Upper Bear Creek Trail Survey

It had been reported by a hiker (David Y.) that a section of the Upper Bear Creek Trail had slid off into the canyon below and that the trail just past mile marker 2 was not passable any longer, so today volunteers of the San Gabriel Mountains Trailbuilders hiked up to the mission section to assess what would be needed for repairs.

Trail outage: North 34 degrees 17.575 by West 117 degrees 51.374 at 4175 feet.

Boulder to remove: North 34 degrees 17.523 by West 117 degrees 61.359.

Rebar in trail (3 rods) that need to be removed: North 34 degrees 17.369 by West 117 degrees 50.829 at 3804 feet.

Five volunteers hiked up, leaving behind a larger number of volunteers to resume working on the foot bridge going in behind the Environmental Education Center at Rincon Station. Since we didn't know what the condition of the missing section would be, w brought along trail working tools in case we could do something to make the section safe and passable.

The missing section is almost exactly at the 2.25 mile mark, and what we found was that the report we had received was a good one: roughly 15 feet was missing and what was left on the side of the hill was a wide rock face.

There wasn't any further trail that could be reworked to make the trail usable, and there was no way to dig in to the rock face to establish a trail. Instead we strung a rope across the missing section to try to discourage people from attempting to cross. We took photographs and measurements so we could decide how rebuild that section.

On the way down we did some minor trail work and then met up with the larger group of volunteers at the Education Center.