Mount Baden Powell
Katharine Lee Bates who wrote " America the Beautiful" must have had that familiar feeling of awe and wonderment every hiker experiences as she bagged Colorado's Pikes Peak in the summer of 1893.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For Amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties,
Above the fruited plain
America, America
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea ro shining sea.
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It was I who have been calling on mountains. No mountains ever called me back but I love them just the same. As usual, it's just me and myself sauntering the 40 switchbacks of the 40th hike of the 52 hike challenge I am doing this year. Twelve more and I would complete the challenge. I belt out a slightly modified Rachel Platten's refrain making sure nobody was within hearing distance.
This is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I'm not old song
My power's turned on
Starting right now I'll be strong
I'll play my fight song
And I don't really care if nobody believes me
'Cause I still have a lot of fight in me.
Cheesy, but good!
So I keep going:
Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee!
The trailhead to get to Mount Baden Powell is not hard to find. Turning left into SR-138 at the Cajon Junction from I-15, pay attention to the a sign for Wrightwood. The trailhead past downtown Wrightwood and a USFS ranger station is well marked with a Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) marker. I have been wanting to hike this north eastern portion of the San Gabriel mountains for a long time. The mountain that was named after Lord Baden Powell, the British officer who started Boy Scouts is sometimes referred to as East Baldy or North Baldy.
Past the markers around the trailhead are conifers endemic to the San Gabriel mountains. These cone-bearing trees with needle-like leaves give the trail shade and its pristine effect. The heavily traffic trail is one of the most maintained trails I have hiked in the Angeles National Forest.
According to Lao Tzu, "what is firmly rooted cannot be pulled out." At the junction of the trail to the summit and the PCT stands a gnarled limber pine tree estimated to be older than 1,500 years. This living fossil is named Wally Waldron tree, after Michael H. "Wally" Waldron who was a member of the executive board of the LA area council of the Boy Scouts.
Just like Mount Baldy, Mount Baden Powell is bald at the top. There's this theory that some mountains are bald in some areas because the climate is too warm to support alpine zones in high elevations. Trees are sparse due to short or non-existent growing seasons the closer they are to the summit.
According to Charled Darwin, "it is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent but rather, the one most adaptable to change." Just like the gnarled and solitary trees that has withstood time at the Mount Baden Powell summit, hikers of all skill level and age come and withstand the challenge of hiking this 9,407 feet in elevation summit.
This one is from Lieutenant General Robert Baden Powell, a British Army officer, writer, founder and first Chief Scout of the worldwide boy scout movement and also brother to Agnes Baden Powell, founder of the worldwide girl scout movement:
"Try to leave this world a little better than you found it and, when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time but have done your best."
https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/how-30-minutes-on-top-of-pikes-peak-inspired-america-the-beautiful/
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