through the end of this semester, so I've become significantly more busy. I've missed posting stuff though. There's lots that has happened. Maybe I'll fill in some of the gaps and set the post-date back to the time the events took place.
First, however, is an illustrated summary of a somewhat impromptu trip to Mount Wilson. Mount Wilson is in the San Gabriel mountains behind Los Angeles, and at its peak rises 5715 feet above sea level making it one of the taller points in the vicinity. There's an
observatory at the summit which is open to the public every day that the access road is passable, which generally means from April to November. Unfortunately, it was closed for the day by the time we arrived. Nonetheless, the trip was outstanding in and of itself and was a great opportunity to escape the gridlocked city for a while.
To begin, one takes Highway 2 north of LA, past Pasadena. This road eventually turns into the wonderfully named Angeles Crest Highway. It isn't long before the San Gabriel mountains begin to loom up in front.
The road narrows and the mountains begin to close in on you from both sides. Ears pop. I was tempted to roll down the window to get some of these pictures, but the outside temperature at 1 in the afternoon was 97*F (36*C) so to keep cool the windows stayed rolled up. I predicted (incorrectly) that as we drove higher it would get cooler. I had been along this road once before several years ago in August, in the middle of the night, to catch a meteor shower, and remembered it being uncofmortably cold. The temperature fluctuation in a 24 hr period must really be something to experience.
We passed signs that indicated what lay ahead and provided helpful ways to remember that driving off a cliff is not the desired way to pass an afternoon.
The first vista point we pulled off at showed how far we'd already come in half an hour. It really amazed me, throughout the trip, how quickly we progressed. I've never sensed that this wilderness was so close by. Looking at the picture, you can see downtown Los Angeles in the distance almost totally obscured by brown hazy smog. Dramatic, but also depressing.
Looking South towards Los Angeles...
Looking North towards the mountains...
The roads were surprisingly empty for a Saturday, which was a relief, since the winding road was difficult enough in places without having to worry about the Porche behind you whose fun you were entirely ruining. More vista points, more scenery:
Although it was nearly 100*F, apparently the roads get pretty rough in the winter. Also, someone didn't seem to like the fact that chains were required (see shotgun hole in sign). We continued up the mountain, and Los Angeles receeded further into the smoggy distance...
Surprisingly soon, we found ourselves making real progress up the mountain and the vista points began to get more and more impressive. At one point we turned off where in the '20's a cog-wheeled railroad had run passengers up and down one of the inclines. It was beautiful up there. The only noise after shutting the car doors behind us was the sound of the hot wind in the fir trees. Up there you really started to feel as though you were on the roof of Southern California.
Looking North you could see the San Gabriel mountains continuing as far as the eye could see. Exploration for another day.. today we were going to the top of Mount Wilson. The roads were in really good condition, which was surprising since they were literally hewn out of the cliffside as you can see from the photo. At some points the rock wall was literally hanging over our heads as we drove underneath. Note: this trip gave me a chance to get familiar with a polarizing filter I'd bought several months ago. I was really pleased with what it allowed me to do.. but it has the tendency at wide angles to produce some vignetting (the fuzzy black around the corners). Sometimes thats a pain, other timesI think its alright. In any event, it really helped save some of the skies that would otherwise have been much more washed out.
The peak of Mount Wilson turned out to be absolutely covered with telemetry. There was a veritable forest of communication towers laden with antennae and dishes of every variety. Unfortunately, the observatory had just closed by the time we arrived, so we contented ourselves with examining in greater detail the crown of electronics:
I'll have to go up here again sometime to get a look at the observatory. The
observatory at Griffith Park, some 4000 feet below, was really cool but its been closed for refurbishment for the last 4 years. I'd love to see the inside of one of the big telescopes, and I'd bet the view from their observation deck is pretty stunning. Next time. We headed back down the mountain, and in just over an hour, were back in the thick of things in downtown Los Angeles. Now that I know that all of this is so close at hand, I guess I don't have any excuse not to get out here more often.
Note: I think i'll put a couple more pics (different ones) on my
Flickr.. so check there if interested.
The Los Angeles River is known around these parts as being more of an industrial drainage ditch than a river. The usual image that comes to mind is of sickly green water trickling down the middle of a vast concrete depression wide enough that cars have raced along it in countless movies. So I was pleasantly surprised when a friend of mine showed me the way it looked by her house. The river was still bordered by sloping concrete, but the greenery had found a way to take root in the bottom and renew a small amount of the lost natural beauty the river once held. If you didn't look too closely at the garbage strewn about, and ignored the faint odor, it was actually a very pleasant spot. I've tried to capture that aspect of it in the picture here, and the other photos on flickr. Unfortunately for the water in this picture, the journey ahead is not pretty.
