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The San Gabriel Mountains 

October 2008

Sometimes I take a day off...and this last Friday was one of them.   I grabbed my old Minolta X-700, a roll of IS0 100 film, a tripod, my 50mm 1.2 and 24mm 2.8 Rokkor lenses, and I headed for the hills north of my home.   I'm pretty lucky living close to the San Gabriel mountain range, and its dirt roads are a lot of fun (the KLR is the perfect motorcycle to use up there, too).

My KLR.   This is one of the world's great motorcycles.

This is on top of one of the hills looking down at the Cajon Pass.   That's I-15 running through it.

Here's another shot looking at the Lytle Creek wash.

I rode all through the mountains, with no map, just meandering around and taking the turns that would lead me deeper in the hills.  I wanted to stay off the paved roads.   At one point, though, I came back to the main road that runs through the little town of Lytle Creek.  I went east for less than an eighth of mile, and I saw a road to the right named Sheep Canyon, or Sheep Creek, or something like that.  Hmmh, I wondered.  I remembered that there's a road with that name in Wrightwood, on the other side of the mountains.  I wonder....

Yep, I took it, and it was great.  It had some of the best views I'd seen up there, especially looking down on the Mormon Flats rock ranges.  I didn't grab any photos there, mostly because I was enjoynig the ride too much, and it was taking my full attention.  After several miles, this road dropped me onto Lone Pine Canyon Road, and from there, it was a quick run up to Wrightwood.  I had lunch at the Evergreen Cafe.

This was hanging over the lunch counter.  I shot it with the 50mm wide open at f1.2 and 1/30 of a second.  It's not bad for a handheld shot.

After Wrightwood, I continued up the Angeles Crest Highway. I wanted to see where it was closed.  There is some construction going on up there, so maybe some day they'll open it again.  I hope they do, as the ride from Glendale to Wrightwood used to be a good one (that road has been closed for years now).  I found another dirt road heading into the mountains off of Angeles Crest Highway and I took it until it dead ended about 20 miles in.  It was a great ride, too.

Film is still pretty cool...it's not as convenient as digital, but it was fun playing with a manual focus film camera, and the image quality was great.

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